U.S. hypocrisy

By Alvaro F. Fernandez

MIAMI – Cuba called the decision embarrassing. Let me add hypocritical. As expected, the U.S. Dept. of State announced last week (May 30) that Cuba would remain on the state sponsor of terrorism list published annually and where Cuba has appeared since 1982.

As per the Dept. of State website, when a country appears on the list it has been “determined by the Secretary of State [the country has] … repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism…

Currently there are four countries on the U.S. list: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. I don’t know about Iran, Sudan and Syria. What I am sure of is that Cuba does not belong on the list.

But it turns out that if the U.S. approves a terrorist, then they are labeled freedom fighters. Others… end up on the bully’s list.

I live in a city that provides (and provided) safe haven and aid to terrorists – persons who have publicly been honored by some of our members of congress. Goodfellas like Orlando Bosh, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon et al. Heck! Orlando Bosh was helped along the way by the Bush family, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and even Raoul G. Cantero, who later was named a Florida Supreme Court justice, appointed by – you guessed it – then Governor Jeb Bush.

But it goes beyond Miami… or what should we call the Guantanamo Bay gulag, where the U.S. does as it pleases with prisoners – including the use of torture?

For decades the U.S. has embraced our world in unique and dangerous ways. Here are just a few examples:

• It is the only country to drop two atomic bombs decimating two cities (and those that surrounded them) in Japan killing and shattering the lives of millions in the process.

• Who helped overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953? All for the almighty black gold! This disaster later led to an even bigger one – the 1979 Iranian revolution and the establishment of an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

• The U.S. attacked small countries in Southeast Asia that had not done a thing to it. Our best and brightest determined the spread of communism around the world must be stopped. Or have we forgotten Vietnam and President Eisenhower’s Domino Theory?

• Agent Orange, a chemical weapon, was used in Vietnam as part of the U.S. warfare program destroying the environment and killing hundreds of thousands along the way. And later we are outraged at others who use – chemical weapons!

• Over more than half a century the U.S. has funded and trained those responsible for the hundreds if not thousands of terrorist forays into an island country in the Caribbean in the hopes of destabilizing and toppling Cuba’s government.

• President Nixon and Henry Kissinger have blood on their hands in the overthrow of Salvador Allende, a democratically elected president, in Chile in 1973.

• Have we forgotten that the U.S. trained and funded Osama bin Laden when he joined the mujahideen forces in Pakistan against the Soviets in Afghanistan helping to later create the world’s most wanted terrorist. And the terror of 9/11…

• Then there’s President George W. Bush who lied to attack Iraq by saying they possessed weapons of mass destruction. This led to the killing of hundreds of thousands and helped to create greater instability in that region of the world. By the way, they’re still looking for the WMDs…

I am sure I’ve missed or forgotten (or don’t even know about) hundreds if not thousands of U.S. adventures around the world as they strive to bring U.S. imposed freedom to others.

Then there’s little Cuba just 90 miles from Key West, an island nation that for centuries has refused to bow before the giant to its north. And for that reason they are condemned as terrorists.

As I said at the beginning, I’ll call them hypocrites.

Allow me to rephrase that: the U.S. should look at itself in the mirror the next time it decides to put together a list of terrorist countries.