Center for International Policy

As printed in
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
July 13, 2002

Can new justice tell patriotism from terror?

By Wayne S. Smith

Writing on these same pages some weeks ago ("Who is a Terrorist?" Sun-Sentinel, May 31), I reminded readers that according to President Bush's own definition, anyone who harbors a terrorist or supports a terrorist is a terrorist. But where, I asked, did that leave his own father and brother Jeb and some of his closest political allies in Florida, all of whom in one way or another had supported, among other exile terrorists, Orlando Bosch, linked by the Justice Department to over 30 acts of sabotage and violence, including the downing of a Cubana airliner in 1976 with the loss of over 73 innocent lives? Should father, brother and a number of close political allies all be considered terrorists?

The question now poses itself again even more poignantly, for Gov. Jeb Bush has just appointed Raoul Cantero to serve as a justice on the Florida Supreme Court. The objection to Cantero is not that he is former Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista's grandson. That is irrelevant. Nor is it that he defended Orlando Bosch in court. Of course not. Everyone has the right to a defense attorney. That is one of the strengths of our system.

But Cantero did far more than act as defense attorney. Back in 1988 and 1989, he was an advocate and supporter of Orlando Bosch, appearing at meetings in his honor and indicating his enthusiastic support for Bosch in interviews on Miami radio. Bosch, he said, was "a patriot."

Do Floridians really want a justice on their Supreme Court who cannot distinguish an act of patriotism from an act of terrorism?

Of course, Cantero is not alone. It is not surprising that Bush appointed him, for the governor himself was, and still is, part of the Orlando Bosch claque. Along with a gaggle of South Florida city commissioners, state legislators and other community leaders, including U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and then Sen. Connie Mack, Jeb Bush lobbied for Bosch's release from INS custody. He even met with hunger-striking Bosch supporters.

Acceding to this pressure, in 1989, the first President Bush freed Bosch and allowed him to live unrepentant in Miami.

Nor have Bosch's supporters ever recanted, disavowing their support for Bosch and repudiating his tactics. Not Ros-Lehtinen, not Gov. Bush, and most certainly not Raoul Cantero, the new Supreme Court justice. One must assume, therefore, that they continue to support him.

And what of Bosch himself? Has he mellowed at all? No, far from it. In a signed opinion piece which appeared in the June 16 edition of Diario de las Americas, he described the efforts of dissidents in Cuba to call for a referendum, i.e, the so-called Varela Project, as a "sacrilege," and denounced the dissidents themselves, from Oswaldo Paya and Elizardo Sanchez to Vladimiro Roca, as a group of "naïve pacificists." Their sins, he made clear, were their willingness to co-exist with the Castro government and their rejection of violence as a tactic.

Clearly, Bosch remains as committed to violence as ever. In a democracy, he says, violence is "invalid and a crime." But in the Cuban context, he says, "The banner of pacificism cannot be waved." In other words, violence is the only path. Reading his statements of June 16, one has the sense that were it within his power, he'd be back to blowing up passenger planes.

But where does this leave us, then, in terms of the credibility of our war on terrorism? President Bush had said that one cannot pick and choose one's terrorist friends. But that is precisely what has happened in the state of Florida. The governor, his newly appointed Supreme Court justice, the congresswoman from Miami and various other state and local officials continue to support Orlando Bosch, an arch-terrorist. And, as I pointed out on May 21, he is not the only one. And all this, apparently, with the approval of President Bush.

This simply takes us back to the concept of one man's terrorist being another's freedom fighter. Other nations may look at this and ask themselves why they should take seriously our commitment against terrorism.

Wayne S. Smith is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C. and a former U.S. diplomat with service in Argentina, Brazil and the Soviet Union in addition to Cuba.