Document text
Letters to the editor: Why I broke the law this summer By Bradford Jones Ashland Together with nearly 100 other U.S. citizens, I broke two federal laws in July. As a result, we could each face 10 years in prison and $250,000 fines. Our crimes? We traveled to Cuba and delivered 80 tons of humanitarian aid. Citizens of "the land of the free" cannot legally travel to our neighbor 90 miles away to deliver medicines and medical equipment needed there. We were on the fourteenth U.S.-Cuba Friendshipment Caravan conducted by the interfaith group Pastors for Peace. We proclaimed our intentions beforehand, and the government did nothing to stop us. It had twice seized aid (a school bus and computers for the Cuban medical system) from previous caravans, and both actions were answered with hunger strikes; the second lasted 94 days. Each time the government relented and returned the items, knowing it cannot win such showdowns in the courts of national an world opinion. Seventy-five percent of U.S. citizens, and over 50 percent of Cuban-Americans, are against the embargo and travel ban. The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly against them 11 straight times, most recently by a margin of 173 to 3. This caravan was dedicated to the elders in Cuba, which has increased life expectancy there from under 50 years to over 70 since 1959. Cuba has, by far, the healthiest and best educated citizenry in all of Latin America, and an infant mortality rate lower than we do in this country. Add to that a right to work, housing, completely free health care and education, and a lack of homelessness, extreme hunger, "disappeared" citizens, death squads and extra-judicial killings, and one wonders why the U.S. doesn't emulate Cuba and promote her as an example. Instead, our government tries to destroy and subjugate her, as it has done to so many countries in Latin America and around the world. After the "liberation" of Nicaragua and Guatemala, one can count over 300,000 dead and find two of the three poorest countries in this hemisphere. But they're now "democracies?" Try telling that to the starving peasants and homeless, illiterate children. In Cuba, we visited many organizations and institutions, several of them non-governmental. This included hospitals, clinics, senior care facilities, churches, schools, agricultural projects, and art institutes. We visited the Latin American School of Medicine. There at a converted naval base Cuba is training, completely free of charge, 8,000 youth from Africa and the Americas to be doctors. Included are 80 students from poor and medically under-served communities in the United States. This is an example of the international solidarity that Cuba is famous for. Also memorable was meeting family members of "The Cuban Five," Cubans falsely charged and convicted of espionage against the United States. In fact, they were only infiltrating and monitoring the right-wing groups that operate with virtual impunity from Florida against Cuba, and for decades have practiced sabotage, biological warfare, murder, bombings, and terrorism. Unjustly, three of the five are serving life sentences. The real reason the travel ban exists is this government does not want us discovering the truth about what is happening in Cuba, which is extremely different from the distorted view our media gives. Proving this, the Bush administration is refusing to renew dozens of travel licenses that companies here use for legal, cultural and educational trips. And, it has sharply increased the number of citizens that are being fined, often $8,000, for traveling to Cuba illegally. Those who resist such tyranny and go see for themselves will find that, like all countries, Cuba is not perfect, but that positive, humane, and inspiring things are happening there. Commentary: Bush Demands U.S. Troops Be Assassins By Donald Walsh Medford Obviously the Bush administration, the Congress, and the Pentagon have not read the official U.S. military manual, The Law of Land Warfare (FM-27-10). This is the document, ratified by Congress, which tells soldiers what they may or may not do in the course of war. Article 31 titled "assassination and outlawry" states: "This article is construed as prohibiting putting a price on an enemy's head as well as offering a reward for an enemy 'dead or alive.'" Our first U.S. military manual said of assassinations: "Civilized nations look with horror upon offers of rewards for the assassination of enemies as relapses into barbarism." In war the enemy always remains nameless. Soldiers are not bounty hunters and this is confirmed by a long military tradition, that when the conflict is over soldiers from opposing armies respect each other as simply having done their respective patriotic duties. This prohibition was reaffirmed under President Reagan, December 4, 1981, in executive order #12333 which forbid any government sponsored assassinations. It is this relatively impersonal nature of combat that has led international law to assert that after a conflict is over all prisoners shall be sent home to their respective countries. Soldiers are not to be prosecuted for their soldierly deeds provided that they have not violated the much touted "laws of war." Assassination, however, challenges the traditional role of soldiers and makes them head hunters and this makes soldiers into war criminals. Furthermore, heads of state are traditionally protected from being killed. President Bush has no more right to declare a bounty on President Hussein than Hussein has in doing so on George Bush. Heads of state, like soldiers, are simply doing their job and neither deserves to be specially targeted, either during or after a war. This is a customary "job protection" recognized internationally. It is not that the United States has never proposed and carried out assassinations in the past, but they were done through clandestine CIA operations. It would be too embarrassing for the dignity of any national leader to admit to such behavior. When American planes targeted to assassinate Muammar Khadaffi of Libya they instead killed one of his daughters and hospitalized six other daughters as well as his wife. This is what assassins do proudly. President Reagan, at the time, kept quiet and did not brag about killing or wounding Khadaffi's family. President Bush, however, has no shame and brags about his ordered assassinations. The Bush administration neither reads history nor has moral compunctions. President Bush was so uncouth as to provide written and public authority to the army to hunt and kill "terrorists" and obscenely printed on a deck of playing cards the names and pictures of those whom our soldiers are ordered to kill without trial. The killing business is complicated enough in the present war against Iraq which was politically but not legally declared without sanctioning assassinations. It is further complicated in the grossly misnamed "war against terrorism." Blatantly killing "terrorist leaders" by name casts the entire discussion of the established "laws of war" into legal and moral chaos. War is difficult enough to discuss rationally and morally without turning war into a vendetta. The Bush sanctioning of assassination makes soldiers into assassins. He shames our American reputation before the international community. LINKS: DAILY TIDINGS: Main | News | Sports | Obituaries | Opinion | Columnists | AP News | Subscribe | Archives | Weather | Classifieds | Contact Us | Privacy REVELS: Main | Calendar | Dining | Movies | T.V. OTHER: Road Cams Copyright 2003 Ashland Daily Tidings 541.482.3456. 1661 Siskiyou Blvd., Ashland, OR 97520. Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. - Advertisers -