If there is one thing that eight U.S. congressmen who urged President Joe Biden to remove Cuba from the arbitrary list of sponsors of terrorism agree on today, it is that the measure lacks any merit.
The most recent request in the last two weeks occurred the day before when Tennessee House of Representatives member Steve Cohen sent a letter to the president recommending him to initiate the process to review and reverse the inclusion of Cuba in the so-called State Sponsors of Terrorism (SSOT) list.
"Lifting sanctions is not an endorsement of the Cuban government's policies, but a recognition that the current approach has failed the Cuban people," Cohen said.
The best way to be good neighbors," he wrote, "is to cultivate more dialogue, travel and interaction between Cubans and Americans.
The letter was circulated when "three years ago today (yesterday), nine days before leaving office, then President (Donald) Trump placed Cuba on the SSOT list," he recalled, stressing that "for more than 60 years, the U.S. embargo (blockade) has caused profound damage to the economy and people of Cuba."
"I had the opportunity to travel to Cuba with President Barack Obama in 2016 and I experienced a strong sense of goodwill towards the Americans and President Obama," said the congressman, who said that after his trip he left inspired "by the possibilities of collaboration and growth of our two countries".
On January 2, a letter from a delegation of Democratic congressmen from Massachusetts was made known in which they made a similar request to Biden.
Placing Cuba back on that list "was a vindictive action taken by the Trump Administration in January 2021 when it left office, and the policy should have changed by now," wrote Representatives Jim McGovern and Ayanna Pressley in the December letter, but published at the beginning of the year.
"In fact, Cuba and the United States have a bilateral counterterrorism cooperation agreement in place," the two lawmakers stressed in the text, also signed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, and Representatives Seth Moulton, Lori Trahan and Stephen Lynch.
President Barack Obama (2009-2017), of whose administration Biden was vice president, removed Cuba from the list in 2015 after admitting that the basis for that decision was unfounded.
However, almost three years into Biden's presidency, as the Massachusetts congressmen expressed, "the overwhelming number of sanctions imposed by his predecessor, including placing Cuba back on the SSOT list, remain in place."