Now that the wild and foggy phase of the military action against the great general of an invisible and implacable enemy army is over, here comes — as is usual in modern democracies’ history — the moment of explanations and details. This moment has arrived for the America of Barack Obama, who, in fact, has been tormenting himself for four days in the dilemma whether to spread or hide the horrible pictures of bin Laden’s murder.
And if there can’t be rational or reasonable doubts about the death of the planner of dozens of massacres of innocent victims in the world — since it’s known that lying would have caused a momentous disaster — the doubts about the modalities and the execution of that attack can’t ferment in the international conscience.
Secretary of State Clinton, Secretary of Defense Gates, the new Director of the CIA Panetta and Obama himself are right in not wanting to share the images of bin Laden’s body, shot in the head, destroyed by the bullets of the assault specialists, to whom it is taught to shoot in the face so as to leave him with no way out. The thrill of horror and instinctive mercy that we would feel for every mangled human being, even those who chose to call themselves out and to preach violent death as the road to heaven, will rise in whoever sees those pictures. Likewise, it is inevitable that those macabre images will become a truculent icon for the terror apostles.
The pictures have already been shown to deputies and senators — therefore to the representatives elected directly and individually, in the United States, by name and last name by the American people — and whoever has seen them has already declared not to have any doubt about the identity of the dead.
But this indirect and believable warranty — in an America where the opposition to Obama has reveled for years in the fairy tale of his illegitimate birth and would be happy to raise doubts and destroy a president that today flies high — can’t be enough for the world public opinion that doesn’t question Obama’s word.
Whoever realizes that no head of state could handle for a minute such a huge lie and knows with no hesitation the “right side” to stand by even in the dirty and sordid fight against terrorism, remembers that the strength of free nations doesn’t lie in the cannons or in the super trained commandos. It’s in the principle of accountability, of responsibility and the public report of your actions and choices.
This is the dilemma that’s torturing Obama’s administration. Continue hiding those pictures for decency and respect of people’s sensitivity, like the White House says, or offering hesitating, rationed and often contradictory explanations, feeds the bonfire of absurdities that’s already burning around the assault and execution of bin Laden. It blows on the fire lighted by the irrepressible hatred for the United States, sour remains of the real socialistic failure, and most of all by the too many lies that Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, gave us to justify Iraq’s invasion (producing that unforgettable and grotesque testimony of General Powell in front of the U.N. Security Council — testimony that he himself would later define as the most humiliating moment of his life). Obama has to take into account this terrible precedent as well as the lies about the fake incident of Tonkin that Johnson utilized to obtain the OK of Congress for the war in Vietnam, torturing the image of the United States for a generation. The “word of the king,” as noble as the king can be, is no longer enough to satisfy anyone, in the time of the worldwide and instantaneous information and disinformation.
But even the opposite choice wouldn’t convince the a priori skeptical, the conspiracy theorists who still doubt about the landing on the moon that was nevertheless followed meter by meter by the Soviet telemetry or are sure that an alien astronaut has fallen in the desert of New Mexico and the bones of the aliens are jealously hidden by the American government. The impossibility of persuading these indomitable people can’t spare President Obama from a more detailed reconstruction of the times, the procedures and the facts of that Sunday in May, because those who believe his word, in the strength of American democracy with all its imperfections, and the cruel, repulsive inevitability of Osama’s violent end, are demanding it.
In its highest and most admirable moments, the United States spoiled us. It blurted out to the world its mistakes by making public secret registrations and by spreading secret documents way before the age of WikiLeaks, intercepting and going through the most intimate privacy of its first citizen, in the name of the first and most formidable principle not yet assimilated by weaker democracies — that according to which no citizen is more important than the Constitution and the survival of the institution. That’s the foundation on which the society is based, not political consent or fluctuating polls.
This, which is the most incandescent and crucial moment of the 21st century because it represents the symbolic — even though, unfortunately, not yet true and definitive — end of a tragedy begun 10 years ago in New York, is so far the most important challenge for Obama, the president who lit up the hopes of American exceptionalism even in those made skeptical and disappointed by the extremism of Bush; he must not betray expectations.
He has to take charge of the procedures, decisions, responsibilities, and repercussions just like he rightly took credit for the glory and popularity cashed in the hour of the nationalistic and patriotic joy. A society of images can’t be left without images without generating suspicions, thinking that they might come to the surface in any case, or worse, be falsified by hands interested in discrediting him. Transparency is the very hard price democracies have to pay themselves, to remain as such.