Reflections on Human Rights: Who Are the Real Terrorists?

"Today, our attention is concentrated on the fight against terrorism... We have reiterated our condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations. The government of the United States has cynically included Cuba among the "countries that foster terrorism," but Cuba will never permit that its territory ever be used in terrorist actions against the people of the United States or of any other country." --Fidel Castro

It's all over the Cuban news and I can hardly breathe: G.W. Bush is giving money and arms to Israel. I feel sick; my eyes fill and Ana sits in shocked silence beside me, watching my reaction--she has never seen me cry before. I'm so nauseated I miss all the details. How much money? Over how many years? A contract, they're saying--how many guns and missiles? Again?! I feel like throwing up. All I can manage is to curse in Spanish: comemierdas. Shit eaters. Who are the real terrorists, I wonder silently.

In the name of liberation and justice, the U.S. has helped to kill thousands in such a wide range of global conflicts it hurts the brain to take it all in. In the name of liberty and human rights, we have taken away the right to live, the right to safe custody and trials, the right of other humans to make their own choices. In the name of our right to impose our rules on everyone else, we've broken the 4th Geneva Convention and the rules of war at whim. Our children die while we torture and bully the children of other nations without conscience. We refuse to play by the very rules we insist others live by.

I got into a terrible argument with a Cuban dissident over this very topic last week, just days before "Bushecito," as Castro calls him, decided to further formalize America's support of the systematic military oppression of the Palestinian people. Cubans support the Palestinian cause very openly and with great solidarity, but Palestine wasn't the topic of this conversation. First, let me clarify that in Cuba, dissidents do fight for important human rights like freedom of expression, but that they tend to come at life from the right more than the left. I said something to the effect that America needed to realize it had no right to police the world, and this dissident erupted. He insisted the world needed the U.S. to police it, to impose its sense of justice and rights, particularly where no one else would step in. "The Communists are just waiting for the U.S. to stop governing them," he told me. "Imagine what the world would look like if Communism took over everywhere," he said with disgust.

Ok, so let's try to imagine that. First, let's dispell the myth that communism has to include a malevolent dictator, and acknowledge that there is a difference between a dictator and a terrorist. I'm not a supporter of dictators, mind you, and I know the Castro brothers have made a wide range of mistakes in Cuba, but there are definitely times when a benevolent dictatorship is the only way to control human stupidity. The example I've used in my Spanish class is of a hurricane that passed over Jamaica and Cuba several years ago. In Jamaica, where citizens are welcome to be stupid enough to stay in their homes and there is little state infrastructure to get the poor to safety, 800 people died. That same hurricane, passing over Cuba a day later with even more ferocity, took no lives whatsoever. So ok, maybe it's not so great to be forced to leave your home by military personnel with guns. But I'm willing to bet the victims of Hurricane Katrina wouldn't have minded being saved by force if there'd been a system in place for saving them. In Cuba, human life matters so much the government will save people from themselves, and it won't let economics or class decide who gets to survive.

Breaking it down a little further, what has always mattered most about communism in Cuba is the socialism at its heart, the economic structure and philosophical belief that all humans deserve to live adequately at least, and that all humans matter. Socialism was never meant to be egalitarianism; Marx made it quite clear that socialism should reward both higher capacity and harder work, but should give the same avenues for advancement and wellbeing to all citizens, regardless of class. Even if Cubans are poor, they all have the right to free health care, free education, basic food, a roof over their heads and a job. As I've heard Fidel claim several times, even the child of a poor farmer can become a doctor, an engineer. And yes, ensuring jobs and food may breed laziness in some, especially when salaries provide few incentives. But I'm still willing to imagine a world filled with well-fed children who all have shoes, and who have a right to an education and the health care they need. Maybe Fidel uses health care and education as a political tactic to cover up other, more questionable choices, but I still support the achievements made in these arenas. This kind of work is being done in other parts of the world, too, and the benefits of socialist thinking are already visible globally--and in countries the world is far less willing to criticize than Cuba, too. You just don't see the distended bellies of famine, naked, shoeless children, nor ignorance and illiteracy in socialist countries. No matter how much Cuba needs to improve economics, freedom of expression and their use of the democratic system, 98% of Cubans are literate and 90% of Cubans graduate high school. And life expectancy has gone up 18 years in the half century since the Revolution triumphed.

Sometimes I even try to imagine a world without the violence that springs from the right to bear arms. Certainly violent crimes are committed the world over, but another truth is universal as well: the moment we put guns in the hands of humans, the sense of justice and the intelligence of those carrying the guns becomes the rule of law. Again, maybe a benevolent dictator is capable of saving humans from our own worst instincts, maybe not. But I know that violent crimes are highest where stupid humans are able to be all the more dangerously stupid thanks to the arms they carry. There are no guns floating freely in Cuban society, and frankly it's a myth that you can be shot in the street by the police or military for saying what you think. Not only do we have guns all over American society, but we sell them to the world. The meek will inherit the earth?! Yeah right--he who has the most guns wins every time. Might makes right the world over, and the U.S. government thinks it has the right to decide who to give that power to.

Terrorists are people who try to force others to accept their way of thinking, and personally, I think Bush Jr. is the world's worst terrorist today. And maybe I'm being a hypocrite to suggest that Fidel and Raul Castro have the right to impose anything on their people, given that last claim, but I stand by my belief that some rights matter more than others. Cubans think a little differently about rights, and some of their choices have been good ones. According to Fidel in his recent biography, 80% of the human rights measures approved by the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights in Geneva are proposed by Cuba. Even if he's exaggerating, which he tends to do, it's true that Cuba has consistently championed justiceand human wellbeing, no matter how much isn't working in Cuban society still. A friend put it beautifully today when he told me that a Cuban doesn't just give away what he doesn't need; if a Cuban only has half a loaf of bread, he'll split the half loaf with his neighbor, and if they both go hungry, at least they'll go hungry together.

It seems right to me that we try to create a world where every human has the right to live well, regardless of which side of the world she was born into or which side of the fence she happens to live on. The United States has the capacity to help the world, not hurt it; if we were to adopt a politics of humanism instead of war, we could do a lot to change what's wrong through more productive, constructive means. Perhaps if we can start by imagining it, we can begin to create the conditions necessary to create more global justice and wellbeing peacefully. Maybe we could even help Cuba to fix its errors along the way, but with solidarity, not with force.