To: Raymond McGrath, (Coordinator of Cuban Affairs DOS), Ricardo Zuniga, (National Security Council Western Hemisphere Division), and President Donald Trump

Cuba is Not a Sponsor of Terrorism; Take Cuba Off the List

Remove Cuba from the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism now. Any rationale for keeping Cuba on this list has long-since disappeared, especially with Cuba now playing a principal role in facilitating and hosting the Colombia-FARC peace negotiations being held in Havana. Removal of Cuba from this list will allow the United States to take steps leading to normalized relations with Cuba, and it will positively impact the U.S. relationship with all of our Latin America neighbors.

Why is this important?

What do Cuba, Iran, Syria, and Sudan have in common? They are all on the U.S. government’s list of “state sponsors of terrorism”. Which one seems to be the oddball? Cuba? The presence of Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism symbolizes everything that’s wrong with our approach to Cuba. It’s based on a myth (that Cuban sponsors terrorist groups); it reinforces Cold War-era prejudices (that Cuba is an “enemy” who we must isolate and oppose); it helps lock our foreign policy in stone. It prevents the United States from taking sensible steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba.