Op Ed piece Knight of the Living Dead published 3/24/07 in the New York Times, Slavoj Zizek cuts to the chase on how far we have fallen as a nation, our moral compass has broken, we have retreated to the dark past of the middle ages when the value torture was argued in the public sphere. The U.S. has created a gray world protected by the law but not regulated by these laws.
The case of Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is well know by now by most of us, a terrible terrorist who confessed (under the torture of waterboarding) to many heinous crimes including planning the 9/11 attack. Mr. Mohammed has become what Zizek calls a homo sacer a person who is excluded from all civil rights, he is now outside legality.
Now after nearly three years of incarceration at Guatanamo Mr. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed has submitted a guilty plea to the military tribunal along with his co-conspirators. The U.S system is in a disarray of it’s own making. The people of the U.. want justice, but justice has been badly served in this case, it will hard if not impossible. Due to the illegal nature of the Bush administration detention policies.
Reading this essay by Slavoj Zizek is like turning on a light. Please read it, we seem to be stumbling in the dark.
Something a little lighter and entertaining, ZIZEK’S review of Children of Men by Alfonso Cuaron
Previously pulished in part at FieldNotes 1/5/8