Cuba not terrorist country says Washington Post

The Washington Post, the most important and oldest newspaper of the US’s capital city, published an article today criticizing the inclusion of Cuba in the US list of terrorist countries.

The article, written by 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson, refers to Washington’s rigorous airport security rules put into effect last Sunday under which passengers flying to the United States from Cuba and another 13 so-called terrorist countries will be submitted to extra screening.

The text says Cuba represents a threat of terrorism equal to zero. “Cuba is not a failed state where swaths of territory lie beyond government control; rather, it is one of the most tightly locked-down societies in the world,” the author wrote and adds
“a place where the idea of private citizens getting their hands on plastic explosives, or terrorist weapons of any kind, is simply laughable.”

“There is no history of radical Islam in Cuba. In fact, there is hardly any history of Islam at all…the island nation would have to be among the last places on Earth where al-Qaeda would try to establish a cell, let alone plan and launch an attack,” the article reads.

“Yet Cuba is on the list because the State Department still considers it - along with Iran, Sudan and Syria - to be a state sponsor of terrorism.”

In addition, the text notes: “Despite the fact that the U.S. Interests Section in Havana was one of the few American diplomatic posts in the world to remain open for normal business, with no apparent increased security, in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks?”

Further in his writing Robinson says Barack Obama’s administration’s policy towards Cuba has been tentative and halting and he criticizes the fact that the blockade against the island nation remains undisturbed as well as the ban that keeps American citizens from traveling to Cuba.