Democracy Hypocrisy, Part 21

Photo: This was taken from the Portland Veterans for Peace website for their Peace Memorial Park. What a cool idea. What a cool photo. This is in Portland, OR. I found out about this through the local chapter of Veterans for Peace, who are also very cool people!

DEMOCRACY HYPOCRISY PART 21

This example of democracy hypocrisy has to do with terrorism. Supposedly, the current US government is against terrorism, except of course, when they are doing it themselves – then they call it something else. However, this example has to do with a terrorist now living in our country. Luis Posada Carriles is living in Florida without being charged or arrested by the US government authorities for the terrorist act he committed. He has boasted of bombing Havana hotels. He is suspected of being the mastermind behind a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. He is walking around, out on bail, from immigration charges, in Florida. This is from an editorial in the Los Angeles Times last April:

With a misguided decision upholding bail for Cuban-born terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has done more than free a frail old man facing unremarkable immigration charges. It has exposed Washington to legitimate charges of hypocrisy in the war on terror.

By allowing Posada to go free before his May 11 trial, the court has released a known flight risk who previously escaped from a Venezuelan prison, a man who has boasted of helping set off deadly bombs in Havana hotels 10 years ago and the alleged mastermind of a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people. Posada's employees confessed to the attack, and declassified FBI and CIA documents have shown that he attended planning sessions.

In other words, Posada is the Zacarias Moussaoui of Havana and Caracas. Moussaoui is serving a life sentence without parole in a federal prison in Colorado for conspiracy in the 9/11 attacks; Posada is free to live in Miami.

What’s the reason he is allowed to walk around free? Here’s is the answer from that same editorial:

…..Posada's lawyer has preemptively warned that if charged, his client would likely reveal extensive collaboration with the CIA.

And, just to underscore the hypocrisy, they end with this statement:

The United States keeps 385 suspected terrorists imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, many in isolation and all without U.S. norms of due process. Yet Posada, a confessed terrorist, is sent home with an ankle bracelet.

"The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do." - Samuel P. Huntington