Jun 20 2007
From Gitmo: Roses are red, violence is blue…
… I mean, violent is blue. No, I meant, violet is blue.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that Marc Falkoff, the lawyer representing 17 Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, has compiled an anthology of 22 poems from the terrorist detainees for publication.
I think these terrorists are getting in touch with their more feminine side. Yessiree. They are turning aside from their improvised explosives, their AK-47’s, their suicide bombings in favor of streaming lyric poetry…
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.
For years, the U.S. military refused to declassify the poems, arguing that inmates could use the works to pass coded messages to other militants outside. But the military relaxed the ban recently and cleared 22 poems by 17 prisoners for public release.
An 84-page anthology titled “Poems From Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak” will be published in August by the University of Iowa Press, giving readers an unusual glimpse into the emotional lives of the largely nameless and faceless prisoners there.
“When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees/Hot tears covered my face,” Sami al Haj wrote in one poem. The al-Jazeera cameraman has been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 on suspicion of aiding Islamic militants. “When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed/A message for my son,” he went on.
Before we decide to cry a river for these detainees, it should be reiterated that most of these men are hardened terrorists who wouldn’t hesitate for a fraction of a second to blow a hole through your head. Many of these men were captured on the field of battle in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In any other period in history, these men would have been put against the wall and shot out of hand because they aren’t uniformed soldiers. The often referred to but rarely read Geneva Conventions does not recognize armed non-uniformed fighters as official enemy combatants. The term for them are terrorists and spies, and they are subject to summary execution.
So, we decided to be merciful to these terrorists. Fine. But it is insanity to give our enemies a soapbox platform that speaks directly to the American people. We are handing them the perfect propaganda tool to leverage against us. It’s like we’re handing them the rope they’re going to use to hang us.
The approximately 380 prisoners at Guantanamo are being held indefinitely; just two have been charged with crimes. Military officials are dismissive of the inmates’ poetry, which they say is aimed at garnering public sympathy.
“While a few detainees at Guantanamo Bay have made efforts to author what they claim to be poetry, given the nature of their writings they have seemingly not done so for the sake of art,” says Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Defense Department spokesman. “They have attempted to use this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against Western democracies.”
This Marc Falkoff (Gee, what a name…) has got to be pretty self-diluted. Islamofascists are really peaceful. You just have to get to know them better.
The collection, translated from Arabic, was compiled by Marc Falkoff, a defense lawyer with a literary bent. Mr. Falkoff, who got a Ph.D. in English before he went to law school, represents 17 Yemeni prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and he dedicated the book to his clients, describing them in the inscription as “my friends inside the wire.”
(Hat tip: Michelle Malkin)
If you have a known terrorist in Gitmo you should extract as much info as possible from him . Then you should overnight his head back to Osama. The postage has to be cheaper than feeding them everyday . If this country doesn’t get tough and soon we will loose millions of American lives. Continue to show weakness people and you will see things far worse than 9/11 .
Well, we’ve got to find Osama first. Then we can send him special delivery packages. I’m sure he’d love to have surprise gifts from the U.S. Army.
Perhaps the ACLU or the Modern Language Association or some other progressive organization could organize an Adopt-A-Detainee program. These guys could all have highly literate pen pals who could read their poems at literary festivals. Who knows? I’d bet a Voices of Guatanamo theatrical productions could prove popular off-Broadway and with regional theatres.
I’m not arguing its tacky to give a terrorist a platform, but its also a bit odd to keep referring to the whole lot as “hardened terrorists”, especially in light of the fact a majority are released and set free by their country of origin. Maybe the defense lawyer considers his clients “friends” because he believes his clients are among the majority that apparently are not “hardened terrorists”
David,
I don’t know, David. This seems beyond the pale to me, and well beyond a simple matter of taste, such as being “tacky”. While it is true that we release these terrorists back to their country of origin, I think that’s more of a statement of our benevolence as a people than it is about them.
Given the extreme criticism of President Bush and our military, just what are we supposed to do with them once we’re done interrogating them. What are we supposed to do to them without be accused of being Nazi’s again?
As far as I’m concerned, it’s always better to kill a terrorist than to capture him. Unless he can provide immediate tactical data that has bearing on our troops, any information we extract from him would be nominal. More than likely, he isn’t the “brains” of the operation.
What we are doing instead is capturing them, interrogating them and releasing them. A few weeks or months after releasing them, we run into many of the same detainees in Iraq and fight them AGAIN in the field. Over and over. That sounds pretty “hardened” to me.
Far better to just kill them on the battlefield.