Sheehan Leads Delegation of Hypocrites

As they traveled through Cuba, on their way to protest against the detention of al-Qaida suspects at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo last week, American peace activists displayed the hypocrisy of their cause.

To get to Guantanamo, they had to bypass about a dozen of prisons where the Fidel Castro communist regime holds hundreds of Cuban dissidents — for a lot longer, under worse conditions and for committing no crime at all.

But the peace activists, led by radical war critic Cindy Sheehan, were apparently wearing horse blinders as they spent a week in Cuba and traveled from Havana to Guantanamo.

They want potential terrorists to be set free, but they have nothing to say about the inhumane conditions endured by Cubans whose only crime is to try to express themselves freely in their own country.

"I'm calling for the cycle of violence to stop now, to close this prison," Sheehan told reporters as she stood in Cuban territory, outside the U.S. base.

"What I've read happens in this prison makes me sick to my stomach," she added, reflecting exactly the feeling that her hypocrisy causes among Cuban-Americans.

To many thousands of Cuban-Americans who spend years, even decades, in Castro dungeons, Sheehan's trip to Cuba was like a kick in the stomach.

Sheehan, who became an antiwar activist after she lost a son in Iraq, is concerned about the human rights of some Muslims who want to destroy everything we stand for. And yet she ignores the pleas of people who are only seeking the freedom to protest that she obviously exploits.

It's always the same with these bleeding heart liberals: Their hearts only bleed for anyone who hates the United States.

But this time, they went too far.

Let's be clear: Standing on U.S. soil and protesting against the U.S. government is a constitutional right. But doing it on enemy territory has another name: treason!

While the peace activists were in Cuba, as guests of the Castro regime, a group of wives and mothers of Cuban political prisoners sent them a letter urging them to visit Castro's dungeons.

The group, known as the Ladies in White, asked Sheehan to help them boost the cause of seeking freedom for their imprisoned relatives.

Of course, Sheehan would not have been allowed to visit Cuban prisons.

For many years, the United Nations, the Red Cross and many human rights organization have not been allowed to inspect conditions there. But at least by asking, and getting rejected, these activists could have raised world attention to all Cuban prisons, and not just the one run by the U.S. government.

Yet one of Sheehan's leftist comrades told reporters that the group would be focusing only on Guantanamo and that the fact that the U.S. detention center happens to be within an island-prison is "very incidental."

Then Sheehan, attempting to clear her name, made things even worse. She claimed that she was not aware of the letter inviting her to Cuban prisons, which means she is either a fraud or amazingly uninformed.

Did she need to be invited? Is she so ignorant that she doesn't know there are political prisoners suffering human rights violations in Cuba? Didn't she know that Castro has been running gulags since long before most of the Guantanamo prisoners were born?

In a letter to the editor of a New York newspaper, Sheehan explained that she is concerned about human rights violations all over the world, "but especially when these violations occur from my government."

Yet most people know that compared to Castro's political prisons, where many have been shot by firing squads, tortured or forced to endure decades of degradation and atrocities, Guantanamo is a luxury hotel.

As if her indifference toward Cuban dissidents wasn't enough, she then tried to minimize the repression of the Castro regime.

"It seems that these (Ladies in White) women are able to protest on a weekly basis in Cuba," she wrote.

In fact, the Ladies in White, who march SILENTLY through the streets of Havana every Sunday, are the only dissidents who are able to stage any kind of protest in Cuba without getting at least a severe beating by Castro's goons.

If they even spoke during their protests, they would be punished. And if they were as radically vociferous as Sheehan, they would be vanished from society — forced to rot in prison — which is what we should do to Americans who travel abroad to become traitors.

To find out more about Miguel Perez, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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