Walter Solon entry no. 5 - Khalili

Carl Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty, transplanted into Critical Theory and leftist scholarship by Walter Benjamin and Agamben, seems to inform Khalili’s text. According to Schmitt, the sovereign is the one who decides on the state of exception. The paradox of the Rule of Law is thus established, and Schmitt’s realistic account of the true nature of political domination crystalized in the state form is re-interpreted by Leftist scholars in their accusation of hypocrisy and respect for the human rights by Modern, military states. Israel’s and the United States’ using of proxy armies in foreign countries to execute their brutal tactics of interrogation by means of torture are possible by the production of territories operating as a “no man’s land”, where no jurisdiction applies. The irony is that such actions, when acknowledged, are defended on the basis of a struggle of democratic, lawful countries, against barbaric, lawless enemies. The proxies, local militias who “betray” their native counterparts and serve the imperialist foreign power, are the necessary hole in the law that renders Israel and the US not liable for their international crimes. The racist discourse produced by legitimize such procedures also includes a cultural attribution to the proxies (and with that, to the occupied natives) of the practices of torture and violence.  Irregular rendition of foreigners in obscure border areas is also included by, say, the FBI, in a historical narrative that legitimizes it as a legal device. The overall picture is that of an age where liberal empires institutionalize a series of regimes of invisibilities worldwide, which allow them to capture their enemies under conditions of extraordinary rendition and prosecute them in “black site” that leave no documented traces. The fact that all this is conducted in accordance to the countries’ laws doesn’t leave the room for an interpretation, according to which such imperialist enterprises would constitute an anomaly within democracy. It is rather an inherent part of it.

Problems with the article resound with criticism I’ve made previously. America and Israel appear as superpowers (maybe as one only superpower), from which all power and action derives. The role of proxies and client states is not well enough detailed or investigated in the depth it would deserve. These are seen as mere puppets, traitors of their native countries and countrymen that decide to co-operate with imperialist for at most egoistic reasons, such as personal enriching. The micropower dynamics (maybe not so micro!) of countries such as Lebanon or Latin America, to cite just two examples, doens’t interest the author. Again, the idea of an international conspiracy of Americans and Jews that rules over all of the world (including Europe, a simple military base for anti-terror Judeo-American enterprise) comes to mind, albeit it’s not explicitly evoked and may be just a anti-Semitism-phobic reverie of mine.