The Parable of the Good Samaritan by Delacroix

Here is what Sarah Stephens, Director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, said recently with regard to the hurricanes that have recently ravaged Cuba:

In recent days, three hurricanes -- Hanna, Gustav, and Ike -- have laid waste to the island. Thanks to ferocious winds and rain, Cuba lost 700,000 tons of food products in ten days. One quarter-million homes and structures were damaged or destroyed. Water, telephone, and electrical services are disrupted. Care International predicts that tens of thousands of Cubans will be left homeless and that Cuba is facing the real possibility of food shortages in the days to come. Thanks to Cuba's remarkable civil defense, only seven lives have been lost, but my Cuban friends tell us in simple terms, this is a crisis, a catastrophe.

Other governments have responded decisively. Russia, which cut off financial aid to the island after the Cold War, has started making good on its promise to deliver 200 tons of supplies. Spain is sending 15 tons of aid by air. Venezuela, China, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and the EU are all pitching in.

But where is the United States? We're busy baiting the Cuban government under the guise of hurricane relief.

I didn't believe that it could get any worse, but the Bush Administration has descended to a new low in Latin America.

Pushing a Latin American policy whose only highlights are occasional trips to South and Central America by hospital ships, billions of taxpayer dollars to an utterly failed drug policy in the Andean Region, and millions of dollars to corrupt and ineffective Cuban-American organizations in Florida, all wrapped up in an overall policy blanket of almost total neglect, the Cheney/Bush team may depart the White House with the worst record of failure in our own hemisphere of any since Nixon, Kissinger, and the Central Intelligence Agency created an absolute disaster in Chile almost 40 years ago.

But to cap it off with an extended middle finger to Havana after the Cuban people have suffered so dramatically, is truly sucking at the dregs of failure.

We need to lift immediately all aspects of our bankrupt policy's restrictions on money, travel, aid, and comfort—and leave that condition intact for at least 90 days—and to ensure that whatever the Cuban people need, they get it. Period. That is the only decent thing to do.

Some time ago, we used to be a decent people by and large. Why can’t we reach down and find some of that decency again?

--Lawrence Wilkerson