Of course there are photos. The post-September 11th decade, the decade of the War on Terror, the decade of the bin Laden manhunt, was also the decade of the digital photography revolution, the decade in which the world went camera-mad, and everyone became a walking recording studio (still photos, audio, video—all in your pocket, all in your phone), and every recording became instantly and infinitely replicable and transmissible: the decade where everything is depicted, and every picture must be shared. The attacks of 9/11 were the most photographed, most instantly and universally witnessed historical events ever until the release of another set of photographs: those showing the abuse, torment, and torture by American soldiers of their wards at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. Photography was, of course, banned at Saddam’s hanging, and, of course, there was footage: a shaky, ghoulish, camera-phone snuff-film that captured better than any hi-def tripod shot could have the rough vengeance. Now, our technology is such that President Obama and his team were able to follow the assassination of Osama bin Laden live on Sunday, sitting in the situation room of the White House while the Navy SEALS’ raid on bin Laden’s not-so-safe house in Pakistan played out. So yes, they’ve got pictures of the dead terrorist and they’ve got film of his burial at sea, and now they’re debating if and when to release these pictures. The White House counterterrorism guru John Brennan said on TV, “This needs to be done thoughtfully.” It would have been much better if he had said, There is no need for this to be done—not any time soon. There is, in fact, a compelling need not to do it.

ABC News is reporting that the first image of bin Laden that the White House may show us is “bloody and gruesome, with a bullet wound to his head above his left eye.” If it’s released, this is the image that will instantly supplant every other account of Sunday’s raid as the iconic representation of America’s moment of triumph over its most wanted enemy. Is that what we want—the official equivalent of the Saddam hanging video? Did we learn nothing from the past decade about the overwhelming power of crude images of violence to define and polarize our historical moment? The Abu Ghraib photographs were unofficial documents of an official policy that was supposed to be kept secret, but if nothing else, they should have taught us that a photograph of the violence you inflict is always, in very large measure, a self-portrait. In getting rid of bin Laden, Obama has made the greatest step yet toward being able to put that era behind us. Do we want a photo of bin Laden’s bullet-punctured skull to eclipse this moment?

For the moment, the dominant triumphalist images of bin Laden’s death are the scenes of jubilant American crowds celebrating the news in front of the White House and at Ground Zero. The spring-break spirit of pageantry that prevailed in these crowds had an unseemly air; at the same time, the sentiments expressed by many of the revelers were quite free of the lynch-mob bloodlust that one might expect from such a scene. Does this mean, they asked, that we can have peace at last? That we can set fear aside? And, above all, that we can feel secure pride and confidence in American power again? The astonishing raid—long and secretively planned, stealthily launched, boldly and bravely and absolutely perfectly executed—was evidence of an American capability and purpose that we have longed to feel amid all the disappointments of the past decade of war.

Under Obama’s command, the raid on bin Laden—on par, as a feat of heroic military derring-do, with Israel’s 1976 raid on Entebbe airfield in Uganda—projected a cool and fearless capability. The perfect secrecy of the operation was part of its inspiring style—the total control, even the pitch-perfect relentlessness of Obama’s speech announcing the kill. Publishing trophy photographs is antithetical to that; it’s what our enemies do.

The main argument for releasing a photograph of the punctured scalp of our enemy is that it will provide proof that bin Laden really is dead. In other words, seeing is believing. But does anyone really believe that any more? Believing is believing. People who want, or need, to believe that bin Laden wasn’t shot dead will have no difficulty believing that a picture of his cadaver is a fake, a simple propaganda trick. The release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate didn’t put an end to birtherism, so why would the release of bin Laden’s autopsy video put an end to deatherism? And why does the White House care to appease the holders of such delusions?

At Abu Ghraib, and in far too many theatres of our post-9/11 wars, we compounded the wound that bin Laden and Al Qaeda inflicted on us ten-years ago, with self-inflicted wounds, time and again abandoning our own best principles in the name of defending them. We stooped to fighting terror with terror, and confronting barbarism with barbarism. The assassination of bin Laden allows us to begin turning the page—but surely not if that page is printed with an official trophy photograph of his blasted head.

Read David Remnick, Steve Coll, Lawrence Wright, Jon Lee Anderson, Dexter Filkins, Hendrik Hertzberg, George Packer, and more of our coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death.

Photograph by The White House via Flickr.