Even before Achilles dragged the corpse of Hector behind his chariot through the dust around the walled city of Troy, the tradition of demoralizing the enemy by degrading and displaying the bodies of its dead heroes was well-established. The United States was horrified when this was done to our fallen servicemen in Somalia, and it is one of the most barbaric and unnecessary practices of war.  While the Geneva Convention doesn’t mention the displaying of enemy corpses, a 2005 publication by the Red Cross called Customary International Humanitarian Law does. It was written to address issues that international treaties omitted, and its Rule 113 reads:

“Each party to the conflict must take all possible measures to prevent the dead from being despoiled. Mutilation of dead bodies is prohibited.

And what does “despoiled” mean? I think Achilles despoiled Hector’s body, and I think the Italians despoiled Mussolini and his mistress when they hung their bloody corpses upside down for all to see. And I think displaying a photograph pf Osama bin Laden with his face blown off is the equivalent of despoiling a body, when someone like Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eugene Robinson can write on his blog…

Because while gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others. A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden…Showing him in death would definitively refute any notion that bin Laden enjoyed some kind of divine protection. The myth would die with the man…The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved.”

Right. In other words, Robinson wants to demoralize and humiliate the enemy by showing its champion to be mutilated, helpless, and dead. I think Achilles might have written that on his blog.

As he and other politicians too frequently do, President Obama confused pragmatism and ethics when he told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he opposed releasing the death photos. “It’s important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool. That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.” Wait a minute—would it be “who we are” if there was not a danger of the photos sparking violence? In the first part of his statement, Obama’s talking pure strategy; in the second, he’s arguing ethics. I have my doubts about the pragmatic calculation, but his ethical assessment is impeccable. Humiliating dead people, even dead evil people, is a tactic that belongs with putting heads on pikes. If there is are legitimate diplomatic, foreign policy reasons to release the photos that outweigh the ethical arguments against it, that’s a different matter. In the absence of them, however, Obama is right: this is not proper conduct for a country that was established on principles of human rights and dignity.

If one has any doubt, perhaps the Hannity Rule will help. Conservative talk show host Sean Hannity seems to be a nice enough guy, but when matters of ethics are being considered, his analysis is unfailingly driven by rationalizations and flawed reasoning. He is almost the ethical equivalent of George Costanza, Jerry Seinfeld’s hapless best friend on “Seinfeld,” who finally concluded that his judgment was so unerringly poor that he should do the opposite of whatever his instincts told him was the wisest course—and it worked.

Hannity strongly believes that the bin Laden death photos should be released…because Islamic terrorists publicized photos of Nick Berg and Daniel Perl being beheaded. Because, he argues, we have no ethical obligation to treat people with dignity and consideration who do not extend us the same courtesy to Americans. Ethical treatment is only for good people; the rest should be treated as badly as their own conduct. It’s “Do Unto Others As You Know They would Do Unto You.”

Yes, Hannity’s is a common distortion of ethics, the “tit-for-tat,” “they had it coming,” “give ’em back what they gave us” reasoning that extends beyond warfare to rot our politics and everyday life. Ethics, however, involves  maintaining high standards even when lowering them is convenient and popular.  Ethics means comprehending that doing the right thing does not allow applying the lowest common denominator, but pursuing patterns of conduct that strengthen society and culture at the sacrifice of seductive pleasures like revenge, and watching one’s adversaries scream in pain.

Ethics obligates us to care about treating others, even those who hate us, better than they would treat us. If there is no national security benefit to showing the world Osama bin Laden with a bullet in his head, then the decision is matter of ethics alone, and the question is whether the United States embraces our values, or those of its enemies.

President Obama has given the best answer.