PJ Media

The “needs” of the extreme (and perverted) few here in the U.S. and abroad are and should be far outweighed by the fact that, internationally, the release of these images of distant-past, already-punished actions would have provided America’s enemies with yet another powerfully visual tool with which to recruit future jihadists and terrorists to their cause — something we saw in spades after the 2004 release of the Abu Ghraib detainee photos.

“The greatest recruiting tool we had” in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq “was Abu Ghraib,” a former al-Qaeda leader told Senator John McCain in 2007, affirming the case made by soldiers and pundits alike, including Generals Ray Odierno (commander of Multinational Force-Iraq) and David McKiernan (former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan), that publishing these images would put even more lives at risk both at home and abroad.

In other words, quietly acquiescing to the ACLU’s demand for release of these photos would have been tantamount to publishing and distributing “thousands of al-Qaeda recruitment posters,” as Ben Johnson at FrontPage Magazine put it, all on the taxpayers’ dime and the Obama administration’s watch.

Obama himself acknowledged this fact in a speech given in Strasbourg, Germany, just three weeks before he announced his intent to release the photographs to the ACLU. “When we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib, that wasn’t good for our security,” Obama told the German crowd. “That was a recruitment tool for terrorism.”

Though it took some time — and some prompting from the commanders of our forces who are currently serving on the front lines of the war on terror — Obama finally realized the potentiality that releasing these photographs to the public could have the same effect as the release of the Abu Ghraib images, and decided that he was not willing to risk being responsible for the result.

The U.S. Senate has met Obama’s decision to put the safety of American soldiers and civilians ahead of leftists’ desires by passing legislation — three times — to prevent these and any similar future photographs from being released.

On May 21, the Senate passed the Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 (DPRPA) as an amendment to the House’s supplemental appropriations bill. However, this protective amendment, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent, was scrapped in conference. The Senate has since passed DPRPA by unanimous consent twice more, in both amendment and freestanding form. Both are awaiting action in House committees and are unlikely to see the light of day as written in the liberal Democrat-dominated lower house, despite Obama’s declaration of support for such legislation.

Yousef Munayyer, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, once claimed that “Abu Ghraib set the bar for obscene inhumanity.” While this is a patently ridiculous statement (Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Army Privates Kristian Menchaca and Thomas Tucker, and the thousands of others tortured and slaughtered by radical Islamists were unavailable to comment on Mr. Munayyer’s assertion), there is no doubt the disclosure of images from the infamous coalition prison affected jihadi thought and recruitment in a way mere verbal description never could have.

That Obama recognizes this, and is willing to go to court to prevent a possible repeat of the jihadi recruitment fest the Abu Ghraib scandal became, is something that should be appreciated by all who care about the security of our nation and the safety of our servicemembers and civilians.

However “inconsistent” with Obama’s oft-broken campaign promise of open and transparent government the ACLU may find this decision to be, his decision to withhold these photographs of detainee abuse is the right one — and, where national security is concerned, it is far more important that President Obama be right and effective than that he be consistent.