Zero Dark Thirty on Super Bowl Sunday

Zero Dark Thirty 2012 Poster © Columbia Pictures | IMP Awards

A friend on Facebook declared: “if you want to know everything wrong in the world, all you have to do is watch the stupid bowl.” Written during the course of the great event, I missed the comment in real time, as I missed the game. But I suspect she is right. And for this reason, I generally stay away, though with some ambivalence.

As a good American boy, I enjoyed playing the game and watching, and the memories of pleasures past linger (including watching games, in the less distant past, with my son, who was without my provocation a fan). Yet, football is more and more clearly brutal, with its special cult of violence becoming increasingly problematic. And the Super Bowl is not just another game; it has specific repulsive dressing. The ads are a spectacle of consumerism and all I hate about capitalism. Even though I begrudgingly offer capitalism two cheers, seeing no practical alternative in our world, I see no reason to see virtue in necessity, and it is off putting to celebrate. Super Bowl Sunday is a media event from which I abstain.

Last night, I followed my Super Bowl tradition, and went to the movies. I finally pushed myself to go see Zero Dark Thirty, with less than ten other people in the audience. I very reluctantly went. Following the debates about the film, I didn’t want to support a work that apparently credited torture for the killing of Osama bin Laden. I expected to be repulsed, not by the gratuitous violence of the film (in football’s spirit). It was the violence of the message that concerned me. Proponents of torture applauded this Hollywood production as the exception that proves the rule of Hollywood’s liberal bias. Opponents of the use of “enhanced interrogation” denounced the film. And esthetes of various sorts, including the film’s director, claimed that as a work of art, one based on our very recent past, Zero Dark Thirty is intentionally without a clear political message, depicting the facts, opening discussion. I decided to decide for myself, and . . .

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Omar Khadr’s Canadian Homecoming

July 2008 demonstrators in support of Omar Khadr © Joshua Sherurcij | Wikimedia Commons

On September 29th, Omar Khadr found himself on a flight from Guantanamo Bay to Canada. Khadr is a Canadian citizen, and his return was an uncomfortable homecoming. A commenter on a news story expressed a widely shared sentiment: “It does not seem right that Canada took him back into her arms after trying to cut one off.”

Omar Khadr’s story prompts us to revisit ideas about status, law, and belonging in the U.S. and in Canada. Khadr was the youngest of the Guantanamo Bay detainees. He was detained when he was 15, and was released to a Canadian prison at age 26. He is the last citizen of a NATO state to be released. How did this happen? Without the despicable legal constructions of the U.S. “war on terror,” a 15 year old who survived a firefight with U.S. troops would not have been detained for nine years or have pled guilty to homicide. Yet, his return would have been speedier were it not for the Canadian reluctance to recognize Khadr as a citizen. It took a 2010 Canadian Supreme Court decision and two years of pushing his file from desk to desk to facilitate his return.

Khadr found himself in a terrible predicament. The U.S. insisted that he was a war criminal, and the Canadian government, relying on this vilification, pretended it had no obligation towards him. After all, he was only an “accidental citizen” (Peter Nyers), not a “real” one.

Omar Khadr was born in Toronto, but his father was the “un-Canadian” al Qaeda associate Ahmed Said Khadr. Since the 1990s, the family spent much time in Afghanistan and Pakistan. On 27 July 2002, Omar Khadr was part of a group that was attacked by U.S. forces. He was seriously injured; all other members of his group were killed. Three coalition soldiers were killed, among them one U.S. service member: Christopher Speer. Khadr was charged with killing Speer. Khadr was captured and eventually transferred to the infamous detention camp in Guantanamo Bay.

In Canada, those who argue in . . .

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