Obama is wrong again

In a stunning reversal of his previous commitment to the rule of law and transparency President Obama announced that he would fight the Second Circuit court ruling to release some 2000 Pentagon-owned photos showing prisoner abuse by our troops. In justifying his decision, President Obama said that the airing of these photos would endanger our troops in combat zones and further aflame the anti-American opinion in the Arab world. This argument makes absolutely no sense.

First, the Arab world has already seen the kind of torture the Bush administration approved at the highest levels: Abu Ghraib, Guntanamo, CIA dark sites. All of this is old news. What has been the refreshing piece of good "new" news was Obama's promise to uphold American values and the rule of law. The beginning has been promising: the order ending torture, closing Guantanamo, publishing torture memos, leaving the door open to prosecutions of Bush officials who approved tortured, etc. Obama has done more for the safety of our troops and our image in the world in his first 100 days than both Clinton and Bush had done during their two terms. This is why his reversal of this policy is so disappointing.

Given the fact that the world already knows these photos are pretty bad covering them up only makes things worse and makes a mockery of our rule of law. As Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington university said, it is not up to the President to release or not release the photos. This is a court order, issued in a response to the ACLU lawsuit under the freedom of information act, telling the Pentagon that it HAS to release the photos. In its ruling, the 2nd Circuit court answered the very argument that President Obama uses now to block the release of these photographs: the public interest in seeing these photos and airing the past crimes outweighs the vague notions of inflaming anti-US opinion. In other words, it is Bush administration's policies that have ALREADY made our troops less safe and not Obama's intention to reverse these policies. Keeping the photos secret only prolongs the cancerous growth around our image and it is the secrecy that continues to inflame the anti-American sentiment.

What is particularly important about these photos--and I suspect is the main reason Obama reversed his decision--is the fact that 2000 of these images show that rather than being the result of a "few bad apples," the torture and abuse of detainees in Iraq was a widespread POLICY among the soldiers directly authorized and inspired by those torture memos drafted at the highest levels of the US government. So not releasing these photos is also a disservice to our men and women in uniform, most of whom are honorable and courageous individuals who have dedicated their lives to this country. The photos would put to rest once and for all the argument--cynically put forward by Cheney and Bush--that it was a few deranged soldiers who committed these abuses. No, it was Bush's abrogation of our commitment to the Geneva Conventions and the subsequent drafting of torture memos by Bush lawyers that led to this type of behavior. According to anonymous sources, the photos show many of the very same techniques that Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury approved at the Office of Legal Counsel.

I still think that the Obama administration will lose this case because the argument they are using is so flimsy and has already been rejected by a court. I also think this is a very politically clever ploy of Obama to make it seem like it was forced to release the photos: in other words, they might be expecting to lose the case but then they have political cover against the backlash.

But in the process of this political game, Obama is hurting the rule of law by making the argument that the government can block the Freedom of Information process from taking place simply because the information released might embarrass the government. That's the whole point! The Freedom of Information Act is an invaluable tool the public has to air our government's policies and shame the government into respecting the rule of law in case law has been violated. And in the case of the Bush administration, the law had been not only violated, but our very Constitution was defecated upon repeatedly.