LNC Chair Nicholas Sarwark
LP national Chair Nick Sarwark’s letter to the editor, published in yesterday’s Miami Herald, via LP.org:
Last week in Miami, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for ending trade sanctions on Cuba. This was a brave move on her part, and I applaud her for it. I also applaud President Obama for re-establishing diplomatic relations and the Republican and Democratic lawmakers in Congress who are seeking to preserve Americans’ right to travel freely to Cuba.
We have seen that decades without diplomatic relations have done nothing to change the regime in Havana.
Likewise, decades of economic sanctions and travel restrictions have been unproductive at best and arguably may have even strengthened the Castro’s hold on power.
We often forget that free people have the right to travel. We should never advocate our government or any other government restricting our travel. We also have the right to do business where and with whom we choose. We have the right to do business in Cuba and with Cubans. But our government is currently preventing us from exercising those rights.
Some people advocate sanctions in the name of liberty. I think their intentions are benevolent. They think that sanctions are a relatively peaceful tool for opposing regimes that we think are inappropriate in some way, typically in the realm of human rights. I, too, am passionate about the human rights of oppressed people worldwide. But the United States now has decades of evidence that shows that sanctions rarely achieve their intended goal and, instead, hurt the very people the sanctions were intended to help.
Advocates of sanctions also forget that such restrictions also violate our rights, as Americans, to travel and trade where and with whom we choose.
Freedom is best advanced not by governments, but by individual people interacting with each other of their own accord.
If we are truly concerned about the human rights of people in countries such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea, the best thing we can do is to end our sanctions on those countries and let our citizens interact and trade freely with their people.
“Andy Craig – sanctions did not kill as many Iraqis as Operation Iragi Freedom.”
Iraq Body Count gives their count of the post-2003 civilian deaths from the war to date as between 142k and 161k. Several credible estimates of the deaths from sanctions range from just under 200k to 500k+
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Estimates_of_deaths_due_to_sanctions
Andy Craig – sanctions did not kill as many Iraqis as Operation Iragi Freedom. In fact the toll from sanctions was invoked by neoconservative supporters of OIF, who said that after Iraq is liberated the sanctions could be lifted.
Jack Kemp opposed George W Bush’s war on Iraq, pointing out that sanctions worked to prevent Iraqi rearmament, and so Iraq posed no threat to the US or its allies.
I am not saying sanctions should be used in all or even most situations of oppressive governments. Just that people have a right to oppose oppressive regimes, and sanctions are preferable to war.
woops, wrong thread.
The Daily Beast article in incorrect that Perot met the 15% threshold. First it wasn’t set at 15% yet, and second Perot was included because Bush insisted on it.
The pretentiousness and arrogance of some of the LtPF signers is ridiculous. They want one of their own, an establishment centrist, and anybody else is “dangerous.” I’m glad Ackerman wasn’t afraid to alienate them and refused to accept “maybe” lowering the threshold to 10% as good-enough.
Since 1992, and then Perot’s exclusion in 1996, there two strongest-performing ind/third-party candidates have been Ralph Nader as the Green nominee in 2000 and Gary Johnson (a former Gov.!) running as a Libertarian in 2012. If including them is beyond the pale, then who the hell would they want to see included? They never say, just vague unspecified “an independent.” You know, a right-thinking independent who agrees with them and is impeccably establishment, a billionaire who can buy his way onto the ballot with minimal real support. Just, you know, not *that* billionaire, the one currently running as a Republican.
But the actual third- and fourth-largest parties who have a lengthy history of real grassroots support and meeting the ballot access threshold? The prospect horrifies them.
I know. Posting it is fine, too.
LP national chair gets letter published in major newspaper, LP blog covers it, so we repost.
True, I don’t oppose this policy.
I reject the rationale behind the article and a post.
Current US-Cuba trade restrictions, to take one example.
In a manner of speaking, yes.
@WilliamSaturn
Thank you, clearly people are not rational enough to recall how to spell a word. What else is irrational?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33o32C0ogVM
Perhaps under “The Invasion of the Chicken Snatchers” !!
There are images. You can probably google pussy riot chickens under images. I saw the images in books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lybia
Wow! Were they live chickens? Is it on You Tube? I am sure there was a point to your magnificent tirade but after the chickens I just couldn’t follow…
This is just placing ideology above reality. I’m not a green party member, but let me completely change the subject to something relevant to people: this is just the sort of rhetoric US NGO’s use because they are so worried about the “oppressed” peoples of other countries, they want “more discussion” of corruption and important social issues, they care so much about liberal freedoms, all used as an excuse to topple popular regimes in power. They love and fund all the freethinkers in Russia who run around supermarkets in the nude stuffing chickens up their vaginas. I think none of it is about fake principles of freedom that people delude themselves with; really, people just have weird taste.
The rebels in Venezuela are idiotic free-market students who actually think independence from American businesses is an excuse for a revolt.
The rebels in Syria are paranoid idiots who go on to join al qaeda and isis.
There was not a single “moderate liberal” among the rebels of Lybia; every last rebel in Lybia was mindless murderous rapist, they also went on to form the leadership of isis.
Americans should do the world a favor and stop “caring” so much. Propaganda infests their every belief. Maybe after a few decades of real isolationism they can come back out and form an educated opinion.
“Sanctions are a legitimate means of opposing oppressive governments, and certainly preferable to war or military intervention.”
Certainly? Sanctions on Iraq killed an order of magnitude more civilians than Desert Storm did.
Though I agree, even by the supposed logic of sanctions keeping them on Cuba makes no sense.
Sanctions are a legitimate means of opposing oppressive governments, and certainly preferable to war or military intervention. In Cuba it is clear that sanctions have been counter-productive, providing an excuse to the socialist government of Cuba for constant shortages that have resulted from economic planning. Ending sanctions will take away the main excuse the Cuban government gives for their failures.
In 1992 I moved my book shop into a location that had been a tobacco store. I continued to receive catalogs and newsletters intended for the tobacco store. One day I received a newsletter from Davidoff of Geneva, purveyor of find cigars. They announced that they would no longer sell Cuban cigars because the Cuban tobacco monopoly could not guarantee quality for even delivery of their cigars. Aside from sugar, cigars are the main export of Cuba, and their cigar trade was falling apart.
For Green Party members who defend Cuba, what about a regime whose main products are sugar and tobacco?
Nice letter, Nick. Congratulations on getting it published.