First Cuban embargo a good one

This October 19 marks sixty years of the U.S. economic embargo against the socialist government of Cuba. It represents six decades of trying to overturn that government for shaking off six decades of U.S. cruelty and exploitation of Cuba after grabbing it from Spain in the 1898 Spanish American War. That cruelty and exploitation was largely erased from the narrative when the U.S. embargoed Cuba following Castro’s nationalization of U.S. business interests following the successful 1959 revolution. Earl T. Smith, last U.S. ambassador before we broke with Castro put it succinctly to Congress: “The U.S. was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president. Nearly all U.S. aid to Batista’s government was weapons assistance which strengthened the Batista dictatorship and completely failed to advance the economic interests of the Cuban people”.

But that military aid ended March 14, 1958 when the U.S. slapped an arms embargo against the Batista regime. Why? We realized that Batista, having killed tens of thousands of Cubans during his quarter century rule, had lost nearly all support of the Cuban people and would likely be overthrown by the Castro revolutionaries. That embargo spelled the death knell of the evil Batista regime when Castro forced Batista to flee with tens of millions in Cuban treasure just nine months later.

Early on in the second embargo, the State Department issued an all too candid memo specifying the purpose was to make the Cuban people suffer so greatly they would overthrow the Castro regime. Sixty years on that same cruel, warped mentality continues the embargo against the Cuban people while similarly cruel economic sanctions crate suffering, even death, for many thousands in Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, among others, all designed for regime change that never occurs.

The U.S. instead, should replicate the short, successful Cuban arms embargo of March, 1958 against the bad actors on the world stage including Saudi Arabia, Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, all of whom make American weapons makers rich at the expense of the people destroyed by those weapons.

Only in America

Can a young person grow up with the potential, on one hand, to become president, and on the other hand, destroy democracy. Or if your Donald Trump....both.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn

Ghost of McGovern haunts Democratic foreign policy stance

The most antiwar presidential candidate in my lifetime was Democrat George McGovern in 1972. He ran against pro Vietnam War president Richard Nixon, who claimed America could achieve peace with honor there. McGovern said ‘Bunk’ and pledged to end the war without, as Nixon’s policy guaranteed, getting hundreds of thousands more Vietnamese, and tens of thousands more U.S. soldiers killed. Result? The U.S. electorate rejected McGovern’s vision overwhelmingly, giving Nixon 49 states and a 23.2% vote margin. Democrats, traditionally less militaristic than Republicans, learned a hard lesson: never campaign for peace over war.  

In the 12 presidential elections since, including this one, Democrats dared not champion peace against war loving Republicans. In 2004, former Vietnam peace advocate John Kerry had the chance to call out George W. Bush for his illegal, immoral and criminal Iraq war. Instead he bailed, campaigning on winning the war, which was in tatters, by fighting it more intelligently. In 2008 and 2012, Barack Obama hinted at withdrawing from senseless wars. Once in office, he not only didn’t fully end them, he added to America’s Wars of Shame, intervening in Libya, Yemen and Syria; helping turn them into failed states, with hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees.  

Trump also campaigned against America’s forever wars, but has dropped more bombs than Obama, assassinated a high ranking Iranian general, and nearly started massive wars against both Iran and North Korea. But rather than call out and campaign against this military bellicosity, Joe Biden campaigns for more military spending, more confrontation with China and Russia, adversaries he calls “near peer powers”. What’s tops Biden’s foreign policy agenda on January 21, 2021? “First thing I’m going to do, if elected, is get on the phone with the heads of state and say… America’s back”. Biden is no fool. He knows peace doesn’t sell with a war obsessed government and military fueled by companies selling hundreds of billions in weapons of mass civilian destruction.  They ply their madness over a clueless, compliant and complicit electorate. And astride Biden’s shoulder every war tinged step of the way is the ghost of George McGovern. 

Institutional racism, BLM, must be taught early, often

Civil rights, including the uplifting of the Black and Brown masses crammed into urban wastelands, has been a commitment of mine for 65 years. Growing up in a White privileged Chicago neighborhood, I was fortunate to be raised by parents, who tho not political, taught tolerance through example. I learned of institutional racism driving through those urban wastelands, which stimulated a thirst for understanding how and why they got there and means of uplifting them. The answers were not pretty or simple. School did virtually nothing to quench my thirst for knowledge. Neither did my friends who were either oblivious to the racial divide or parroted the casual racism of their parents.

Entering University of Chicago in 1963 was a watershed event in my racial education. I spent a decade in Hyde Park’s integrated community, experiencing diversity as the norm rather than the exception, and civil rights that were supported rather than ignored or dismissed. A stint as a Public Aid Department caseworker in Englewood allowed me to experience institutional racism up close and personal. This was the decade America finally shook off de jure segregation and begin the mainstreaming of Blacks into the entire fabric of America.

Half a century on, much of the optimism those of us practicing racial goodwill has been challenged. Enduring racial inequities are numerous and daunting. A significant portion of the White community has either little knowledge of institutional racism or are openly hostile to it. To some in my social network, none of whom espouse overt racism, there simply is no institutional racism. Everyone has the same shot at success they claim; and only those who don’t try don’t succeed. They cannot comprehend White privilege. They view relatively few and spontaneous criminal protest behavior as the entire sum and substance of Black Lives Matter. Try as I might to enlighten them, they appear a lost cause to the failure of our educational system to teach the true story of America’s racist founding and legacy.

Our educational system must redress this failure. It must start early and continue throughout the educational highway, from elementary school through high school and beyond. Many educators are on board. Tragically, the president is not. Just today at his ‘Conference on American history’, Trump said he’ll issue an executive order to create a “national commission to support patriotic education”. But his concept of ‘patriotic education’ specifically excludes any mention of institutional racism or White privilege. Trump calls both “hateful lies about this country. Our youth will be taught to love America with all of their heart and all their souls." He called teaching America’s racist history "toxic propaganda" and "a form of child abuse in the truest sense of those words". Those sentiments at first demoralize, then strengthen our resolve to seek progress.

The path of racial healing is far from a straight line upward. The legions of all races and ethnic groups, protesting for the end of institutional racism that keeps many millions shut out of America’s promise, are often met with profound ignorance as well as overt hostility. But when the highest elected official expresses both that ignorance and hostility, we’re in for a long, hard slog to the goal of racial justice and reconciliation.

Proper Grant apology would include resignation

It’s painful to read IL District 42 State Rep. Amy Grant’s recorded racist, homophobic comments directed at her state rep challenger Ken Mejia-Beal. Is shocks to read her disparagement of Mejia-Beal for being compassionate toward the many infirm in our society. One ponders how Rep. Grant views those less medically fortunate. How can such a person pretend to be a responsible legislator and viable candidate to continue in office? Her apology failed when it included her disclaimer that her hurtful and unacceptable views “do not reflect my heart or my faith”. Her heart and faith were on full view with those comments, unfit for a private citizen, much less an Illinois legislator. A sincere apology would leave out a face saving disclaimer that it was someone other than Amy Grant who made those statements. A healing apology would be for Rep. Grant to drop out of the November 3 election and then resign her office.

Syria: Another roach motel for American war party

Does even one American in hundred, make that one in a thousand, feel we must be involved in the Syrian civil war? I doubt it. But the U.S. military, from Commander In Chief Donald Trump on down, certainly do. The Syrian civil war has been raging since 2011. Under President Obama, the U.S. entered the civil war in 2014, ostensibly to defeat ISIS there but primarily to oust Syrian president Bashar Assad, a cog in the Iranian sphere of influence we’ve been trying to destroy since the Iranian Revolution of 1979. We provided financial, military and logistical support, including Special Forces, to rebel factions we claimed were moderate. They weren’t. Much of our hardware wound up with some of terrorist groups we claimed we could control. Had we stayed out, Assad would have prevailed early on, preventing tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and many of the 3.8 million refugees. Russia jumped in the following year, eventually tipping the balance for an Assad victory, tho fighting continues.

But still the U.S. didn’t leave. Now we stayed to protect our Kurdish allies whose real agenda was to carve out a homeland in the northeast portion of war torn Syria, something we have no business supporting. President Trump was right to vacate this mission as it had no connection to American security interests whatsoever. Great, all U.S. troops coming out? Not so fast. Trump said we’d leave a residual force to protect Syria oil wells from its rightful owner Syria. Hey, America deserved that oil as a spoil of our spoiled venture to oust Assad.

A year later, U.S. forces are still playing a near deadly cat and mouse game with Russian forces there to prop up their neighbor and ally Assad. Just last month, U.S. and Russian military vehicles collided, injuring 7 GI’s. This follows several near altercations between U.S. and Russian personnel. Instead of pulling out those troops serving no legitimate purpose, U.S. officials decided to up the ante, sending in 6 Bradley Fighting Vehicles along with a hundred troops for a 90 day deployment.

That’s how the U.S. treats the sovereign country of Syria; a roach motel where U.S. soldiers go in, but never fully come out.