Cuban American mayor in South Florida says Biden should consider military intervention in Cuba, Haiti
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Ana M. Ziade, the mayor of North Lauderdale, wrote to President Joe Biden telling him the U.S. needs to “physically enter” Cuba and Haiti to aid those countries’ citizens.
Ziade said the letter was the consensus of the City Commission, and in an interview Friday she said that “absolutely” means considering military intervention in Cuba “in a way of assistance, not a takeover.”
Ziade, whose parents and older siblings fled Cuban and emigrated to the United States, is the first elected Hispanic mayor of a Broward County city.
She acknowledged that by raising the idea of U.S. military action, which she said also might be warranted in Haiti, would subject her to political blowback.
“I know I will. I get it,” she said. To those who disagree, she said, “That’s fine and that’s your opinion and that’s my opinion, my opinion as an individual and daughter of immigrants that fled and know the story.”
Ziade said she isn’t advocating a military takeover. “That’s not what the United States is or stand for or who we are,” she said. “What I do mean is that if there is that request of the people, that that is truly what they want, I think we should have that ability to go in and step in.”
Military assistance would be appropriate in her view if “they need that assistance to help them fight the fight.”
And she said, U.S. government officials may have a different perspective. “I’m a mayor. They have the generals and the department heads, the Department of Defense, the secretary. They have all of those people. I can say what I want, but at the end of the day, they have the crew, the backing they need to make those executive decisions.”
Ziade said the commission, which includes two Haitian American commissioners, discussed the situations in both Caribbean countries: Cuba, where protests against the authoritarian, communist regime erupted on Sunday, and Haiti, where the president was assassinated on July 7.
Commissioners “unequivocally and unanimously” agreed to communicate their consensus to the president — including the call to “physically enter” the countries in the letter to Biden dated Thursday.
“(W)e humbly and respectfully request, and in a great way, implore you and your new Administration, to take this moment in time in our great country’s history, to take action. You simply must assist these two countries at this moment of historic government vulnerability, and to physically enter, not just into the conversation, but into each country, when and where it will be most useful to foster the democratic ideals of the USA.”
Asked about whether that meant military intervention, she said: “It may lead to that. It may lead to that only because of the civil unrest. Obviously, in Cuba, specifically, which is what I’m speaking to from my position and my position only because I’m Cuban.”
“We already have Guantanamo Bay there,” she said, referring to the U.S. naval base at the southeastern end of Cuba.
Ziade said seeing the protesters in the streets of Cuban cities last weekend “I physically got emotional.”
Her parents decided to leave Cuba when her older sister came home from school and told them that students were told that if they heard anything being said against the government it had to be reported.
Her sister came first, one of thousands of unaccompanied Cuban children who came to the U.S. through Operation Peter Pan flights. Her mother and brother came next, and eventually her father. She said her parents left a good life with white collar jobs in Cuba and were blue collar workers in the U.S.
“They literally fled with the clothes on their backs,” she said. “I just thought ‘Holy cow. If they were only alive to see this, how proud and how happy they would be.’”
Ziade said the U.S. must help its nearby neighbors. “Both the Cuban people and the Haitian people in their own countries need to come together and with the help of the United States, I believe our countries will again become the resilient countries that they once were and flourish,” she said.
Ziade said her concern isn’t confined to Cuba. “What happened in Haiti was an atrocity. Whether you were for the president or not. That’s just horrible, horrible what happened. My heart goes out to them. I think they need that guidance and that assistance.”
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez went farther than Ziade on the subject of military action in Cuba.
“What should be contemplated right now is a coalition of potential military action in Cuba similar to what has happened ... in both Republican and Democrat administrations,” he said.
Asked about air strikes, Suarez said, “That’s something that needs to be discussed and needs to looked as a potential option in addition to a variety of other options that can be discussed.”
He later told the Miami Herald that he was not advocating for air strikes or other particular military action. “I’m not a military expert,” he told the Herald. “I’m not going to sit here and opine on what kind of military intervention should be used.”
