8/28/05: WNPJ members speak out against U.S. embargo of Cuba

The Sunday Wisconsin State Journal Forum asked readers to send in their opinions on the U.S. embargo of Cuba and WNPJ members responded, providing four of the six letters printed on the topic.

Bernard Micke, Robert Kimbrough, Marc Becker and Clarence Kailin all strongly criticized the U.S. embargo of Cuba

U.S. actions toward Cuba morally wrong

As an eight-time traveler to Cuba, I can attest to the extreme hardships our friends there endure because of the lack of ordinary but vital goods and the lack of critical medicines needed to treat the most ill adults and children. No matter one's opinion of Castro, it is not our inherent right to cause this suffering.

Sara Cooper's article proposing the lifting of the embargo cites the "once thriving island nation." But who was thriving? Perhaps the Mafia who ran the casinos in Havana, or the overlords of the cane fields who paid only subsistence wages and provided nothing in the way of health care or education?

Peter Huessy's contention that Castro would use foreign exchange "to finance the terrorism central to his life-long ambition to turn the Americas into an armed socialist camp at war with the U.S." is both a delusion and a lie. Cuba poses no military threat to the U.S. It does, however, pose a huge threat in the war of ideas.

It has supplied thousands of doctors to poverty-stricken areas of Latin America, trained thousands of doctors from other countries for free. Its prevention-based model of health care has overcome the embargo's difficulties to produce infant mortality rates and longevity that equals or exceeds that of the U.S. and are the envy of developing nations.

We need only to look at the U.S. base in Guantanamo to find a "merry band of jailers" who abuse human rights to the detriment of "freedom and liberty in our hemisphere."

-- Bernard F. Micke, Wisconsin Medical Project, Madison

Cuba is sovereign, not a child to be punished

The headline for your Forum on the U.S. blockade of Cuba, "What to do with Cuba?," shows your bias. The assumption behind the headline and both essays is that Cuba is a wayward child who must be punished. The authors, while agreeing on the child's misbehavior, cannot quite agree on what action on their parts would be more effectively correctional.

The fact is the government of Cuba will not fall whether the U.S. government lifts or keeps the blockade. Cuba is not our child; she is an independent, sovereign nation. We may not legally "do" anything "with" her. She must be allowed to pursue her own destiny without external interference.

- Robert Kimbrough, Madison

Interests of Cubans should be the focus

Although ending socialism in Cuba (either with or without the embargo) will do much to line the pockets of Archer Daniels Midland, it will do little to improve the lives of average Cubans, or ours here in Wisconsin. Both authors argue for that undesirable outcome. What the Forum lacked was a counter perspective from an average Cuban whose life has improved under socialism.

-- Marc Becker, Madison

Cuba succeeds despite U.S. interference

In spite of all the difficulties that the U.S. imposed on Cuba, it has become a great example to much of Central and South America, just for starters, in health care and education. For all their faults, no wonder they are so feared by those in power here.

-- Clarence Kailin, Madison