Guantanamo Will Not Close Just Yet: Obama Can Do No Wrong

Guantanamo Will Not Close Just Yet: Obama Can Do No Wrong

The newly minted President of the US, Barack Obama, promised to close Guantanamo within one year. Now that the hour of power has come he is not so sure. He is not even being assisted by fellow Democratic senators, who refused to vote for the money to close Guantanamo. Let's be clear: Guantanamo will not close just yet in the post-Bush era and Obama can do no wrong. Remember we forgave Obama for the Wright affair, for hanging around for many years with a religious preacher that spewed anti-US, anti-white, anti-Jewish venom. And we will forgive Obama, even if his administration continues to torture, interrogate clandestinely, and engage in abhorrent techniques with the hope of making us safe from genocidal Islamists. We will forgive Obama because Guantanamo is the model of our global politics, Obama or no Obama.

Guantanamo as the model of global politics? I thought that with Obama we were entering an era of dialogue, speaking to our enemies, and new approaches to foreign policy? But Guantanamo is the model and microcosm of the global political order after 9-11. For the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, Guantanamo represented "the state of exception," a type of emergency situation that becomes the model for societies around the world. Please see the following 2004 Agamben interview about "the state of exception" conducted by the German Law Journal:

http://www.germanlawjournal.com/article.php?id=437

The US in Guantanamo abandoned the Geneva Conventions until 2006 because al-Qaeda and the Taliban were "enemy non-combatants" (terrorists) that did not qualify for legal protection of captured national soldiers or guerrilla fighters. These captured fighters did not even have the status of people, argued Agamben. It is interesting how the prelude to torture and de-humanization is the loss of legal status for "enemies," something the Nazis did very well. The "state of exception" of the Nazis allowed the regime to combat national enemies (Jews, communists, unionists, liberals, etc.) from 1933 and lasted a terrible twenty years. Twenty years that included concentration camps, expansionist wars throughout Europe, and a racialist project that was a perpetual revolution. The heinous regime was only defeated by external Allied forces.

All populations around the world in a post-9-11 climate live under "the state of exception": constant surveillance by state authorities. New anti-terror laws, legal (illegal?) spying on citizens, and growing police and military powers from the US and China to Egypt and Pakistan. The entire political body is treated like criminals were in the past. We are all suspects, constantly living under an extraordinary state of emergency that can last perpetually. So whether you are for Cheney or Obama on the matter of Guantanamo, Guantanamo is the new model for our political world. All those concerned about civil liberties, whether on the right, left, or beyond, should be revolted. For as Obama put it himself yesterday:

On one side of the spectrum, there are those that make little allowance for the unique challenges posed by terrorism, and who would almost never put national security over transparency. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who embrace a view of the world that can be summarized in two words: "anything goes." Both sides may be sincere in their views, but neither side is right.

I am an Obama fan and cheered for him before he won and when he won. He is the symbol of the US's great promise: a beacon of cultural and racial tolerance and multiculturalism to the world. Yet, what Obama is saying above is that we won't take the Bush-Cheney approach on Guantanamo, torture, and waterboarding, but that sometimes we might need to because of "the unique challenges of terrorism." National security might in extraordinary circumstances trump transparency, meaning torture will sometimes be permissible against deadly enemies. Obama has a way to find solutions based on the justice of the middle, but in this case he undermines civil liberties for the terrorists and for us.

But Obama can do no wrong. He is the darling of the US, European, and world media. A feel-good story in a world troubled by economic chaos, global poverty, terrorist threats, simmering ethnic conflicts, environmental decay, and a potentially nuclear Iran. But Obama will not stop the new ugly reality: Guantanamo is the model of our global politics, whether he definitively closes it or stalls the process. For this we will all be losers, whether in Toronto, Washington, Paris, Tel-Aviv, or Islamabad. State powers will have triumphed and our liberties will be a thing of the past.

Tamir Bar-On