Christians, and Christian societies, honour dead bodies, because Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, had one.
We do not abuse the dead.
We do not kick corpses.
Traditional Christians do not encourage cremation.
President Obama made the right call to take out bin Laden, the right call to end torture of prisoners, and was right not to release the bin Laden photograph.
No person who doubts bin Laden’s death will be convinced by a photograph released by the American government. Photos are easily doctored and if both American political parties are lying about the DNA evidence, they will lie about a picture.
Terrorists forced Americans to see evil on 9/11, but our government will not return the favour by showing us the dead body of our foe. We are better than the terrorists. We are civilised.
bin Laden is dead. Nothing is to be gained by flaunting his remains. Justice does not demand revenge, gloating, or cruelty to the bin Laden family. Their evil son, father, and husband has received justice. Let it end at that.
May 6th, 2011 | 4:24 am | #1
Great post. I agree with everything, minus Obama ordering the hit on Obama.
May 6th, 2011 | 7:14 am | #2
[...] John Mark Reynolds: Christians, and Christian societies, honour dead bodies, because Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, [...]
May 6th, 2011 | 9:27 am | #3
Very well said.
May 6th, 2011 | 2:49 pm | #4
*Obama ordering the hit on Osama, my bad.
Can’t wait for some awful conservative jokes about how “Obama” and “Osama” are only a letter apart….sad day.
May 6th, 2011 | 3:03 pm | #5
So Joshua burned Ai and made it a heap forever, a desolation to this day. And the king of Ai he hanged on a tree until evening. And as soon as the sun was down, Joshua commanded that they should take his corpse down from the tree, cast it at the entrance of the gate of the city, and raise over it a great heap of stones that remains to this day.
(Joshua 8:28, 29)
May 6th, 2011 | 3:24 pm | #6
Agreed. What would anyone gain by the released photos? The desire to see the photos of a dead and disfigured person, to me, really just shows an appetite for hatred, and an obsession with violence and death.
May 6th, 2011 | 3:46 pm | #7
Take your Dramamine, and let’s review.
Take One: Bin Laden died in a bloody firefight.
On Sunday night, Obama dramatically told the world that “after a firefight,” our brave men in uniform “killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.”
Embellishing the story the next morning, White House deputy national security adviser John Brennan said at his briefing that bin Laden “was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in. … And whether or not he got off any rounds, I quite frankly don’t know. … It was a firefight. He, therefore, was killed in that firefight.”
Take Two: Bin Laden did not engage in a firefight.
The day after Brennan disclosed such vivid details, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney walked them back Michael Jackson-style. Bin Laden, he said in version 2.0, “was not armed.” Brennan had clearly implied that bin Laden “resisted” with arms. Carney amended the narrative by insisting that “resistance does not require a firearm.” How exactly bin Laden resisted, Carney would not say.
It’s been all downhill, uphill, K-turns and 180s ever since. Fasten your seatbelts:
Take Three: Bin Laden’s wife died after her feckless husband used her as a human shield.
Take Four: Bin Laden’s wife did not die, wasn’t used as a human shield and was only shot in the leg. Someone else’s wife was killed, somewhere else in the house.
Take Five: A transport helicopter experienced “mechanical failure” and was forced to make a hard landing during the mission.
Take Six: A top-secret helicopter clipped the bin Laden compound wall, crashed and was purposely exploded after the mission to prevent our enemies from learning more about it.
Take Seven: The bin Laden photos would be released to the world as proof positive of his death.
Take Eight: The bin Laden photos would not be released to the world because no one needs proof and it’s more important to avoid offending peaceful Muslims who supposedly don’t embrace bin Laden as a “true” Muslim in the first place.
Take Nine: Bin Laden’s compound was a lavish mansion.
Take Ten: Bin Laden’s compound was a glorified pigsty.
Take Eleven: Bin Laden’s compound had absolutely no television, phone or computer access.
Take Twelve: Bin Laden’s compound was stocked with hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs and computers galore.
Take Thirteen: Er, remember that statement about bin Laden being armed? And then not armed? Well, the new version is that he had an AK-47 “nearby.”
Take Fourteen: A gung-ho Obama spearheaded the “gutsy” mission.
Take Fifteen: A reluctant Obama dithered for 16 hours before being persuaded by CIA Director Leon Panetta.
Take Sixteen: Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and close advisers watched the raid unfold in real time — “minute by minute,” according to Carney — and a gripping insider photo was posted immediately by the White House on the Flickr picture-sharing website for all to see.
Take Seventeen: Er, they weren’t really watching real-time video “minute by minute” because there was at least nearly a half-hour that they “didn’t know just exactly what was going on,” Panetta clarified. Or rather, un-clarified.
Take Eighteen: Stalwart Obama’s order was to kill, not capture, bin Laden.
Take Nineteen: Sensitive Obama’s order was to kill or capture — and that’s why the SEAL team gave him a chance to surrender, upon which he resisted with arms, or actually didn’t resist with arms, but sort of resisted without arms, except there was an AK-47 nearby, sort of, or maybe not, thus making it possible to assert that while Decisive Obama did tell the SEALs to kill bin Laden and should claim all credit for doing so, Progressive Obama can also be absolved by bleeding hearts because of the painstakingly concocted post facto possibility that bin Laden somehow threatened our military — telepathically or something — before being taken out.
Take Twenty: “We’ve been as forthcoming with facts as we can be,” said an irritated Carney on Wednesday.
And they wonder why Americans of all political stripes think they’re blowing smoke.
—
From HERE.
May 6th, 2011 | 9:52 pm | #8
TUAD,
Conspiracy theories don’t serve this well. The easy explanation to all of those things is the White House trying to keep secret the confidential information of the mission, and coming up with some confusing statements. It’s not uncommon for such things to happen when a highly secretive mission has been undergone.
The White House has no reason to lie about something like this. Osama wasn’t a military defeat, it was an ideological victory. Al Qaeda will survive plenty fine without Osama; while the loss of their figurehead is an emotional loss, it doesn’t serve as an undermining of their entire operation.
If this were a conspiracy theory, only two desired results could be seen:
(a) they could have lied about Osama to draw him out. However, this is completely non-unique as theories about him being dead have existed for years,
(b) they lied because they think it would weaken Al Qaeda, which is too stupid for the US to try to do. First, Stanley McChrystal, a US military official, recently wrote an article for Foreign Policy noting the elaborate network that is Al Qaeda and how killing one leader, no matter how important he may be, will not in fact destroy the organization. Second, this presumes that Al Qaeda doesn’t know Osama’s whereabouts, which isn’t clear. Third, the backlash from this would have (and still should be) been a major concern.
The things you listed are peculiar, but not absolute proof that Osama isn’t dead. Frankly, the similar style of rhetoric is used to argue for the 9/11 Truth movement, one of the silliest conspiracy theory groups out there.
May 6th, 2011 | 11:48 pm | #9
Not sure what the relevance is of noting your objection to cremation and how that supports your contention that Obama got three things right. I don’t recall any discussion about that being an option that was considered. Would the disposal of a body at sea also not be consistent with what you say “traditional Christian” would encourage?
May 7th, 2011 | 11:07 am | #10
Nikolai Volk,
I didn’t say there was a conspiracy.
May 7th, 2011 | 1:55 pm | #11
chuck, cremation may not have been an option that was considered, but it fits the goal that burial at sea is intended to meet — no body to be enshrined. Whether that choice was ever considered or not, it’s a good thing that it was not used.
Burial at sea does not in any way violate traditional Christian treatment of the dead, the point of which is that the body is to be honored, not destroyed, although doing it to someone who did not die at sea may be pushing the boundaries a bit.
May 7th, 2011 | 1:57 pm | #12
“And they wonder why Americans of all political stripes think they’re blowing smoke.”
But TUAD didn’t say it was a conspiracy. There’s a really important difference there, I guess, between “blowing smoke” and a “conspiracy.”
There’s an old expression known as “fog of war.” The big mistake here was releasing details too early while the fog was still thick, instead of sifting through things to get a solid story before publicizing it.
May 7th, 2011 | 7:00 pm | #13
@pentamom – pushing the boundries, indeed. The objective of burying bin Laden at sea was the complete destruction of his body such that no remains would ever be found and, as you say, enshrined. I agree that strategically that was a good decision, but that strategy was not a part of the original article. Granted, in the case of cremation, those who make that decision are the first cause of destroying a body, whereas in the case of burial at sea, there are secondary causes. However, these secondary causes are much more rapid and I dare say complete than mere decomposition of a body in a grave, and this was known and deliberately chosen. Again, strategically, I get it. However, given the objective of complete disposal, I am not sure that I see any space between the particular method chosen by the powers-that-be, and cremation, which I gather you (and JMR) consider to be dishonoring the body. Further, I am at a loss to understand how President Obama “got this right.” Not from the perspective of the complete disposal of bin Laden’s remains, but rather in the selection of a means that honors the body according to “traditional Christians per JMR.
May 8th, 2011 | 2:30 pm | #14
“The objective of burying bin Laden at sea was the complete destruction of his body such that no remains would ever be found and, as you say, enshrined.”
Burial at sea does not “destroy” a body in a way remotely analogous to fire. It leaves it intact (as far as active human involvement) for “the sea to give up its dead.” That is precisely the point.
The objective was not to destroy the body, but to render it unrecoverable by humans. Those are two different things.
The problem here is that traditional Christians have long made this distinction between the active destruction of fire, and letting the natural process of decomposition occur anywhere; therefore, whether you find it a valid one or not, it is rightly called the traditional Christian view.
I only say it is pushing the boundaries because the burial at sea was clearly done for purposes other than primarily those of honoring the body, since the death did not occur at sea; however, it was not done in a way that actually dishonored it. Therefore, it is “pushing the boundaries,” but not defying them.
May 9th, 2011 | 6:06 pm | #15
TUAD
Great stuff. That should be one of those “Send this to all your friends.” chain e-mails. Maybe I’ll start one!
May 11th, 2011 | 9:53 am | #16
What if the information concerning where Osama was hiding was learned from using “torture” techniques? If he was right to take him out, and I believe he was, was it right to use information gained from methods that he had forbidden?
May 12th, 2011 | 2:02 am | #17
Raymond,
The CIA director has come forward and openly admitted that the information concerning Usama Bin Laden was, in fact, obtained through “enhanced interrogation” including water boarding. In other words, torture. So yes, the information was obtained using torture.
You said “If he was right to take him out, and I believe he was, was it right to use information gained from methods that he had forbidden”
Well, the only way that it would be right to obtain information using torture, is if you claim that torture is permissible. I don’t think that it is.
The only other way is if the ends justify the means. I would argue that no, the ends never justify the means. If this were the case, practically anything is morally permissible as long as you can frame the end result as something vaguely positive or good.
May 12th, 2011 | 1:35 pm | #18
Livingston,
There’s a sense in which the end always justifies the means, in that there are certain means which do and do not not fittingly serve certain ends. The best one can say is that the end did not justify some particular means.
[Example: Does the end of potential health improvement justify the means of inflicting sometimes extreme pain by surgery? Only if there is no other less painful means of obtaining the same result. We would rightly think someone mad who cut off his finger to cure a small cut rather than applying a ointment and a bandage - in this case, the end does not justify his means.]
The question here is, are there means that cannot be justified by any end? Means like torture, assassination, etc.?
Before you say no, remember the calculus of the Sanhedrin: “…it is better for you that one man should die for the people, than that the whole nation should perish.” (John 11:50) The outcome for both Jesus and the nation shortly following shows God’s repudiation of their thinking.
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