United States: The Great Terrorist Protector?

Castro, the communist leader of Cuba, caused a stir when he released a series of articles to the Cuban media within the last three weeks. In his third article, Castro aggressively attacked U.S. President George W. Bush for allowing an anti-communist charged with orchestrating the bombing of a Venezuelan jetliner to be released from jail on a bond.

The fugitive from the Venezuelan penal system, Luis Posada Carriles, escaped from prison days after his incarceration following the attack in 1976 although has consistently denied the charges against him. To put the circumstances into perspective, it is also worth mentioning that Carriles is a longtime adversary of Castro. Carriles was charged by Cuba for several bombings in Havana Hotels in 1997. Beyond acts of communal acts terror aimed at communism, Castro went so far as to publicly accuse Carriles of various assassination attempts. Coming from a fuming Castro, this outright condemnation of the actions of the U.S. President are the first to come after months of silence when Castro ceded his powers to his brother Raul while he was said to have been recovering from intestinal surgery.

Along with Castro, distraught family members of the 73 passengers killed are in sharp opposition to this ruling which could lead to freedom. They criticized what was considered Bush’s “brutal,” decision. Espousing the United States as inappropriately condoning certain behaviors to promote democracy, one man fumed “in the United States, they are talking about good terrorism and bad terrorism and to me, “all terrorism is bad.” Although one can easily understand why the President George W. Bush would find reason to ally with such an anti-communist crusader, the moral implications still lead one to question which policy advocates one should support when the advocates are using violent tactics that are currently being criticized in other countries. Still, President Bush will be forced to respond to the charges that the United States has been protecting its own “self-confessed, active territory terrorists.”