My God, that Lileks can write!
Posted by Richard on June 18, 2005
You have to go read James Lilek’s ScreedBlog. Regularly. Even if you don’t give a rat’s ass about the topic or disagree with him violently, just go and marvel at his way with words. Today, some observations about Gitmo and the left:
From Day One the very existence of the place has been a popcorn hull in the tender gums of the hard left. There was just something ineffably sinister about a detention camp. Never mind that the people sent there were “Unlawful combatants,” a phrase that would seem to bestow, well, a lack of adherence to the very notions of international law the Gitmo-detainee advocates hold dear. Never mind that they get their Korans, their arrows on the cell floor pointing to Mecca – and does anyone doubt that the arrows actually point the right way? Never mind that the food must be prepared by cooks who have to incorporate the prisoners’ convictions that the infidel is unclean, and must don gloves to prevent kafir infestation. Never mind any of that. Hoods. Shackles. Poor dears.
A popcorn hull in the tender gums of the hard left — damn, I wish I could write like that!
To some on the hard left, the American soldier comes in two flavors: Grandpa, who died so France could someday take the month of August off to hit the beach, and the Lt. Calley variety who lights a thatch roof with his Zippo, lights his Marlboro with the same, and shoots the fleeing villagers with his Napalm Super Soaker. Vietnam is the template, as ever. Gitmo is a slo-mo My Lai.
Go, James, go!
… In any case, I don’t expect what I say here will change minds; if chaining terrorists to the floor and messing with the thermostat is the Gulag, the new Auschwitz, then your head is protected by a thick cap of beliefs that can only be penetrated by, oh, a nail expelled by a suicide bomber’s dynamite belt. …
Yowsa!
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