Reply #6: Travel Ban An Unnecessary Restriction on American Liberties

[Vogon_Glory]

The travel restrictions that the federal government places on American citizens and US residents wishing to visit Cuba are an unnecessary restriction on the freedoms and liberties of free Americans. This is a point that I've made over and over again elsewhere, and it is a point that more and more of us across the political spectrum should be making to our congressional representatives, our Senators, and the people in the Executive Branch. The travel restrictions have done nothing to bring about the end of the Havana regime; their only effects are to break the hearts of emigre Cubans and their loved ones still living in the island and to increase the poverty of Cubans as a whole. I begrudge the federal government's right to restrict travel to enemy countries during actual military hostilities at best, but Cuba poses a minimal threat to the mainland US these days and people who travel to and from the island present far less of a risk than those earnest and bearded young men who jet to and from Pakistan these days. It's time to end the travel restrictions for people wishing to visit Cuba.

A point that ought to be made to the flag-waving, chest-thumping, self-professed "conservative" "patriots" who support continuing the travel restrictions is that yesterday's conservatives would NEVER have stood for such restrictions for Americans wishing to travel to Cuba. They thought, just as many progressives do now, that the US government had no right to dictate what countries they should visit. They would be outraged at not only how supinely their descendants have given in to governmental coercion but that their descendants actually SUPPORT such coercion.

The man in the White House that the right-wing exiles have enthusiastically endorsed and voted into the Executive Office in 2000 has left the federal government's books deep in the red. One of the economies that ought to be made is to repeal the travel restrictions for American citizens and US residents wishing to visit Cuba, and to use the freed-up resources of OFAC for tracing the al Qaeda money trail.