U.S. Latin American policy - Dumb and Dumber

From the Peace and Social Justice Center Newsletter;

President Obama's recent trip to the Summit of the Americas showed how
isolated the U.S. is in Latin America. On top of the history of
arrogant intervention that started with the Monroe Doctrine, current
U.S. policy continues the pattern. Latin American countries want to
talk about ending the war on drugs - but not the U.S. government. They
oppose this critical change in policy, despite the obvious benefits
for the people who are most suffering from the violence of the drug
war - the people living in Latin America and the thousands of U.S.
citizens who are in our jails for drug "offenses".

The U.S. also keeps insisting on excluding Cuba from these summits and
international meetings. This policy is suitable for 5 year olds on the
playground but has been an embarrassment and a crime otherwise. This
is another feature of U.S. policy that others will no longer tolerate:
the other American nations are forming a new organization called the
Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. Which excludes the
United States and Canada. Nice going with the supposed reset of U.S.
policy that Obama promised us.

The U.S. policy on Cuba is wrong in many ways, but the imprisonment of
the Cuban Five is even more grossly unjust than usual. These are Cuban
intelligence agents who came to Florida to keep track of anti-Castro
fanatics who were conducting bombings and murder inside Cuba. The five
gave evidence they had discovered to the FBI. For example they learned
the location of a boat on the Miami River loaded with explosives. The
FBI commandeered the boat before it could blow up in Cuba, or Miami.
But instead of proceeding to act on the terrorists, the FBI switched
their focus to the five, to please the anti-Castro community. They sit
in prison now in Virginia, for the crime of stopping "our" terrorists.

Pix credits; http://freethefivenz.blogspot.com/