There are thousands, if not millions, of “Elians” in Cuba. Many of the strongest and brightest escaped and made their home in southern Florida a few hours by boat from the place most would describe as their Cuban prison. Many came illegally, as did Elian, and were allowed to stay. We are not discussing the issue of whether Elian or any other Cuban refugee should have been allowed to stay. We are examining why this has happened.
How could the economically dependent Cuba become an island jail for millions a few miles from Florida? The US embargo “sanctions” that contains and surrounds Cuba, did not free the Cubans from Communism. No! It was not done by our government to punish Fidel Castro as we were told. In fact, it perpetuated a pocket of Communism in a world that has rejected it elsewhere. Yet sanctions remained our governments answer for fifty years.
The media hype has largely overlooked the story of a captive Cuba: financially destitute and politically suppressed, a fifty year old, militarist dictatorship. One of the most revealing scenes of the entire Elian Story was the short clip of the aging Fidel Castro, delivering an hours-long harangue to a standing throng of “supporters of Elian.” The expression in the eyes and faces of men briefly scanned by the camera was of somber nothingness. Each appeared to wear a drab brown uniform, standing in obvious boredom and indifference. Their faces told us what the newscast did not; that they were compelled to listen to the dictator preach of the glories of Cuba.
Conditions in Cuba are no longer a secret. Many of the Miami refugees will gladly tell anyone who will listen about life there from first hand experience or from the words of relatives still in Cuba. One can hardly exaggerate the deprivation there. It explains, but in no way excuses the acts of thousands of Cubans, themselves once refugees, who militantly rallied to prevent Elian from being returned, even to his own father.
The very fact that these Cuban immigrants have organized and gained political control over Miami, once a stronghold of Jewish patriots, is a testimony to their determination and organization. We are not condoning their actions, nor are we judging the immigration policy that brought the boat people to Florida decades ago. Our purpose is instead to provide a glimpse of why the Cuban tragedy exists. We wish to set aside all the rhetoric about Castro, Reno, Clintonese and the successive layers of Democrat and Republican administrations who have lied to us.
The American government made Cuba a jail by its sanctions. The ironclad evidence is found by the records of a dozen other “Cubas” hidden from our view by our own government with the complicity of the national press.
The United States Government assured Elians fate as a captive of his own government the day it placed the embargo (known as sanctions) on Cuba some fifty years ago. In the same way the “Warmakers” condemned the helpless children of Iraq to death in 1991 when the Bush Administration, posing as the United Nations, embargoed the survivors of Desert Storm. For an understanding of how sanctions work in real life, let us resort to a barnyard analogy, borrowing slightly from Orwell:
A farmer, who owned a little spread at the edge of town, was known to beat his wife, who is the mother of his many neglected children. The sheriff proclaimed righteously the need to correct and contain the source of this evil, a pox on the whole community that might spread. He arrived at a clever plan to correct the farmer without confronting him.
He got the townspeople to finance and construct a wall around the farmer, sufficient to cut off his travel, water, fuel, food, and communications. “That will teach him,” the Sheriff pronounced.
A year or two later, the local banker approached the Sheriff in a lather. He explained that no payment had been made on the farm, and that it was now necessary to foreclose on the mortgage, but he could not get over the wall to serve the papers. In addition, the banker had heard reports of dirge- like laments and noxious odors near the wall.
A fact-finding committee was sent out to spy upon the errant farmer. They discovered that his wife had gone insane and was chained to the bed. The smaller children were unattended and in rags; the older ones were missing and there was evidence they may have escaped by digging under the wall. The stench was from the carcasses of dairy herd that died from lack of veterinary care and neglect. The farmer had taken up drinking alcohol manufactured from the corn he was not allowed to sell, and was in a permanent stupor.
The sheriff scratched his head and announced, “Maybe we need to reconsider sanctions, they just dont seem to be working”.
In the ideal world, where the Sheriff must obey the law, he might have to stand trial for aiding in the murder of the farmers family. In the Hollywood version of this story, the Sheriff might finally confess and incriminate the banker who, it might be discovered, put the Sheriff up to building the fence in order to acquire the farmers choice land for an industrial park.
In our parable, the Farmer can be any Fidel Castro or Saddam Hussein, Milosevic or many others; the wife and children are the victims of sanctions worldwide. Your writer leaves to your imagination who the Sheriff, the banker, and the townspeople are
Our government currently has starvation embargoed no less than six countries. Among the more recent victims are Iraq, where 500,000 little “Elians” have died of malnutrition and disease resulting directly from the embargo. Other past “sanction” victims of the “Sheriff and the Banker” include Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia), South Africa, Libya, Bosnia, Iran, Iraq, and most recently, Sudan.
A sanction (embargo) is an act of war against a weak people by the strong one. Sanctions often aid the incumbent dictator cement power over the people, as it did in Cuba. There will be more millions of victims elsewhere unless Christian Americans awaken to the systematic destruction of Innocent people in places like Kosovo, Iraq and Sudan. Christians allowed the problem, we must solve it.
See: “Heads Up!” “Why Gasoline is Two Dollars a Gallon”, The Iraq story, to understand the “Warmakers” agenda.
