In the land of Guantanamo, where the shadows lie
Here’s a sad story, one of many at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Two days ago:
Guards have confiscated a “Lord of the Rings” movie screenplay from a former child soldier awaiting trial at Guantanamo, his lawyer and U.S. officials said Thursday.
The “soldier awaiting trial” is Canadian Omar Khadr, who was fifteen when he was captured by U.S. Military. His attorney sneaked him a contraband copy of the Lord of the Rings screenplay. According to the attorney:
“He wants nothing more in life than to see Lord of the Rings.”
The military explained:
The Lord of the Rings screenplay has been returned to [his attorney] as a violation of the prohibition against providing detainees materials that are not directly related to his representation of his client.
Thankfully, it’s seeping into the American conscience that the deprivations of due process at Guantanamo are wrong–wrong in a way we had hoped America had forever overcome. I don’t claim to know whether Omar is guilty of a crime, but it’s been six years. The right to a trial is one of our oldest rights, one so important to the founders that they saw a need to put a clause in our constitution forbidding its repeal, the so-called suspension clause.
It’s hard to come up with an analogy, a hypothetical, for anything as barbaric as suspension of habeas corpus (short of torture perhaps, but of course, we’ve brought that back to). But then, perhaps, J.R.R. Tolkien did just that with the Lord of the Rings.
From National Geographic:
In 1916 Tolkien was sent to France, where he and his fellow soldiers faced the terrifying new mechanisms of modern warfare—machine guns, tanks, and poison gas—fighting in some of the bloodiest battles known to human history. Tolkien fought in the Battle of the Somme, a vicious engagement in which over a million people were either killed or wounded.
In the trenches of World War I, Tolkien began recording the horrors of war that would later surface in The Lord of the Rings.
As the military said, the story is not “directly related” to Omar’s defense. It may seem like a trivial thing that his screenplay was confiscated. It is, frankly, a trivial thing, considering all he has been through. But it’s also unsurprising that someone denied their humanity clings to a story of despair in the face of oppressive warfare. I wonder if the military did the courtesy of letting Omar know how it ended.
“In the end, the hobbits get captured and brought to Mordor. They lose the ring as their possessions are confiscated. They’re detained indefinitely. That’s as much as you need to know.”
2 Responses to “In the land of Guantanamo, where the shadows lie”
http://lots-o-thoughts.blogspot.com/
It never ceases to amaze me how the network news channels gloss over this story and go straight for the bowling scores. While Chris Matthews is straining to interpret politicians’ sentences (and those of their supporters), and wondering who is “out of touch” with what, there’s a huge story going on that every responsible journalist should be covering.
http://www.luros.org
Some guys I know had this to say a few days ago:
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
Discussion