Obama’s Moment of Weakness

It’s the first major breach of promise by the “savior.” President Obama has reversed his previous decision and now says he won’t release additional photos of the United States military torturing captives. In making this wrong decision, Obama is weakening himself for no good reason.

The announced great cleanup action after the dirty George W. Bush era – was this it? Despite his promises during the campaign, now the president says he won’t release more torture photos taken in prison compounds in Iraq and Afghanistan. Further evidence of U.S. excesses in its war on terror will remain hidden away, at least temporarily. The government had just recently vowed it wanted to show these photos to the world, especially because a New York court had ordered them released.

So why the about face? A taciturn Obama explained that he was motivated by a concern for the safety and security of soldiers, should the photos become available to the public. Human rights organizations, liberal and otherwise, as well as many of Obama’s supporters are rightly up in arms over such a measure being taken by their hero. Global anti-Americanism, open or latent, they know is rooted in this self-image Americans try to project about freedom, peace and democracy, which is now proving to be phony and self-serving.

The excuse that such photos would promote more anti-Americanism, as Obama claims, reverses cause and effect: Releasing these 40 photos won’t promote anti-Americanism; concealing them will. The world wants to see just how far the CIA and military torturers went in the name of the war on terror, so that a line might someday finally be drawn under this chapter of American “self-defense.” That is the only way Obama’s promised new beginning in relations between nations, in general, and the Arab-Islamic world, in particular, can ever be possible.

Obama knows this, of course. But the new man in the White House also knows that in order to have a new beginning, he first has to eliminate the deep divisions between liberals and conservatives and the haves and have-nots currently crippling the nation. To do so, Obama, pragmatist that he is, is trying to reconcile with his political opponents, especially the Republicans. That is why he’s willing to let those responsible for torture in the Bush administration off the hook, because the applause he will garner from conservatives is the endorsement he needs. And finally, he can’t just ignore the influential national security apparatus and govern around it, which is also why CIA and company won’t be held to account either.

As politically understandable as Obama’s decision might be, it’s still wrong. He is putting his greatest asset, his credibility, on the line in doing this. He is also unnecessarily antagonizing his strongest supporters, the liberal left. But the last word still hasn’t been uttered in the matter of torture photos, because the Supreme Court will eventually decide whether the photos may be made public or not. How the necessary debate over torture will proceed won’t be in Obama’s hands after that decision – and that’s not a sign of his strength.