This past Saturday Defense Secretary Robert Gates blocked the release of photos showing American abuse of Afghani and Iraqi prisoners. The reasoning for this overwhelming oppression of the truth, is as always, national security. The surprise however, is not that the military is attempting to cover its own human rights abuses, but the fact that Congress and President Barack Obama are cooperating with it.
When President Obama was sworn in, he assured us that there would be an increase in transparency. He assured us that justice would be upheld, by eliminating torture tactics and by giving back Iraq to its people in 2011. While there has been some progress, specifically the closing of the Guantanamo Bay facility, there has been no prosecution of any officials responsible for the institution of torture tactics, despite repeated calls from American civil rights groups. The president has made remarks saying that this omission of justice comes from a desire to move forward, rather than to look back. It has been reported by the White House that the release of photos detailing torture tactics would threaten the lives of soldiers and even threaten the public by creating hostility toward Americans overseas. Two foreign wars and eight years of aggressive foreign policy apparently wasn’t enough to make people “hostile” toward Americans.
What is most disconcerting about the denial of these photos, is that federal courts have already sided with the American Civil Liberties Union, when they sued for the photos in the spring of this year. The administration was obligated to release at least the 23 photos requested by the ACLU. That is, until Congress decided to pass a law giving Robert Gates the power to keep them private, a law signed by President Obama last month.
The Supreme Court will now take the obvious action of having to decide whether or not this new law is in fact, constitutional. But this is nothing but a run around. For the last decade terrorists have used U.S. torture techniques, military intervention, and drone attacks as propaganda to recruit jihadists-the release of these photos isn’t going to hand them any more fuel. If we hearken back to the days when the Abu Gharaib photos were released, there was anger coming from both sides-American and foreign. The obstruction of these photos isn’t really about the safety of troops, it’s about the safety of the government’s image.
The fact is that these photos are bad enough to be the last straw. Not to be ironic with my metaphorical animals, but seeing some of the gruesome tactics Americans have employed would break the war camel’s back. Public approval for the war in Afghanistan is going down, held up only by a sense of obligatory duty to the casualties we have already sustained, and a pull-out trauma associated with Vietnam. No one wants to lose this war, and these photos could make that happen.
Does that really excuse the behavior of the administration though? We can’t continue to allow politicians to make promises and then alter their stance when they obtain their new powers. This isn’t just the course of the traditional political process anymore, this is Congress and the president working together to quietly block the courts with newly minted authority. We have seen this in the past and it is never a sign of good governance.
Our troops are already under constant threat. If the government wants support and strength it should be looking at its own people, not wondering what the enemy will think. It is far worse for the government to lack the faith of its own people and be dishonest and hypocritical, than it is to release the evidence of the errors of its ways. We must look back to move forward, because otherwise we’ll never know if we are going in circles.