A disturbing story is stinking up the joint this week, and it centers on Barack Obama’s decision to release Bush administration memos on torture. (Or enhanced interrogation techniques, if you prefer.) I noticed that Glenn Greenwald was wrestling with the questions surrounding it today. My problem isn’t with the answers so much as the questions themselves which are being raised, and more importantly, the one which is not.

The two questions on many people’s lips seem to be:

1. Should Obama be praised for his timing in releasing the memos or did he wait too long?
2. Should he be criticized for granting immunity to government agents who followed the directives in those memos?

I find the first question a non-starter and the second one too obvious to bother with. When the memos were released doesn’t seem to matter much, and it’s insulting to suggest prosecuting the lower level grunts who followed orders and were assured / shown that they were acting in accordance with the current interpretation of the law.

No, the bigger question on my mind is, should the memos have been released at all? Yes, I know a lot of people are highly exercised over the whole thing and they want the truth brought out. Generally I default to the idea that what the government does is our business and keeping things secret from us is a sign of bad faith.

There is one area where I draw the line, though, and that comes in the form of matters of law enforcement and security. You can’t always let all of your cats out of the bag if you want to stay one step ahead of the bad guys. When a new administration comes in and finds fault with the policies of the previous, change them by all means. And if the fault is so egregious that it requires prosecution, we have military courts for such things which don’t need to have every detail hung out to dry in Newsweek.

Will this release cause future presidents to be less willing to document and retain vital documents for fear that they will be published later in the name of scoring political points? Will each administration’s tenure end with a paper shredding party in the West Wing?

What do you think? Does this set a good precedent of open government or set the stage for more secrecy and destruction of documents by those who come after?