Great news for US interests and taxpayers: United States pulling out of UNESCO

Kudos to the Trump Administration for pulling out of UNESCO 

The United States leaves UNESCO

The United State is pulling out of the United Nation's cultural organization UNESCO for it's anti-Israel bias, the need to fundamentally reform the organization, and to save taxpayers over $500 million dollars in payments. However that is just the tip of the iceberg and the Trump Administration should be celebrated for taking this bold move both for American taxpayers and U.S. national interests.  Back in February 2017 I made the case in this blog for the United States leaving UNESCO and staying in the UN Human Rights Council.

Ronald Reagan defunded and left UNESCO in mid 1984 because the hard left was using it to spread its anti-American and radical left ideologies but George W. Bush brought the United States back into UNESCO after a twenty year boycott believing it had reformed. Returning to UNESCO was a mistake, the organization has been back to its old tricks that are hostile both to U.S. values and national security interests.

Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the withdrawal by the United States of America from UNESCO made a video statement in which she stated that "together, we have worked to protect humanity’s shared cultural heritage in the face of terrorist attacks and to prevent violent extremism through education and media literacy." She claims later on in the same statement that "[at] the time when the fight against violent extremism calls for renewed investment in education, in dialogue among cultures to prevent hatred, it is deeply regrettable that the United States should withdraw from the United Nations agency leading these issues. At the time when conflicts continue to tear apart societies across the world, it is deeply regrettable for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations agency promoting education for peace and protecting culture under attack." 

This statement flies in the face of what UNESCO has done with the United States as a member. On June 18, 2013 the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added “The Life and Works of Che Guevara” to the World Registrar. UNESCO providing funds to preserve Che Guevara’s papers. Guevara in addition to promoting communist ideology, is best known as an advocate for guerrilla warfare who viewed terrorism as a legitimate method of struggle against an enemy.

How does adding all the works of Ernesto "Che" Guevara including the "originals manuscripts of his adolescence and youth to the campaign Diary in Bolivia”  serve to promote "education for peace"? How do the multimedia archives where recordings are contained of when he first lied about exporting revolution in 1961 and in later speeches declares the sacred duty to die for revolution in 1964 advance peace? Or gems such as this: "The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for [Eutimio], so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe]. He gasped for a little while and was dead. Upon proceeding to remove his belongings I couldn't get off the watch tied by a chain to his belt, and then he told me in a steady voice farther away than fear: 'Yank it off, boy, what does it matter.' I did so and his possessions were now mine. Diary entry from the Sierra Maestra on the execution of Eutimio Guerra as an anti-revolutionary spy (January 1957)"

How does making his 1961 book, Guerrilla Warfare, easily available to youth around the world promote a culture of peace?  It is a manual for organizing and carrying out an armed insurgency that draws on Guevara's experience in the Cuban revolution. It pushes the idea of the guerilla as a vanguard that creates the conditions for revolution using violence. The cover of the English edition with a hand grenade says it all. Or his 1962 work Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution in which the Argentine guerilla explains "The seizure of power is a worldwide objective of the revolutionary forces," and later goes on to explain  "that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." But there are many other works and documents. These are just a small selection.

March 28, 1961: Mobilizing the Masses for the Invasion
April 9, 1961: Cuba: Exceptional Case or Vanguard in the Struggle Against Colonialism?
August 8, 1961: On Growth and Imperialism
September, 1962: The Cadres: Backbone of the Revolution
1963: Guerrilla war, a method [note: not to be confused with his famous 1961 book on the subject already mentioned above.]
April 16, 1967: Message to the Tricontinental

Che Guevara's last work the "Message to the Tricontinental" written in 1967 contains some gems worth sharing, or so UNESCO believes to educate new generations for "peace" such as an appeal to embracing hatred in order to do the hard things without mercy:

"Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

Later on in the same essay Guevara makes the case for terrorism.

"We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline. He will even become more beastly, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to appear."

This is a passage that could, and perhaps has, inspired ISIS or Al Qaeda and we know that Che Guevara inspired the Norwegian terrorist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik in 2011. Breivik cited both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in his manifesto for the amount of carnage a small number can achieve.

U.S. tax dollars would have been paying for this, but the Obama Administration froze payments in 2011 after UNESCO recognized Palestine as a full member and began an onslaught of anti-Israel resolutions.

Who will UNESCO honor next to promote a culture of "peace": Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, or Josef Stalin?

As the world threatens to spiral down into more extreme violence, perhaps other countries should consider some of the messages UNESCO and their tax dollars are paying for in promoting the writings of Mr. Guevara. Other countries should follow the lead of the United States and Israel in leaving this institution that fails not only to protect heritage sites but hastens their destruction, and remained silent when Hamas bulldozed a world heritage site to set up a terrorist training camp in 2013 and claims to promote peace while making readily available manuals on guerilla warfare and writings that advocate war crimes and terrorism.

UNESCO maintains archives of all of Ernesto Guevara's writings

How unprincipled engagement with the Castro regime places the United States at risk

Predicting the next foreign policy failure in Cuba from past mistakes

On May 29, 2015 the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it with North Korea, removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terror while ignoring the continuing terrorist nature of the Castro dictatorship. The regime in Cuba has a long history of sponsoring terrorism and training terrorists that the Obama administration has sought to minimize and ignore in its drive to normalize relations with the Castro dictatorship. 

Despite evidence that the Castro regime is linked to drug trafficking and engaged in the smuggling of weapons to an outlaw regime (North Korea in July 15, 2013) and to terrorist guerrillas ( Colombia February 28, 2015). In a previous post I provided a list of ten reasons why Cuba should have remained on the list.

This is the latest example of the White House failing to communicate accurately the threats and dangers that exist in the world to the citizens of the United States and it has been a profound disservice to the Republic. Unfortunately this pattern has been an ongoing one since at least the Clinton presidency.

During a recent public discussion on U.S.-Cuba policy at Florida International University, Frank Mora on February 5, 2015 when confronted by the criticism that the Obama administration in formulating Cuba policy only met with those who agreed with him responded that the White House wasn't going to meet with critics to formulate policy. 

This approach of only meeting with those who agree with you sounded familiar, and it was.  Jim Wallis of Sojourners had described President George W. Bush in a similar manner: "He doesn't want to hear from anyone who doubts him.'' 

However the similarity did not end there. Ron Suskind in a October 17, 2004 article in The New York Times Magazine quoted a Bush Administration official:

''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

The disaster in Iraq was predictable and indeed voices on the right outlined what was going to happen and were declared "unpatriotic" for their troubles. 

The above statement, sadly is not limited to the Bush Administration, but is a mark of hubris. Ignoring realities on the ground in the belief that a new policy can change existing realities without taking into account the facts is a recipe for failure.

When critics of President Obama's policy pointed out that the swapping of Alan Gross for Cuban spies that had taken part in state terrorism would encourage other countries to repeat the practice of holding U.S. citizens hostages it was all too predictable. 

The plight of The Washington Post journalist, Jason Rezaian, who is currently being held hostage by the Iranian regime and placed now on a show trial is following the pattern laid out in Cuba by the Castro regime's handling of Alan Gross: "Jason Rezaian Trial in Iran May Be More About Leverage Than Justice."

Taking Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism will provide the dictatorship with more resources and greater international legitimacy to advance its agenda which is undermining democracies, as has been the case in Venezuela, and engaging with all sorts of nefarious regimes and transnational actors. 

At the same time victims of the Castro regime will no longer be able to seek redress for damages in U.S. courts targeting frozen funds of the Cuban government, effectively closing off an avenue for justice.  Recalling Martin Luther King Jr.'s maxim that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and that a true peace is impossible without justice, the fallacy of this approach becomes clear.

Ignoring or pretending a threat does not exist because it is perceived as unimportant is a mistake.  As was seen in the case of North Korea, this did not improve relations but made the regime more aggressive and dangerous.  

When Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda declared war on August 23, 1996 "Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques; Expel the Heretics from the Arabian Peninsula" the President of the United States did not make a big deal out of it. Nor was much public attention paid when Al Qaeda "on February 23, 1998, stated that Muslims should kill Americans -- including civilians -- anywhere in the world where they can be found." 

Although the information was available on a State Department Fact Sheet the Clinton administration in its public statements referred to Al Qaeda being a terrorist threat overseas ignoring the above declarations of war when communicating with the American public. This is part of the reason that Americans were caught by surprise on September 11, 2001 when the Twin Towers and Pentagon were attacked.

The belief that the United States is a great power and need not concern itself with small players like Cuba or North Korea is a recipe for disaster. It was that arrogance that cost Americans 2,997 lives on September 11, 2001 and many more afterwards over the next 14 years of war and continued terrorism. Let us pray that the decision to engage this toxic regime and remove it from the list of state sponsors of terrorism does not end in tears. 

First version of this essay was published in the Panam Post on May 29, 2015.