Bob Schwartz is the executive director of the DISARM Education Fund, a gun-control group whose aims are to ban all private ownership of handguns; to require the licensing and registration of all rifles and shotguns; and to end the development of nuclear weapons. Above all else, DISARM is committed to passionately opposing American foreign policy and weakening U.S. national defense. The group candidly acknowledges that during the 1980s, it “became a prominent critic of the U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other nations in the Americas, a stance we vigorously maintain. DISARM has been especially active in protesting Washington’s role in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala.” “Our major focus today,” says DISARM, “is opposing the U.S. embargo against Cuba and alleviating the devastating effect of this policy on the health of the Cuban people.”

Schwartz has likened the American embargoes against Iraq and Cuba to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, stating, “I have very mixed feelings about what I see. I’m watching the television and I'm shocked at what has happened in the United States. But I also think about the way the embargo, over the past 40 years, has created so much need and suffering and death in Cuba. I think it’s a time [that] while we’re looking at how disasters affect the United States, we should also be looking at the impact . . . [of] embargoes – it’s not just the Cuban embargo, it’s all embargoes. They kill just as surely as bombs and bullets, and we need to end embargoes.”

Schwartz has endorsed Project USA/Cuba-InfoMed, which seeks to “increase awareness about health achievements in Cuba and the impact of U.S. policies on the health of the Cuban people,” and “to build opposition to the U.S. embargo of Cuba.”