JOIN USThe Barack Obama administration has done a U-turn on the issue of releasing photographs of torture by American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. His administration initially promised to go by a court order to make public photographs of prisoner abuse. But it has since backtracked. It has said it will challenge the court order. Obama has said that the release of the photographs is of no benefit and may inflame opinion putting US soldiers in danger. Indeed, when photographs of torture by American soldiers in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison became public in 2004, international public opinion was outraged. It did also lead to hundreds of angry Iraqi youth joining militant groups and attacking US soldiers occupying their country. However, this argument is short-sighted. Transparency on the issue is aimed at ensuring that torture doesn’t happen again.
Obama’s decision to withhold the photographs indicates that national security concerns have trumped the need for transparency and fixing accountability. This is an argument that scores of regimes, including that of George Bush have made to explain away secrecy that shrouds their decisions. Now Obama is part of that long list. The release of the photographs is necessary to make the American public aware of the nature of the sadism and the terrible torture that was carried out in the name of fighting terrorism. Americans need to wake up to the fact that torture was not isolated but systematic and the result of policy. Refusal to release the photographs and act on them amounts to covering up the crime.
Soon after assuming office Obama promised to bring in a new standard of openness. He is now betraying that promise. It is possible that his about-turn has come under pressure from Republican criticism that his administration is putting at jeopardy the lives of American soldiers. But caving in on issues of principle even under pressure is unacceptable. Earlier, his administration decided to grant a blanket amnesty to those responsible for torture in the CIA’s global network of jails, rather than hold these officials responsible for their actions and bring them to justice. Obama’s half-hearted approach to the use of torture is untenable and unprincipled. One is either for torture or against it.