I agree with Cenk's diary and the arguments of many others that say that by (sigh) flip-flopping on the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, Obama is making a serious mistake. He invites the inference that his policy is to continue the denial of reality and responsibility that typify the Bush-Cheney Administration.
I also think that it's a "serious" mistake not merely in the sense of "significant," but also in the sense of the antonym of "cavalier." I believe that Obama has thought it through carefully and thinks that, in strict utilitarian terms, the harm of releasing photos outweighs the harm of suppressing them. I know that some of you don't want to give him the benefit of that doubt, but except with respect to marijuana policy I don't recall Obama treating anything serious cavalierly.
So, if Obama is truly torn over this, I want to explore the interests at stake and what the second-best solution to their release is. As usual when I float a compromise proposal, some will say that I'm lightening the pressure on Obama to do what he should. All I can say is, read on.
1. Un Chien Andalou
In my book, Obama has exactly one good argument against releasing the photos: the notion that pictures are so powerful, and speak so directly to our emotions, that the release of these photos might make it impossible to play a positive role (should we so choose) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc. In other words, his argument would have to be that for people to imagine what is in the photos would not be worse than what is actually there.
For those of you who assume that what we can imagine is always worse, please consider the example of the first scene in Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog), directed by Luis Buñuel, who co-wrote it with Salvador Dalí. If you want to watch it for the first time without preconceptions -- which I do not recommend unless you want to empathize with those who first viewed an important moment in movie history -- here's the famous/infamous part 1. The first 100 seconds suffice to make the point. If you want the experience softened somewhat, first read the description appearing after the clip:
Note: a version of the film that seems closer to the original, found here, wouldn't embed. This one seems to work for me; if it doesn't work for you, just click the link in the previous sentence.
Right now, we as a society have seen 0:50 in the video, when the awful and unspeakable act is being commenced, up through 0:52, during which brief time we thank cinematic conventions that we're actually not going to see the act happen. Then come three seconds of Oh My God. This was in the pre-Saw, pre-Hostel, pre-Se7en, era; this was not something that happened in movies. When I first saw this (without warning of what it contained) in 1977 in college, I can attest that several people in the audience appeared to be astrally projecting for the remainder of the film.
The violent visual image is incredibly powerful, worse than what we can imagine. I understand why Obama is afraid of unleashing it. I don't think it's the right call -- but let's imagine what he could do if he was unwilling to cross the line, but do everything short of doing so.
2. Elie Wiesel
The written word, even if less readily admitted to our limbic system, is also very powerful. One good example is Elie Wiesel's short novel, Night, which chronicles his experiences as fictionalized versioms of his family slip into the maw of the Holocaust. I don't think that this novel, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book The Gulag Archipelago, or many other books that recount atrocities in detail can be accused of airbrushing the horrors of what they depict, even if they are not pre-digested for the limbic system.
So, President Obama won't release photos (for now)? OK, let's use words.
Elie Wiesel is still with us, even if thanks to Bernard Madoff he and his life's savings and the assets of his foundation are not. So let's ask him for one more sacrifice on behalf of humanity.
Let's say that there are 200 photos in question. Give them each a number and lay them out under glass in a private and guarded room within the White House. Ask Elie Wiesel and 19 other witnesses -- let's say nine of them Nobel Peace Prize winners like the Dalai Lama, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tutu, José Ramos-Horta, Jody Williams, Kofi Annan, Shirin Ebadi, Wangari Maathai, and either Jimmy Carter or Al Gore, and then ten Nobel Literature Prize laureates -- and give them one task:
Be our eyes. Tell us what's there.
They should be allowed to take as many notes as they want. Each person would witness and take notes on all 200 photos. Then they should describe them. If there's a photo of a young boy being sodomized -- and, by the way, you just read that without flinching, didn't you? Such is the difference between images and words -- then they should write that down along with enough details to paint a word picture of the scene. Each person would then compose paragraph length descriptions of each photo. These words of culpability should then be published on the occasion of an austere (but televised) dinner, attended by all 20, at which each of them has a chance to discuss, with President Obama in attendance, what these photos show and what they mean.
I understand the fear of the visual image. But if we respect truth -- if we believe in candor and contrition -- can we accept less than this non-visual acknowledgement of our national sin? If Obama were to do this -- a ceremony of acceptance of responsibility that would be etched into minds (if not our limbic systems) as a clear break with the lies and deceptions and self-delusions of the past, then maybe we could then excuse his not releasing the photos.
But if he would not do this either, even with its absence of images of horror, then one has to ask why.