Several times leading up to the election, I made mention that I was sure that a President Obama would make some moves that I didn’t like, but that I still felt better with him than the other option. This remains true, and unfortunately, right now I feel have to register displeasure about a particular move he’s made.

And no, it’s not mustard-related (that was ridiculous, and deserves no comment, other than “Why haven’t I yet made time to dine at Ray’s Hell-Burger myself?”).

It’s about the turnaround on the “transparency of government” thing, specifically with regard to this stack of photographs supposedly documenting torture of prisoners by American agents. First, the president indicated that the material would be released, then backed off, indicating that such photos could endanger troops in the field.

I don’t dispute that the government has a right to change it’s position in the face of new evidence (in fact, one of my biggest problems with the last administration is that it never changed its position, regardless of the evidence), and given that the President and his advisors clearly know more about this situation than I, I can only hope that there’s a legitimate reason for it.

That said, given the information that has come out, I rather disagree; these photos have been talked to death, and at this point, everybody’s imagined image of the photos based on the discussion is likely far worse than what’s actually there (I hope). As several wise people have said, this is a “rip the bandage off quickly” situation; get the pain out there, deal with it, and move on to the next crisis. Talking about this business constantly merely prolongs and potentially exacerbates the situation.

My problem isn’t that certain documents are being held back; the FOIA isn’t absolute; and in legitimate cases of national security, not everything gets released (I’ve seen the exemption of all kinds of completely inoccuous aquisition stuff for a variety of reasons). Also, I’m not particularly worried about giving terrorist organizations more propaganda material; they’ve got plenty already, and all this talking is probably giving them plenty of grist for their recruitment propaganda mill; I personally doubt another stack of photos is going to change the game on that front at all.

The problem is that, partially because of the general secrecy and shadiness of the last administration, holding back stuff that everybody already knows about and is speculating about anyway doesn’t help the Obama administration’s “We’re all-new, and changing the game” case. Even if this stuff is seriously inflamatory, not letting it out in this case just perpetuates the suspicion that America has something to hide, and holds itself to a different standard than it does the rest of the world; which is exactly the kind of thing that the Bush administration did that Obama successfully campaigned against. Keeping this stuff under the lid doesn’t really help us, but putting it out there under some sterilizing sunlight, owning up to our mistakes, and clearly and unequivocally re-affirming that this isn’t how we’re doing business any longer would go a long way toward perhaps improving America’s situation going forward.

Now, as I said, I don’t have all the information the White House has, and I’d love to believe the justifications offered by some of my friends on the left about “the long game”,”part of a larger plan” or “it’s a legal strategy to get more high-level legal precident written down against exactly this kind of thing”. I truly hope that these speculators are on the right track, but I’m uncomfortable with blindly trusting; Blind trust in the fact that the government knew what is was doing without question is what got us into so much of this trouble to begin with. Sure it’s a new boss and all, but I’m still uncomfortable going all in. I’m a cynical skeptic at heart, with only occasional hopey flashes.

There may be more to this story, but from my perch over here, while I believe that the administration has every right to make it, this call feels like a bad one.