On May 5, 2011, David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network argued that Obama should release photos of bin Laden’s corpse in part because they will come out eventually, and because not doing so violates Obama’s vow to be transparent and makes the president appear “arrogant.”

On May 4, 2011, Reuters published a number of photos of the compound in the aftermath of the raid, including gruesome photos of bin Laden guards killed by U.S. forces. Reuters defended the decision as appropriate.

Before Obama’s decision to not publish photos of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, journalism groups pondered the ethics of publishing or airing any photos that might become available.

On May 4, 2011, Obama decided not to release photos of the corpse. Read an article about the aftermath of the bin Laden raid from the New York Times.

Stephen Prothero, a religion scholar at Boston University, writes on CNN’s Belief blog that burial at sea was “an elegant solution” to the quandary of what to do with the body, as it thwarts any tendency to turn bin Laden’s burial place into a pilgrimage site for extremists.

Time.com gives an explanation of why bin Laden was buried so quickly, and at sea.

Michael Walzer is a professor emeritus of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He is a prominent expert on just war theory and the author of Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations.

Gerard F. Powers is professor of the practice of Catholic peacebuilding at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He also coordinates the Catholic Peacebuilding Network, which links scholars with Catholic leaders from war-torn countries in an effort to enhance the study and practice of conflict prevention, conflict resolution […]

Robin W. Lovin is the Cary Maguire University Professor of Ethics at the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas where he specializes in religion, politics and ethics.