I've been getting some push-back on Twitter from transparency advocates about my support for the decision not to release the postmortem photos of Osama bin Laden. Since I'm sure this won't be the end of the controversy (two words: birth certificate), and since I'm strongly pro-transparency myself, I thought it was worth another bite at the apple to explain why I think this is a bad battle to pick.
The pro-transparency argument for releasing the photos (see Ryan McNeely here and here) is that most of the time, the public doesn't care about whether or not the government releases information about what it's doing. Therefore, the rare occasions on which the public does decide to care are a great opportunity to push the government toward greater transparency. I suppose I'd agree with this if the call to release the photos had anything to do with transparency, but as I said yesterday, it really doesn't. Transparency should be about insight into how government works and accountability when it fails; this isn't important to either of those goals, and the only thing it will tell us that we don't already know is just how gruesome the death of Osama bin Laden was. This is exactly the point to the people who are calling for the photos to be released, because what they want isn't verification; it's satisfaction.
There are times when, in picking your battles, the motives of your allies aren't as important as your own principles, but this isn't one of those. Deciding that the photo issue is important because it's high-profile is already a political calculation. Deciding to spend even a Tweet's worth of breath on the photo, rather than the Obama administration's more serious failures of transparency or Congress' WikiLeaks-motivated backlash against it, is already a political calculation. It's a calculation based on the fact that more people are making noise about the photo than about, say, the fact that the intelligence authorization bill could allow agency heads to strip an employee of his pension if she becomes a whistle-blower after she retires -- and therefore the photo is a more likely victory. That might well be true. But it'll be seen as a victory for the people who are making the noise, and their motives. It won't just be a victory for the wrong reasons; it'll be a victory of the wrong reasons. That doesn't advance the cause at all.
