2008 Woodie Awards
Close the Guantanamo Terrorist Preserve!
Drew Bullock, Copy Editor
Issue date: 3/1/06 Section: Editorial
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Controversial since its inception in February 2002, the facility affectionately termed 'Gitmo' by military officials and officious media personalities alike has certainly been a departure from the "appease, catch and release" strategies of the previous three decades. Situated on the southeastern end of Cuba on the Caribbean Sea, the terrorist preserve houses between 500-700 endangered terrorists year-round. Unfortunately, the tropical climate is disorienting to terrorists, native to regions of extreme temperature variation ranging from the desert of Saudi Arabia to the mountains of Afghanistan and the sewers of Cairo. Further confusing to the terrorists is their being kept above ground and exposed to sunlight; in their natural habitat, terrorists tend to be subterranean and nocturnal. They are also provided with three meals a day and the opportunity to freely practice religion, both of which are rare in the terrorist ecosystem.
Some efforts have been made to reintroduce the terrorists to conditions more akin to their home environment. In the course of their preservation, it has been alleged that they have been exposed to extreme temperatures such as those they are accustomed to, ranging as they do from the Sahara to the Hindu Kush and Indonesia. In sessions with preserve staff, accusations have been made that they have been exposed to loud music and noise, thought to emulate the harsh percussion and ear-splitting peal of their native music, the improvised explosive device. It has even been alleged that they are kept bound much like the condition they keep their females in, hooded and helpless, but without the dismemberment that usually follows their own captivity rituals. Some of the terrorists, when exposed to adequate nutrition and the freedom to follow a faith different than their hosts', have suffered from mental breakdowns compelling them to refuse food. A live martyr is never a happy martyr.
Annan's call to close the preserve follows on the heels of recently available evidence that other, UN-approved "open" terrorist preserves established in England, France, Denmark, and every other Western country have proven more fertile for maintaining a growing and active terrorist population than the remote sanctuary preferred by the American government. Train bombings in London and Madrid, riots in Paris, flag-burnings, fatwas and European appeasement have reached the optimum level established by the U.N.'s Libya-chaired Human Rights Commission. As there have been no bombings, unscheduled demolitions in accordance with Shari'a, no mass acceptance of dhimmitude, and few Islam-inspired riots within America since the establishment of the Guantanamo terrorist preserve, the United Nations is urging the Bush administration to adopt more successful models of terrorist breeding and conservation.
In contrast to earlier methods of terrorist population control, the techniques employed by the West since the advent of the Islamic Republic have evolved in leaps and bounds of progress over earlier, less humanitarian policies. For example, it is a source of much shame for Americans that Nazi terrorists were executed after military tribunals during the Second World War. It is even more shameful, oft unspoken and unknown, that terrorists were killed outright upon their capture during the Battle of the Bulge. Thankfully, we live in a more enlightened time, when our superiors have shown us that the terrorist is to be cared for, protected, and preserved at the expense of our tax dollars and lives if need be.
To kill them would be to act ethnocentrically, upon a belief that their cultural agenda is inferior to our own. To capture them and prevent them from killing us is inhumane, because the terrorist feels out of place when he can't saw the head off of a kidnapped civilian. What we need to do is release them and try to come to an understanding; the name of their peculiar religion means 'submission,' and it occurs to this progressive that maybe if we just made some effort towards submitting, our terrorists would be a whole lot happier, and the world would be a more diverse and peaceful place.