Pacific Views

Cuban Archbishop Hassled: Country Safe

The archbishop of Havana was hassled and questioned at the Miami airport last Friday. This past Thursday, he released a statement confirming the incident:

...Ortega confirms that he was removed from the general processing area and brought to a room where he was asked a series of questions he refused to answer.

News reports said that Ortega was questioned about issues unrelated to his travel, including his views on the Castro government and the U.S. trade embargo on the island.

Ortega said that the agent indicated that he was opening a file on Ortega reserved for "dangerous persons" and that in order to enter the U.S., the Cardinal had to answer his questions. Ortega then told the agent that he preferred to return to Cuba. While the first agent began processing his request, a second Homeland Security agent came into the room and gave the Cardinal a visa for 30 days.

...The statement points out that the Cardinal carries a diplomatic passport issued by the Vatican and has a multiple entry visa issued by the U.S. State Department. ...

I don't know about you, but this really makes me happy. Why? Well, I won't keep you in suspense.

You see, I'm sure the manpower spent questioning Cardinal Ortega, assembling his file, and perhaps carefully following his activities in the US is being well spent. He must have been up to something, even if you might think that 'something' was probably pretty trivial in light of our current security crisis involving shady religious fanatics who've publicly called for our destruction. And I'm sure that's the case because our government is only interested in our public safety, and would never do anything politically motivated. I'm sure that if there were white supremacists planning hate crimes, fanatic anti-choice advocates preparing to kill or threaten clinic staff, possible al-Qaeda members trying to infiltrate the country, raw intelligence data to translate or analyze, or maybe a functioning computer network needing to be set up, they would have taken care of all that before taking a magnifying glass to a 68 year old archbishop who's been struggling with the hostility of his country's communist dictatorship for many decades.

Therefore, I'm thrilled to know that the Homeland Security department has a dangerous persons file on the archbishop of Havana. It gives me the utmost confidence that, having taken care of all the rest of our enemies both foreign and domestic, our Homeland Security personnel now has absolutely nothing better to do than let a catalytic combination of boredom and arbitrary power run amok among the field agents and incite them to temporary insanity. When that happens, you've just got to let the poor buggers feel like they're doing something, keep their hassling skills up to snuff. You know how it is.

The symptoms are clear and, though annoying, signal to me that we are all now perfectly safe under the watchful eye of Homeland Security.

Posted by natasha at March 5, 2005 03:27 PM | Religion | Technorati links |