The Defense Department scored at least a partial victory in its fight to quash newly released photographs of U.S. soldiers posing with the corpses of Afghan insurgents and suicide bombers: The Los Angeles Times only published two of the 18 photos an unidentified soldier had given them — reportedly the "least gruesome" ones. The military argued that the widely condemned trophy shots, taken in 2010, endangered the large majority of blameless troops. That's remarkably similar to the reason the unidentified solider says he leaked the photos in the first place: He hoped they would force the Army to fix the "breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops," the Times says. Could these macabre photos actually help the U.S. military in the long run?
The military might regret not using this as an opportunity for reform: The Los Angeles Times was right to publish this "mortifying reminder" of what the increasingly baffling Afghanistan War has become, says Amy Davison at The New Yorker. "Our only defense when we find our forces doing things like this is outraged openness." But the Times is sitting on the other 16 photos, and if the military's promised house-cleaning doesn't really change anything, the "moral" response is releasing those graphic images, too.
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