Obama lacks pragmatism.

Following a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed five years ago by the American Civil Liberties Union, Barrack Obama has decided to release a substantial number of photographs detailing 'widespread' abuse of prisoners both in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The motives behind this could be said to be a deliberate cathartic cleanse of the conscience of the American military after years of stepping the boundaries of the Geneva convention and to hopefully start afresh. More likely, it is to publicly document the violations of morality, ethics and international law by elements of the US military to achieve widespreadnational and international condemnation of the crimes committed against Iraqi and Afghani prisoners during the tenure of the Bush administration. It is intended to serve as a large stick to inflict damage upon the preceding administration and the Republican image at large.

Unfortunately, it is playing pugilistic party politics at a very heavy price. Following the Abu Ghraib scandal a few years ago, the culprits wre routed out of the US military, court cases were convened and the American public were quite happy to forget an episode in their history that had left a dirty stain upon their image and standing in the global community. The release of photographs and documentary evidence during 2004 of the abuses that occured in Abu Ghraib fuelled the flames of an already brutal insurgency added to the growing toll of Iraqi civilians and allied soldiers.

As a relative sense of peace and security has now descended on Iraq, thanks largely to the surge of the US military in 2007, it is not a prudent or equitable decision to chip away at the very fragile foundations upon which a sense of security now exists.

In Afghanistan, the US, Canada and the United Kingdom have now become emroiled in a bitter insurgency in the Pashtun heartlands of Southern Afghanistan. Across the border in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas, the Pakistani Taliban, Lashka-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are waging a bitter conflict against the Pakistani army with the overall aim of deposing the supposedly 'apostate' Government of Pakistan. Releasing photographs of abuse of Afghani prisoners in US detention will merely aggravate the violence of the Taliban insurgency US and NATO soldiers in Southern Afghanistan.

What Obama has demonstrated, is a surpising lack of gravitas and a certain naivety as to the impact this decision will create in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Far from being a carthatic renounciation of the excesses of the Bush years, the decision to release these phtographs will only embolden the anti-western venom of Sunni Jihadi Salafist Islam.