Barack Obama and the Photographs

President Obama’s decision to not publish photographs of Osama bin Laden’s corpse may seem like an act of genuine wisdom; however, it reveals a trend of the lack of transparency that has marked his presidency. He justified that the body images of the al-Qaida leader with a shot in the chest and another in the head could raise anti-American sentiments, inciting more violence and potentially acting as a method of propaganda.

But censorship does not cure these ills. Many did not need to see to believe, celebrating with champagne and beer in Times Square in New York, prompting threats of terrorist groups like al-Qaida itself, who want to avenge the killing and feasting with more attacks against America. Others are skeptical by nature, even if they saw the photos, stirring up speculation and conspiracies. While the Iranian government — which doesn’t mind denying the Holocaust — says that bin Laden died long before by his failing health, the Navy SEALs’ attack and the strength of Abbottabad’s survivors confirmed otherwise.

This is not the first time that Obama is marked by controversy unleashed by images. A few days before the Geronimo operation, on national television, he showed himself with his birth certificate in hand, proving that he was not a foreigner. And at the beginning of his term, he avoided at all costs having to prove that justice obliges the Pentagon to release photographs of tortured prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. So now, and during the scandal that caused the leak of diplomacy documents through WikiLeaks, Obama and the military argued that disclosure of the material would jeopardize the safety of the troops and would encourage al-Qaida to recruit more terrorists, which never happened.

If you allow the government to decide what the public should see, know or not know, you run the risk of feeding paternalistic attitudes that will worsen, as the government has the natural tendency to classify, censor and protect national security at the expense of freedom of expression. The images of the body and its burial in the Arabian Sea have an intrinsic news value and public interest, since it is dealing with the most dangerous person on the planet, pursued without success for a decade by the world’s greatest power.

Ultimately, the decision not to disclose something morbid for modesty, or to do so by means of control, has an opposite and more sensational effect — particularly if one considers the collective imagination of the unknown, which fuels more speculation than what a few scandalous photos could provoke. That is how explanations feed from the legislators who had access to photos and videos showing bin Laden and the contents of his diary, which give us a glimpse of the impact of future attacks in Washington, Los Angeles and Chicago.

The most evocative picture of the operation on May 1 was the one that the White House released, believing that this would confirm the facts in a prudent manner. This photo shows President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and National Security personnel looking stunned at live images of the operation. For me, this is not a test, but rather the equivalent of watching the celebration of fans at a football forum.

Obama has to do what he preaches: be more transparent. His obligation is to be open and to conform to the truth, as much as it hurts or however indecent it may be.