I’m of two minds about the issue of releasing the Osama bin Laden death photos. Certainly I have no desire to see them myself; hell, I can’t even sit through an R-rated horror film.  Since al-Qaeda has already admitted bin Laden’s death, there is nothing to be gained by releasing them.

But we don’t release information because there is something to be gained. We release information because it is information. I admit to wariness whenever a government suppresses information.  Sometimes it has good reason, which is why I never joined in the huzzahs for Julian Assange.  Diplomats are allowed to conduct negotiations in secret. The military must squelch information that may jeopardize the safety of its troops, which is why many details of the bin Laden mission will rightfully remain secret. Gory photos of American battlefield corpses should be suppressed to spare the sensitivities of the soldiers’ families.

I sense, however, that the argument against releasing the bin Laden photos might not be about potential retaliation by al-Qaeda and its supporters; I suspect the idea that the photos will increase anger that is already there is overblown.  It is about our own squeamishness.  We have succeeded as a nation, in recent decades, in removing the blood from bloodshed in our minds and making war an abstraction, and these graphic photos may puncture that balloon.

One reason opposition to the war in Vietnam spread so fast in Middle America is that the draft made us confront whether that conflict was worth the risk of losing our sons and brothers.  Many quickly came to the conclusion that it wasn’t. It was a decision that affected, and often divided, many families in all walks of American life. Pressure on the government to bring home the troops was loud and persistent.

We face no such decisions about our interventions in the Middle East.  Because of the all-volunteer military forces, many of us, including me, have little or no ties to anyone serving there. Since the government has not asked us to make any sacrifices, our weeks are pretty much the same whether we are at war or not, and we go about our business as if the war wasn’t happening.  We – I – may oppose the Iraq War on intellectual grounds, but because I am not invested in it personally, I don’t take to the streets in opposition, and consequently the Administration is under little pressure to bring the troops home more quickly.

Now we try to make war even softer by removing as many rough edges from horror as possible. Since 9/11, for example, news media have generally declined to show photos or footage of people plummeting from the Twin Towers because that’s considered too graphic and upsetting (though curiously photos of the towers in flame or footage of the planes hitting the towers are apparently not). I wonder if doing so has softened, even in a tiny way, our memory of that day.  I am no fan of Rudy Giuliani, but I applaud him for insisting, when participating in a HBO 9/11 documentary In Memoriam, that the film include such images.  He thought it was counterproductive to soft-pedal the horror.

We have even made authorized killing tasteful.  While I’m vehemently opposed to the death penalty, I’m bewildered at how we’ve removed the blood from that too.  Supporters of capital punishment insist it is a deterrent, despite statistics that demonstrate that it isn’t.  But how could it be a deterrent if we hide the procedure behind closed doors and make it as pleasant as receiving an IV in a hospital bed?  The thought of standing before a firing squad or on a gallows with a rope around my neck makes my knees knock with dread, but there are gloomy days when the thought of lying on a gurney with a needle slowly putting me to sleep makes me think, “Dude, sign me up!” We still want to kill; we just don’t want to feel so bad about it.

The Obama Administration may well be justified in considering the photos unduly provocative. Since they’ve seen the photos and I haven’t, there may well be content in them that would cause problems. The world will not be a worse place if the photos never see the light of day.

I’m concerned, however, that if we don’t confront ourselves, at least occasionally, with the reality of what violence looks like, it makes us more likely to shrug our collective shoulders at the next violent confrontation.  Yes, we may be people of more refined sensitivities than our forefathers, yet our violence is much more deadly and pervasive.  Seeing the reality of bloodshed makes it harder for us to give it our tacit approval next time. Squeamishness makes us more likely, not less, to plunge into war without asking the hard questions first.