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To the editor:
The Trump administration’s foreign policy has violated international humanitarian law and international human rights law. Its actions have been carried out with impunity and are justified by ludicrous reasons.
A case in point is our policy toward Cuba.
The Trump administration has continued the seven-decade economic embargo of the island that the UN General Assembly has condemned numerous times. Under the UN charter, the embargo is a violation of self-determination, sovereign equality and non-intervention.
It results in humanitarian harm.
In an executive order, Trump has also imposed a fuel blockade on Cuba. UN human rights experts call it: a “serious violation of international law”; an “extreme form of unilateral economic coercion”; not authorized by the Security Council; and given the population’s need for food, medication, hospitals, agriculture and water systems, it could have severe humanitarian consequences.
These are already evident.
The State Department issued a 100-page report that makes absurd accusations against Cuba.
“The Cuban government is waging a sustained campaign of subversion against the U.S. … Even as its economy teeters on the brink of collapse… the central principal of the Cuban State… [is] a hemispheric Marxist revolution that erases the United States from the earth. … Cuban agents and operatives maintain a foothold in hundreds of [American] front groups, activist organizations, solidarity centers, and ideological NGOs and non-profit networks. These groups collectively represent one of the single, largest, most sophisticated and dangerous vectors for hostile, foreign influence in American history. …[Cuba] serves as the connective tissue of a broader anti-American coalition, a staging ground where the ambitions of Moscow, Beijing and Tehran converge with the radical movements operating inside our own borders.”
Who knew, short of entering Marco Rubio’s “Twilight Zone," that Cuba on the brink of economic collapse presents a dire threat to the most powerful country in the world. And who knew there are so many allegedly subversive groups in our country that need to be targeted for repression?
Howard Elterman
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Valete
The truth of our world is a heavy thing. For most people, the earth remains an unforgiving place, where nations often harden their hearts simply to get by. It is easy to sit in the warm, quiet rooms of New York, passing resolutions and debating policy. The UN votes, and the experts speak in long, clinical words like "humanitarian harm," safely removed from the dirt and the struggle. But no matter how much we wish it, elegant words cannot soften a hard reality.
This embargo does not come from malice or a desire to see people suffer. It comes from a tragic, necessary strength. For generations, Cuba chose a path away from freedom, choosing instead to shake hands with our adversaries. A great power cannot safely pretend its neighbors are friends when history proves otherwise. To stop the flow of fuel and money is a painful choice, but it follows the oldest rule of the world: you cannot sustain a system that wishes for your downfall.
Critics call the State Department's claims absurd, but there is no absurdity in looking at a regime with clear eyes. We must remember that this island has exported its conflict and its soldiers for decades. A nation has a plain duty to protect its own home and its own hemisphere. That is the fundamental law of survival.
Thursday, August 13 Report this
Admin
Cuba is our "adversary" only because U.S. presidents chose to be its adversary. How many U.S. allies in the Mideast are free countries? Also, if our presidents' idea of a free Cuba is to have elections that are declared "free" while the U.S. interferes in them, I can understand why their government is skeptical of that type of "freedom."
Friday, August 14 Report this