One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

El Akkad examines the concept of resistance through his firsthand experiences as a journalist reporting from Guantánamo Bay in 2008. He focuses on the pretrial hearings of Omar Khadr, a Canadian teenager who was captured in Afghanistan at age 15 and subsequently detained at Guantánamo for a decade. Through his reporting experience, El Akkad reveals how the military courts at Guantánamo operated outside normal legal frameworks, with evidence and witness names withheld, hearsay permitted, and other legal norms abandoned. He discusses a group of Uyghur detainees who, despite being acknowledged as posing no threat, remained imprisoned for years because no country would accept them. El Akkad notes that many detainees, now elderly and frail, continue to be portrayed as extremely dangerous despite never having been charged with crimes.

He then shifts to examining cultural narratives about resistance and empire through the lens of American cinema, specifically discussing the film Red Dawn. He analyzes how the 1980s original portrayed Soviet invaders as villains, while the 2012 remake initially featured Chinese antagonists before switching to North Korean invaders for market reasons. He says this cinematic example illustrates a fundamental contradiction in American cultural identity: celebrating rebellion against authority while simultaneously enforcing global dominance.