My Petition: Support Freedom for Cuba!

Commie/pinkos aren't the only ones who can write letters. So I wrote my own. If you like any part, please feel free to cut and paste. If there's interest and I have time (not always a given), I'll post some addresses. Here goes:

On October 24th, President Bush with great compassion and wisdom very ably described the totalitarian nightmare that is Cuba. He highlighted a trail of broken promises of freedom and prosperity that dates back to 1959. He put a human face on the tragedy as he stood in solidarity with the family members of just a very few of those yet languishing in Castro’s jails for the simple desire live free. He addressed the Cuban military, asking them to refrain from killing their fellow countrymen. He spoke to the children of Cuba, reassuring them that our only aim is to see them free.

Immediately, the relativists and apologists for the regime were at work. Bush was trying to interfere in Cuban politics. He was impinging on their sovereignty. The prisoners of conscience were labeled “mercenaries” in the finest Granma tradition. We have to ask in response, “Since when is it a crime to ask that the people of a sovereign nation, your fellow men, be set free? Since when is it immoral to ask that Cubans be allowed the same rights of self-determination enjoyed by hundreds of millions of others around the globe?” There were no threats of invasion in the speech. The speech made very clear that the future of Cuba is the rightful prerogative of the Cuban people. Foreign intervention amounted to the assistance offered the people now and later to a fledgling new government.

We have a long history of intervening in other countries, not always for the good. But was it not intervention when we went to war with Germany? After all, it was Japan that attacked us. And yet who could argue with the results? Mayhap, the South Koreans would want to live in greater North Korea? Was it not intervening in South Africa’s domestic politics when sanctions were put in place over apartheid? Have not voices been raised in dismay over the situation in Darfur? Are there not those who argue for sanctions against the regime in Myanmar? So why should the daily injustice perpetrated on Cubans go unanswered or, worse yet, ignored in a headlong rush for profit or stimulation?

President Bush reaffirmed the embargo, an embargo that was first put into place when the regime confiscated- without payment- the property of American citizens and companies, a debt which unlike China’s has yet to be repaid. Despite propaganda to the contrary, food and medicine are not restricted, neither is humanitarian aid. We are at the same time their major food supplier and substantial source of cash (through remittances to relatives). Any further lifting of restrictions must be tied to the release of political prisoners and the easing of the yoke of political repression. It is no more than we did to South Africa where only a portion of the populace was oppressed, as opposed to an entire population enslaved.

We ask that you support President Bush’s position in demanding the freedom of the beleaguered people of Cuba. Tomorrow Oscar Elias Biscet’s children will accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom on his behalf, a medal he will not be able to accept because he is a prisoner of conscience in the regime’s jails. Let his plea inform our policy:

…to the leaders of the democratic states of the world, to the American
people, and in particular to the President of the United States, George W. Bush,
we ask only one simple commitment: do not support or promote any solution or
accord regarding the future of the Cuban nation that you would not consider
acceptable for your own country.