PEP COLUMN: Poor example set by United States

Over the past week, the political and economic leaders of the United States and their multinational media corporations have been proclaiming to the world that the assassination of Osama bin Laden is an act of national greatness.
Well, we should all just pause for a while and soberly consider precisely what message this proclamation is imparting to impressionable children and adolescents all over the world.
Our children are being told that it is the ultimate in greatness for a large and powerful nation to send a team of its most ferocious military warriors to invade the territory of another much weaker country, to corner an unarmed, physically decrepit old man, and, in the absence of this man ever having been subjected to any judicial process of trial and conviction, to cold-bloodedly shoot him to death in the presence of his wife and children.
Somebody – some small and morally clear-sighted nation – has to tell the “emperor” that he is “naked”, and that his actions are a perversion and a repudiation of international law, and of the sacred principles of justice and morality. And so, acting on behalf of and in the name of the people of Barbados, we say – let little Barbados accept this challenge of speaking truth to the powerful, pompasetting, morally deluded United States.
You see, the citizen of Barbados is the citizen of a country whose Government has never invaded any other country, never bombed any foreign city, never carried out any political assassination or ever committed any other crime against humanity.
But in addition to this, little Barbados is also qualified to point out the emperor’s nakedness for another reason – long before September 11, 2001, we experienced our own version of 9/11.
We would like to remind the world that on the 6th of October 1976 – almost exactly 25 years before September 11, 2001 – the 250 000 people of Barbados had to deal with the horrific tragedy of having a Cuban civilian airliner, filled to capacity with 73 passengers, blown out of our Barbadian airspace, as a result of the machinations of a cabal of anti-Cuban terrorists operating with the support and complicity of the US’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Almost 30 years after the tragic events of October 6, 1976, Mr Ricardo Alarcon, the president of Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power, paid the ultimate compliment to the governments and people of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago when he publicly stated that “Barbados and Trinidad, it must be said, acted with great dignity and honour”, and acknowledged the “meticulous, rigorous, serious investigation done by people who respect themselves, people from countries that are small but which know how to respect their sovereignty”.
It is because of this history and background that we, the people of little Barbados, can and must point at “the emperor” and tell him that he is naked.