20
June, 2017
101 Main
Street #380
Huntington
Beach, CA 92648
Dear
Congressman,
Re: Cuba
Despite
his constantly touted campaign slogan, your Trump seems determined to make
America small again. His latest grand gesture, to undo Obama’s initiative in
Cuba, leaves the door wide open for Russia and China (again!) to step in and
fill the gap left by our president’s obsequious grandstanding to a tiny
community of Cuban exiles in Miami.
My wife
and I were in Cuba with a group of contemporary art enthusiasts in 2014. We
were greeted everywhere with warmth and curiosity about America, as well as
with regret that their country’s giant neighbor to the north had chosen to isolate
them for so many fruitless years. We have chosen to punish an entire nation of
neighbors for ideological political reasons that have little to do with their
daily lives. Our choice has kept them in poverty and deprivation for no better
reason than our hatred for their leader. (We have also, incidentally, deprived
ourselves of their excellent cigars! Do you enjoy the occasional indulgence,
Congressman, as I do?)
Certainly
their regime is a repressive one. No question about that. But our policy of
punitive isolation, inspired largely by that small, vociferous community of
Castro-haters in Miami, has done absolutely nothing to influence that regime.
By at least opening the door a crack and making it known that we were willing
to renew our friendship, Obama clearly hoped for regime change from the bottom
up. Tyranny, as we are beginning to find out in our own country, depends on a
population deprived of reliable information and choice. With the growth of a
better informed, connected, and more prosperous populace, no repressive regime
could survive for long against the people’s urge for freedom.
Trump’s
action is itself repressive of the Cuban people, who need encouragement and the
glimmer of opportunity, not pompous lecturing. His gesture—hardly even an
action— serves only to make our country look small and petulant.
Respectfully,
Peter
Clothier, Ph.D.
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