Biden Should Reverse Trump's Designation of Cuba as a "State Sponsor of Terrorism"
That’s the first step of many he can take toward normalizing US/Cuban relations.
By Guillaume Long
YESTERDAY 5:00 AM
Last month, Havana was the seat of the first high-level talks between Cuba and the United States since 2018, fueling speculation that the Biden administration may be contemplating removing Cuba from the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST), an easy first step that wouldn’t require congressional approval.
In Washington, everybody knows that Cuba isn’t a state sponsor of terrorism. President Obama understood that when, in April 2015, he removed the island from the SST list (the Trump administration would later reinsert it). Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s deputy national security advisers, tweeted at the time: “Put simply, POTUS is acting to remove Cuba from the State Sponsor of Terrorism list because Cuba is not a State Sponsor of Terrorism.”
Obama believed it was in the national interest for the US to veer away from its age-old Cuba policy. Stemming from his belief that engagement would serve a greater purpose than isolation, the shift contributed greatly to improving Obama’s standing in Latin America. After the fiasco of last year’s Summit of the Americas, Biden may find this to be an attractive prospect.
If anything, the election of left-of-center governments in several Latin American states means the region is now even more united on the Cuba issue than before. Unsurprisingly, a week before his trip to Washington, President Lula da Silva of Brazil said Cuba was likely to feature in his discussion with the US president, as “Cuba was always on the agenda” in his meetings with Bush and Obama.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/cuba-state-sponsor-terrorism/
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"You're in the groove, Jackson." From Lawrence Welk.
If you ever feel as if you'd really like to know more about US/Cuba relations, going all the way back to the 1800's, and discovering the position of the US toward Cuba has never changed since then, don't hesitate to dive in, anywhere, and start doing that homework. It's never too late to see through well over 100 years of unbearable racism and truculence.
Poor, poor U.S., always in dire danger from the island of 11,000,000 Cubans. What a shame the loudest Cuba haters are also the ones who have no idea of what on earth has happened to Cuba at the mercy of outside interests. Buttinskys of the most abject, ignorant degree. Every one a Marjorie Taylor Greene.
