Reply #190: Hijacked again. [View All]

I have no reason to doubt that the US government uses dissidents and the exile community for their own advantage (and vice versa). The US government has always behaved in the most nefarious manner when dealing with Latin America. That is why when pundits proclaimed the invasion of Iraq to be a departure from previous US policy, I knew that to be false. (And no, I did not and do not support the war; I actively protested against it for months before the invasion). Our government has long behaved precisely as it chose in Latin America, deposing governments at will. Of course, previous administrations did not announce their attentions for months in advance on television and in the newspapers as they did with Iraq.

The Miami Cubans may very well argue that Castro blames the embargo on his economic problems, but so do many academics whose research is devoted to Cuba. In fact, this is one of a number of arguments posed for ending the embargo.

Your argument concerning Elizardo Sanchez is a rhetorical strategy I've seen often on DU in other contexts, and I find it somewhat odd. That there exist one or more dissidents who have not been imprisoned by a given government means that political persecution does not exist, or is not important? That Rashid Khalidi or Ali Mazuri did not face arrest validate John Ashcroft’s roundups of Arabs following 9/11? How many people have to be arrested or executed before it matters? Or are such transgressions acceptable as long as you agree politically with the government in question? A commitment to human rights must be a universal principle if it is to have meaning. It cannot be selective.