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June 20, 2007
The Poets of Club Gitmo
Posted by Dave Blount at June 20, 2007 4:16 PM
Unless the topic is illegal immigration, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page is eminently sensible. As for the rest of the paper… Here's an example from today's page 1:
Inmates at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, used pebbles to scratch messages into the foam cups they got with their meals. When the guards weren't looking, they passed the cups from cell to cell. It was a crude but effective way of communicating.
The prisoners weren't passing along escape plans or information about future terrorist attacks. They were sending one another poems. […]
Writing poetry was both difficult and dangerous for the prisoners, who weren't given pens or paper until 2003. Some former inmates say they used dabs of toothpaste as ink. […]
Any poem found by the American prison guards was confiscated and usually destroyed[…]
The libs at WSJ could almost make you forget that we aren't talking about noble and poetic souls holding fast to all that is lofty in the face of oppression, but a bunch of bloodthirsty terrorists comfortably incarcerated as illegal combatants.
Despite fears of coded messages, the military has cleared some of the terrorist doggerel for public release. University of Iowa Press is publishing an anthology. It's sure to be required reading for many college courses.
Shakespeare these homicidal fiends are not. An example:
When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees
Hot tears covered my face
When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son
Quick, someone hand me a Kleenex. This one looks like Nobel Prize material:
America, you ride on backs of orphans
and terrorize them daily
I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'
Well, at least they've found some way of expressing themselves, other than flinging obscene bodily fluids at the guards.
Here's one more:
Torture, torment, oppression most foul
All because I wear upon my head a towel
Just kidding, I wrote that one.
The collection was compiled by useful idiot defense lawyer Marc Falkoff, who describes the terrorists — who no doubt would kill him just as fast as they would any other American — as "my friends inside the wire." He grouses that the English translations "cannot do justice to the subtlety and cadences of the originals."
As V the K warns, we will soon have Gitmo terrorists giving commentary on NPR's "All Things Considered." Mumia Abu-Jamal has already set the precedent. The vacationing al-Qaeda murderers might also enjoy recording some commencement addresses.
Hat tip: Jules Crittenden.
