Inexplicable

I'm still wondering how the case for freedom in Cuba is helped by incidents like this:

Wheelchair athlete and Persian Gulf War veteran, Josh Sharpe of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, had a different experience with Cuba travel (right in interview with member of press). He was planning to go to Cuba last November to distribute athletic wheelchair parts and give clinics on disabled sports. “We wanted to share with disabled Cubans some of the richness of life that wheelchair athletics have given us here in the United States.” But 12 hours before his licensed program was scheduled to depart for Havana, Josh was told that the State Department had revoked their license. Evidently, their activities were no longer considered humanitarian aid. “I was extremely frustrated,” said Mr. Sharpe. “We had no ulterior motives other than to give the gift of athletics to disabled Cubans.”

Another facet of the Bush administration’s crackdown on Cuba travel has been the end of academic exchanges of two kinds.

Professional academics are no longer allowed to travel to Cuba to do professional research at conferences or symposia. A case in point was Dr. Stuart Youngner of Case Western Reserve University Medical School in Cleveland, Ohio, who was scheduled to attend an international conference on coma and death in Havana this spring (at right with Rep. Butch Otter).
“I had gone to this prestigious conference— probably the best of its type in the world—three times before,” he said. “This time the U.S. government decided that our work at the conference did not qualify as professional research.” Dr. Youngner visited several of his members of Congress and underscored the point that this is not only an infringement on travel but also on academic freedom.

Another side of the administration’s stance is increased enforcement of the ban on illegal travel to Cuba through third countries. For instance, Andrea and Michael McCarthy of Port Huron, Michigan, traveled to Cuba in 2001 to distribute medicine through a Catholic Church program. They traveled through Canada believing that the travel restrictions were not enforced against Americans who traveled through third countries. When they returned from Cuba, the McCarthys chose not to lie to the border patrol agents and are facing a $15,000 fine. Their case is now awaiting trial before an administrative law judge. “We can’t believe that you can be fined for distributing medicines to people in need,” said Michael McCarthy during a press briefing.[emphasis added]

As the article indicates, the support for ending the travel ban is bipartisan. So is the pandering on this issue. What is keeping it in place is Florida's electoral votes. Perhaps someone needs to consider the salutary impact of US citizen visits to Cuba to incidents like this.

[Cross posted at Southern Exposure]

Comments

[James R MacLean]

I share your views on Castro (1, 2, 3, 4). And I know I'm only repeating points you've made before. But I'll say it again anyway: this is what the obsessive villification of certain heads of state fetches us.

Is Fidel Castro a dreadful head of state? Absolutely.

Is regular business with his government morally compromising? I daresay it is.

But if you inquire with a random sampling of people in the 3rd World, you will learn he is honored for standing up to the USA.

Beautiful Horizons, 4 June: If the opposition wins the referendum, I hope they realize that the Hugo Chávez's of the world do not occur in a vacuum and that the best way to prevent further Chavez's is to take the needs of all levels of society into account.

I certainly cannot argue with this; and Castro's name can be substituted for Chávez's. Yet there is no cohesive agent that rules this earth (that's why I never use the phrase "we should..."), and I wonder why it is that nearly every time someone tries to take your advice he/she winds up sanctioned, the target of coup attempts, assassinations and capital strikes; descends into autocracy or reneges on all promises of success?

You have very diligently reminded readers that you deplore episodes like the coups of April '02 or Chile's (Sept '73). I wonder, if those had been met with unqualified public outrage, would there not be at least a ghost of a hope that our financial and political leaders would "take the needs of all levels of society into account"?