The decision to bury the corpse of Osama bin Laden at sea seems almost like an open invitation to conspiracy theorists. The reason for doing it this way is apparently that they didn’t want the site of OBL’s grave to emerge as some kind of shrine/haven for wannabe terrorists. This doesn’t really make sense to me.
The precedent, it seems to me, is the post-mortem treatment of Hitler which has been absolutely dominated by the shrine concern. Consequently, his remains were destroyed in a way that engendered conspiracy theories and the actual location of his death was physically obliterated, just as OBL’s compound has been. But you can’t, of course, erase an actual place from the map and the former site of the Führerbunker is in the middle of Berlin. Anyone who’s curious, whether because they’re a neo-Nazi or just because they’re curious is free to go. And, indeed, I was curious and I went. It’s a parking lot for what I guess is an affordable housing development of some kind (pictured at right) and I don’t think anyone visits it as a shrine to Nazism.
So is this a great policy success, or do neo-Nazis just gather in other places if they feel like it? It seems to me to mostly be the latter. The only people who really suffer from a failure to adequately mark the site are totally innocent people who might be interested. Meanwhile, if people start showing up anywhere to worship at an OBL shrine someplace on the planet, that’d be a great chance to photograph a bunch of suspicious dudes.
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