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Source: ONE News/Getty Images
During the days - it still feels more like hours than days - since President Obama announced that US Navy Seals had killed Osama bin Laden, there have been several moments when I felt that the view from the outside of the US was different to the view within the US.
Essentially, some believe that the US glorying in the killing of an unarmed man in his bedroom, after shooting his wife, is indecent. The event that should be reflected on quietly, and filed somewhere between shame and fulfilment.
Unpleasant words like vengeance are to be avoided. Celebration is inappropriate.
Yesterday, Breakfast's Corin Dann suggested - only indirectly - that some might find the displays of joy at the death of an individual distasteful. He was clearly onto something, a position that runs counter to the story of justice that is being told and retold in the US media.
Last night a friend living in Australia sent an email with the subject line 'Poor B', suggesting that Americans appeared to have gone crazy.
A colleague in New Zealand just told me me that the images of the deep bloodstains on the floor of OBL's bedroom had upset some viewers. I note too the disapproving tweeting of yesterday's Daily News cover; a picture of OBL in a typically beatific pose, and the headline 'Rot In Hell'.
The matter that will be raised again by the debate as to whether to release the images of the dead bin Laden. How much is enough? How much is too much?
What we're talking about is etiquette, a construction that varies from country to country. We're not discussing morality. But some of the complaints exude the vague sour aroma of moral equivalency.
The US is behaving with too much swagger. It's a trope that became current in some circles of after 9/11. American behaviour abroad invited these attacks; now they're doing it again, only the world has to witness all this showing off.
The response in New York City has been as visceral as you would expect on the streets of a city that a decade ago saw almost 3000 of its citizens slaughtered like sheep while doing something as unheroic as going to work.
Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of chanting and fist pumping, but what I saw at Ground Zero half an hour after President Obama spoke seemed to contain an innocent joy.
This has quickly become reflection, and then fear as the threat of reprisals is raised. Uniformed men with large guns are currently patrolling the NY subways. They make you feel both more, and less, safe.
At Ground Zero, the frat boys strutting around and smoking cigars evinced more certainty than the two soldiers I spoke to who'd served in Afghanistan. The soldiers spoke quietly. They thought about their answers. They'd travelled through many emotions. They didn't know how they felt.
Knowing exactly how you feel can be a sign of not knowing what you think. Perhaps distance from an event inclines you to wild and excessive braggadocio and easy condemnation. Those soldiers taught me something: the closer you are to tragedy, the less you have to say.
Read more Tim Wilson opinion
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