Forgive me, please, for being frivolous. I am acutely aware that the situation calls for sobriety. It may be tantamount to laughter at a funeral, but it's laughter all the same.
It is neither Cuba nor America, though it is definitely both. Life's irenic rhythms are apparently not threatened by the men imprisoned at the detention camp just over the hill from the W.
Sampson Elementary School, a few of whom stand legitimately accused of trying to kill Americans through various acts of terror. So, yes, a little dark laughter is in order.
Gitmo is supposedly "the Pearl of the Antilles," a nickname for this remote tip of Cuba, where dry scrubland tumbles toward the sea and lazy iguanas bake in the noonday heat. Havana, miles away, is a distant dream. Much closer is the impoverished nation of Haiti. It, too, is called "the Pearl of the Antilles. The beaches are best at sunset, when the coral rocks are aflame with an auburn glow.
As waves slap against the shore, you can forget about Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who allegedly helped perpetrate the bombing of the USS Cole in , which killed 17 American sailors. He now waits for trial at Camp 7, a secretive prison for about a dozen of Gitmo's supposed worst. Nor do you have to think about, unless you truly want to, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the status of supposedly stateless "enemy combatants," the Geneva Conventions or habeas corpus.
