Open doors to Cuba
Published: Monday, November 5, 2007
Eugene, OR Register-Guard
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The Fidel Castro era will soon end in Cuba. Some believe it ended when Raul Castro, Fidel’s 76-year-old brother and designated successor, took over everyday management of the country for his ailing brother.
The United States is uniquely positioned — geographically, economically and historically — to promote democracy in post-Castro Cuba. Yet President Bush perversely clings to the same failed U.S. policies that after 45 years have failed to bring about democracy — or any other positive change — in Cuba.
In a recent speech, the president once again rolled out the treadworn mantra that the best way to bring freedom to Cuba is by continuing the U.S. economic embargo and by convincing Europe and Latin America to impose similar sanctions. While Bush held out the promise of eventual debt relief, loans and grants to the Cuban government, he made clear such measures are off the table until Cuba allows free speech and open elections.
Bush called on officials in Cuba’s government and security services to “rise up” against the Castro regime and to demand democratic reforms. It’s an exhortation that’s unlikely to win the hearts of Cubans who deeply resent the U.S. embargo and Bush’s wrongheaded efforts to make it more difficult for Cuban-Americans to assist or visit their families on the island.
The decades-long policy of isolation has inflicted great pain and suffering on the Cuban people, and it has strengthened Castro’s grip on power by fueling the nationalist sentiment on which he thrives.
Raul Castro understands how to play the nationalist card, as well. His foreign minister, Felipe Perez Rogue, denounced Bush’s speech as “equivalent to the reconquest of Cuba.”
Bush’s comments were intended to play to his conservative base, but he should reconsider. Unlike their parents, many younger Cuban-Americans do not share an unqualified loathing for the brothers Castro and do not identify with conservatives.
The president also should recognize that the rest of the world has abandoned economic sanctions as a useful tool to bring about democratization. When the United Nations recently voted to oppose U.S. sanctions against Cuba, only three nations — the Marshall Islands, Palau and Israel — stood with the United States in opposition.
The time has come for a fresh approach to Cuba, one that emphasizes diplomacy and contact with American society — and that recognizes that U.S. openness is a sign of strength, not weakness. Opening a free flow of commerce, tourism and culture would do far more to make Cuba an open society than clinging to failed isolationist policies.
Congress should find ways to forge ties with Cuba. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., has introduced legislation that would permit free travel to Cuba, a move that would foster a free flow of ideas and spur democratization.
Congress also could offer to dial down the trade embargo in exchange for release of political prisoners and other incremental steps toward democratic reform.
The United States should replace its failed policy of isolation with one of engagement that encourages Cuba’s inexorable transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Showing posts with label Bush speech on Cuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush speech on Cuba. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Cuban Foreign Minister on Bush Speech, UN Vote
AP Interview: Cuban foreign minister says country is prepared if Bush chooses to attack
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
UNITED NATIONS: Cuba's foreign minister warned U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday that if the United States wants to bring about regime change by force in Cuba, his country is prepared.
The conflict will not only jeopardize Cuba's stability but U.S. stability as well, Felipe Perez Roque said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"We are not threatening and we never bluff," he said. "We respect the United States, but we demand respect for ourselves, and we would defend our country from an attempt to have foreign aggression."
He said Bush's first major policy speech on Cuba in four years, in which the president challenged the international community to help the people of the communist island shed Fidel Castro's rule and become a free society, indicated the president might be prepared to use force.
"Bush said in last week's speech that "the operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not stability. The operative word is freedom." Perez Roque singled out the "irresponsible phrase."
"If that is the expression of the decisions that the president may be planning to make, it would be very dangerous both for Cuba and for the U.S., because if that's the expression of the attempt to bring about a regime change by force in Cuba, that will clash with the resilience of the Cuban people, and the people are prepared," Perez Roque said.
In Cuba, he said, more than 90 percent of the 11.5 million people support "the genuine revolution" that began in 1959 when Castro toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The only "freedom" that Cubans can imagine Bush pursing, Perez Roque added, "would be similar to the one he has taken to Iraq" where the war has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
"An attempt to bring about a change in regime in Cuba is going to jeopardize not only Cuba's stability, but also the stability of the United States because then a conflict would be unleashed very close to their shores," Perez Roque warned.
The history of the Cuban revolution is to defend the country against outside forces, he said.
"We cannot be intimidated. we cannot be misled, and the fact must be accepted that we are a sovereign, independent nation," he said.
Perez Roque was interviewed shortly after the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to urge the United States to end its 46-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. The vote in the 192-member world body — 184 to 4 with 1 abstention — was the highest in 16 years for the resolution.
Calling it "an historic victory," the Cuban minister said it was the international community's answer to Bush's speech and showed global support for "the Cuban right to be an independent nation, to be respected in its right to self-determination."
Even though the resolution is not legally binding, Perez Roque said the vote "has a very important ethical and moral meaning" and strengthened "our resilience and our decision, really, to resist and finally to defeat the blockade."
In his speech, Bush mentioned neither Fidel nor his brother, Raul, by name. Raul Castro has been the island's interim ruler since July 2006 while the 81-year-old Fidel recuperates from ill health.
But Bush said "the dissidents of today will be the nation's leaders" after the Castro era, and he told the Cuban military: "You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure."
The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, lists the country as a state sponsor of terror, and has long sought to isolate it through travel restrictions and a trade embargo, which has been tightened over Bush's two terms. This year, the U.S. stepped up enforcement of financial sanctions, which Perez Roque strongly denounced.
The Bush administration sees Castro's failing health as an opening for change. Little is different under Raul Castro, 76. Bush said in his speech that the U.S. will make no accommodations with "a new tyranny."
Perez Roque called Bush's statements "the expression of the failed policy of the United States towards Cuba," which was demonstrated by the total lack of support for the U.S. in Tuesday's vote.
Bush "should put aside his arrogance and humbly recognize" that the U.S. is isolated, and "he should also rectify his policy that causes hardships and suffering to the Cuban people."
"Cuba doesn't pose a threat to the U.S. Cuba is a country that would like to have normal relations with the United States. Our leaders have stated so publicly. However, we have just received more blockade and more aggressions from the current president of the U.S," he said.
Perez Roque said he would like the next U.S. administration to sit down with the Cuban government and negotiate improved relations.
"I would like it to be that way, but I'm not dying with anxiety to see it happen," he said.
"But if the next administration persists on following (the) wrong policy of blockade and aggression against Cuba, then you will also find us there prepared, and you will crash head-on into our resistance," he warned.
Perez Roque said Fidel Castro is continuing his recovery, and met with him last Friday to discuss his General Assembly speech — "and he made some useful suggestions in my statement to make it better." But he said he could not speculate on whether Fidel would return to power soon.
As for Raul Castro, Perez Roque said despite being demonized by some of the media, the acting president "has a great deal of moral authority in Cuba" because of his role in the revolution, and "a lot of sympathy and a great deal of support among the Cubans."
"The Cubans feel that they are close of Raul, as they've been with Fidel, and in Cuba it was no surprise that with Fidel's disease, Raul was called upon to take over," Perez Roque said.
The Associated Press
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
UNITED NATIONS: Cuba's foreign minister warned U.S. President George W. Bush on Tuesday that if the United States wants to bring about regime change by force in Cuba, his country is prepared.
The conflict will not only jeopardize Cuba's stability but U.S. stability as well, Felipe Perez Roque said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"We are not threatening and we never bluff," he said. "We respect the United States, but we demand respect for ourselves, and we would defend our country from an attempt to have foreign aggression."
He said Bush's first major policy speech on Cuba in four years, in which the president challenged the international community to help the people of the communist island shed Fidel Castro's rule and become a free society, indicated the president might be prepared to use force.
"Bush said in last week's speech that "the operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not stability. The operative word is freedom." Perez Roque singled out the "irresponsible phrase."
"If that is the expression of the decisions that the president may be planning to make, it would be very dangerous both for Cuba and for the U.S., because if that's the expression of the attempt to bring about a regime change by force in Cuba, that will clash with the resilience of the Cuban people, and the people are prepared," Perez Roque said.
In Cuba, he said, more than 90 percent of the 11.5 million people support "the genuine revolution" that began in 1959 when Castro toppling dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The only "freedom" that Cubans can imagine Bush pursing, Perez Roque added, "would be similar to the one he has taken to Iraq" where the war has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
"An attempt to bring about a change in regime in Cuba is going to jeopardize not only Cuba's stability, but also the stability of the United States because then a conflict would be unleashed very close to their shores," Perez Roque warned.
The history of the Cuban revolution is to defend the country against outside forces, he said.
"We cannot be intimidated. we cannot be misled, and the fact must be accepted that we are a sovereign, independent nation," he said.
Perez Roque was interviewed shortly after the U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to urge the United States to end its 46-year-old trade embargo against Cuba. The vote in the 192-member world body — 184 to 4 with 1 abstention — was the highest in 16 years for the resolution.
Calling it "an historic victory," the Cuban minister said it was the international community's answer to Bush's speech and showed global support for "the Cuban right to be an independent nation, to be respected in its right to self-determination."
Even though the resolution is not legally binding, Perez Roque said the vote "has a very important ethical and moral meaning" and strengthened "our resilience and our decision, really, to resist and finally to defeat the blockade."
In his speech, Bush mentioned neither Fidel nor his brother, Raul, by name. Raul Castro has been the island's interim ruler since July 2006 while the 81-year-old Fidel recuperates from ill health.
But Bush said "the dissidents of today will be the nation's leaders" after the Castro era, and he told the Cuban military: "You may have once believed in the revolution. Now you can see its failure."
The U.S. has no diplomatic relations with Cuba, lists the country as a state sponsor of terror, and has long sought to isolate it through travel restrictions and a trade embargo, which has been tightened over Bush's two terms. This year, the U.S. stepped up enforcement of financial sanctions, which Perez Roque strongly denounced.
The Bush administration sees Castro's failing health as an opening for change. Little is different under Raul Castro, 76. Bush said in his speech that the U.S. will make no accommodations with "a new tyranny."
Perez Roque called Bush's statements "the expression of the failed policy of the United States towards Cuba," which was demonstrated by the total lack of support for the U.S. in Tuesday's vote.
Bush "should put aside his arrogance and humbly recognize" that the U.S. is isolated, and "he should also rectify his policy that causes hardships and suffering to the Cuban people."
"Cuba doesn't pose a threat to the U.S. Cuba is a country that would like to have normal relations with the United States. Our leaders have stated so publicly. However, we have just received more blockade and more aggressions from the current president of the U.S," he said.
Perez Roque said he would like the next U.S. administration to sit down with the Cuban government and negotiate improved relations.
"I would like it to be that way, but I'm not dying with anxiety to see it happen," he said.
"But if the next administration persists on following (the) wrong policy of blockade and aggression against Cuba, then you will also find us there prepared, and you will crash head-on into our resistance," he warned.
Perez Roque said Fidel Castro is continuing his recovery, and met with him last Friday to discuss his General Assembly speech — "and he made some useful suggestions in my statement to make it better." But he said he could not speculate on whether Fidel would return to power soon.
As for Raul Castro, Perez Roque said despite being demonized by some of the media, the acting president "has a great deal of moral authority in Cuba" because of his role in the revolution, and "a lot of sympathy and a great deal of support among the Cubans."
"The Cubans feel that they are close of Raul, as they've been with Fidel, and in Cuba it was no surprise that with Fidel's disease, Raul was called upon to take over," Perez Roque said.
Asbury Park Editorial on Bush Speech, UN Vote
U.N. vote adds to Cuba embargo tale
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/5/07
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071105/OPINION/711050324/1030/OPINION
Seven days after President Bush called on the world's nations to "make tangible efforts" to support his campaign to undermine the government of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he got a resounding answer.
On Oct. 23, 184 of the United Nations' 192 member countries voted to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba — an economic stranglehold that's been in place for nearly half a century.
Only delegates from the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted against the nonbinding resolution. Micronesia abstained. Albania, El Salvador and Iraq didn't bother to vote.
Imagine that. The Bush administration couldn't even get Iraq to back the embargo.
The U.N. vote marked the 16th consecutive year the world body has proclaimed its opposition to the embargo. But this year's vote was the most telling. It came in the wake of a major policy address Bush gave on Cuba in which he said the ongoing transition of power from Fidel Castro to his younger brother Raul is unacceptable.
"Life will not improve for Cubans under their current system," Bush said. "It will not improve by exchanging one dictator for another. America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people. We will not support the old way with new faces, the old system held together by new chains."
Cuba, Bush said, "is a tropical gulag."
So why did the vast majority of nations — including all but one of this country's closest allies — support a call for ending the embargo? Because it's a bad idea that has only gotten worse with age. What started out as a prohibition against Americans traveling to Cuba and a ban on U.S. companies doing business there has morphed into something even more troubling.
In 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which imposes a steep fine on Americans who travel to Cuba without permission and allows the U.S. to levy sanctions against foreign firms doing business there. That's right, we've made it illegal for companies in other countries to do business in Cuba. While this law has proven difficult to enforce, it has outraged most of the world's governments.
Consider this as well: More than a few nations believe the only "tropical gulag" in Cuba is the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. It's there, near Cuba's southeastern tip, that the Bush administration has held hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects for years without charges.
Back in June, former Secretary of State Colin Powell — whom the Bush administration used to make the case for war in Iraq before the United Nations — said the Guantanamo Bay prison should be closed.
"Essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open," Powell said.
That it hasn't been closed makes Bush look like a hypocrite for condemning the Castro government for jailing Cuban dissidents.
Powell's condemnation of the terrorist prison comes four years after the Senate and House voted to ease the embargo against Cuba. At the time, both bodies were controlled by Republicans.
The legislation was pushed by farm-state Republicans. The embargo prevents American farmers from selling most of their products to Cuba's 11 million people. The legislation was derailed by Republican congressional leaders.
The point here is that Bush has little support for his Cuba policy among Democrats or members of his own party — or the world in general.
Instead of trying to get others to embrace his failed Cuba policy, Bush should forge a new one. He should end the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba and allow American firms to do business there.
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/5/07
http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071105/OPINION/711050324/1030/OPINION
Seven days after President Bush called on the world's nations to "make tangible efforts" to support his campaign to undermine the government of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, he got a resounding answer.
On Oct. 23, 184 of the United Nations' 192 member countries voted to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba — an economic stranglehold that's been in place for nearly half a century.
Only delegates from the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands voted against the nonbinding resolution. Micronesia abstained. Albania, El Salvador and Iraq didn't bother to vote.
Imagine that. The Bush administration couldn't even get Iraq to back the embargo.
The U.N. vote marked the 16th consecutive year the world body has proclaimed its opposition to the embargo. But this year's vote was the most telling. It came in the wake of a major policy address Bush gave on Cuba in which he said the ongoing transition of power from Fidel Castro to his younger brother Raul is unacceptable.
"Life will not improve for Cubans under their current system," Bush said. "It will not improve by exchanging one dictator for another. America will have no part in giving oxygen to a criminal regime victimizing its own people. We will not support the old way with new faces, the old system held together by new chains."
Cuba, Bush said, "is a tropical gulag."
So why did the vast majority of nations — including all but one of this country's closest allies — support a call for ending the embargo? Because it's a bad idea that has only gotten worse with age. What started out as a prohibition against Americans traveling to Cuba and a ban on U.S. companies doing business there has morphed into something even more troubling.
In 1996, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which imposes a steep fine on Americans who travel to Cuba without permission and allows the U.S. to levy sanctions against foreign firms doing business there. That's right, we've made it illegal for companies in other countries to do business in Cuba. While this law has proven difficult to enforce, it has outraged most of the world's governments.
Consider this as well: More than a few nations believe the only "tropical gulag" in Cuba is the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. It's there, near Cuba's southeastern tip, that the Bush administration has held hundreds of foreign terrorism suspects for years without charges.
Back in June, former Secretary of State Colin Powell — whom the Bush administration used to make the case for war in Iraq before the United Nations — said the Guantanamo Bay prison should be closed.
"Essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America's justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open," Powell said.
That it hasn't been closed makes Bush look like a hypocrite for condemning the Castro government for jailing Cuban dissidents.
Powell's condemnation of the terrorist prison comes four years after the Senate and House voted to ease the embargo against Cuba. At the time, both bodies were controlled by Republicans.
The legislation was pushed by farm-state Republicans. The embargo prevents American farmers from selling most of their products to Cuba's 11 million people. The legislation was derailed by Republican congressional leaders.
The point here is that Bush has little support for his Cuba policy among Democrats or members of his own party — or the world in general.
Instead of trying to get others to embrace his failed Cuba policy, Bush should forge a new one. He should end the ban on Americans traveling to Cuba and allow American firms to do business there.
Lou Perez Op Ed on Bush Speech
News Observor, Raleigh, NC
Point of View: Published: Oct 31, 2007
Reshaping Cuba from Washington
Louis A. Perez Jr.
CHAPEL HILL - President Bush's reaffirmation of his position on Cuba last week serves to remind us of the continuing short-sightedness of U.S. policy. It defies logic.
With Vietnam and Libya, the United States establishes diplomatic relations and expands trade and aid agreements as a policy of constructive engagement to promote democracy; with Cuba the United States maintains political pressure and increases economic sanctions as a policy of punitive isolation in the name of promoting democracy.
And it is precisely that isolation -- of the United States -- that bodes ill, for the government denies itself access to Cuba at a time of change on the island.
The long-awaited transition in Cuba has begun. But political change in Havana has elicited no policy change from Washington. The president's speech last week indicates that he intends to "stay the course" in regard to Cuba. The embargo has assumed a life of its own: Its very longevity serves as the principal rationale for its continuance.
To paraphrase the Otis Redding lyric, the United States has been embargoing Cuba for too long to stop now.
But the president's comments bode ill for other reasons. The administration that will not speak to the Cuban government now presumes to speak to and on behalf of the best interests of "the Cuban people." In the weeks following Fidel Castro's illness in 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Cubans directly that "all of you must know that you have no greater friend than the United States of America." Bush last week also reassured Cubans that "the American people care about you."
These warm well-wishes are received with blank incredulity in Cuba, for they come from an administration that has single-mindedly adopted measures designed to worsen the conditions of daily life for the very people for whom it professes to "care about."
The United States insists that the embargo is not directed against the Cuban people, but rather against their government. In fact, the people have borne the full brunt of punitive sanctions.
The embargo, after all, was conceived with the intent to politicize hunger as a means to foment popular disaffection, in the hope that Cubans, driven by want and motivated by despair, would rise up against their government.
"The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship," a State Department memo insisted as early as 1960, and advocated measures "to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
The United States appears to have adopted the stance that it is OK to punish the Cuban people for their own good. Not a good way to win friends and influence people in Cuba.
Bush's speech, further, implies a far more insidious intent. The president appears to be inciting Cubans to rebellion.
"You have the power to shape your own destiny," he exhorted. How this would be achieved was not made clear, except that the president also addressed the Cuban armed forces, and suggested portentously: "When Cubans rise up to demand their liberty ... you've got to make a choice." And the choice? To "defend a disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people" or "embrace your people's desire for change."
The phrase "using force against your own people" provides insight into the meaning of the president's intent. Is this what the Cuba policy of the United States has come down to: inciting Cubans to rebellion and warning the armed forces against suppressing rebellion?
The administration's policy belies its claim to desire agency for the Cuban people. It plans unilaterally for the future of a "post-Castro" Cuba, apparently untroubled by the total exclusion of the people who live there. When it comes to the matter of the future of Cuba, the participation of the Cubans who live in Cuba is deemed unnecessary: hardly reassuring to Cubans who are exhorted to shape their own destiny.
Without the political will to engage a Cuban government in transition, it is not certain that the Bush administration possesses the moral credibility to engage the Cuban people. It would perhaps best serve the interests of both countries for the United States to show respect for the Cuban people by acting on the premise that Cubans in Cuba know what is in their best interest.
(Louis A. Perez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of history and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Cuba in the American Imagination.")
Point of View: Published: Oct 31, 2007
Reshaping Cuba from Washington
Louis A. Perez Jr.
CHAPEL HILL - President Bush's reaffirmation of his position on Cuba last week serves to remind us of the continuing short-sightedness of U.S. policy. It defies logic.
With Vietnam and Libya, the United States establishes diplomatic relations and expands trade and aid agreements as a policy of constructive engagement to promote democracy; with Cuba the United States maintains political pressure and increases economic sanctions as a policy of punitive isolation in the name of promoting democracy.
And it is precisely that isolation -- of the United States -- that bodes ill, for the government denies itself access to Cuba at a time of change on the island.
The long-awaited transition in Cuba has begun. But political change in Havana has elicited no policy change from Washington. The president's speech last week indicates that he intends to "stay the course" in regard to Cuba. The embargo has assumed a life of its own: Its very longevity serves as the principal rationale for its continuance.
To paraphrase the Otis Redding lyric, the United States has been embargoing Cuba for too long to stop now.
But the president's comments bode ill for other reasons. The administration that will not speak to the Cuban government now presumes to speak to and on behalf of the best interests of "the Cuban people." In the weeks following Fidel Castro's illness in 2006, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice assured Cubans directly that "all of you must know that you have no greater friend than the United States of America." Bush last week also reassured Cubans that "the American people care about you."
These warm well-wishes are received with blank incredulity in Cuba, for they come from an administration that has single-mindedly adopted measures designed to worsen the conditions of daily life for the very people for whom it professes to "care about."
The United States insists that the embargo is not directed against the Cuban people, but rather against their government. In fact, the people have borne the full brunt of punitive sanctions.
The embargo, after all, was conceived with the intent to politicize hunger as a means to foment popular disaffection, in the hope that Cubans, driven by want and motivated by despair, would rise up against their government.
"The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship," a State Department memo insisted as early as 1960, and advocated measures "to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government."
The United States appears to have adopted the stance that it is OK to punish the Cuban people for their own good. Not a good way to win friends and influence people in Cuba.
Bush's speech, further, implies a far more insidious intent. The president appears to be inciting Cubans to rebellion.
"You have the power to shape your own destiny," he exhorted. How this would be achieved was not made clear, except that the president also addressed the Cuban armed forces, and suggested portentously: "When Cubans rise up to demand their liberty ... you've got to make a choice." And the choice? To "defend a disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people" or "embrace your people's desire for change."
The phrase "using force against your own people" provides insight into the meaning of the president's intent. Is this what the Cuba policy of the United States has come down to: inciting Cubans to rebellion and warning the armed forces against suppressing rebellion?
The administration's policy belies its claim to desire agency for the Cuban people. It plans unilaterally for the future of a "post-Castro" Cuba, apparently untroubled by the total exclusion of the people who live there. When it comes to the matter of the future of Cuba, the participation of the Cubans who live in Cuba is deemed unnecessary: hardly reassuring to Cubans who are exhorted to shape their own destiny.
Without the political will to engage a Cuban government in transition, it is not certain that the Bush administration possesses the moral credibility to engage the Cuban people. It would perhaps best serve the interests of both countries for the United States to show respect for the Cuban people by acting on the premise that Cubans in Cuba know what is in their best interest.
(Louis A. Perez Jr. is the J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of history and director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of the forthcoming book "Cuba in the American Imagination.")
Georgie Anne Geyer on Bush speech
Opinion
Georgie Anne Geyer
COURTING CUBA
Tue Oct 30, 6:09 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucgg/20071030/cm_ucgg/courtingcuba
WASHINGTON -- Turn directly to the south and cup your ear toward Cuba. You might just hear some mysteriously evocative new messages flying back and forth between Havana and Washington.
In fact, there has not been a better chance for forging a truly workable, if not creative, relationship between the two quarrelsome nations since 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power and everything shut down. But is anybody here listening? One fears, particularly after President Bush's hostile speech last week, that instead of rewriting history at this unique turning point, we are in danger of repeating it.
A discerning observer might think, at a classic moment of change like this in Cuba, that wise American leaders might tread carefully, speak softly and hide their sticks behind new intentions. One might dream that we could be on the watch for wise diplomatic openings to use to our advantage after 48 years of alternating deadly silence with explosive violence in the straits.
Look first at the lineup on one side: An extremely ill Fidel voluntarily "retires" in the summer of 2006 before his 80th birthday, naming "little brother" Raul, no kid himself at 76, to power. A collective leadership, including top leaders of the Communist Party and younger, more worldly generals, many of whom have traveled and grasped the realities outside Cuba, is established.
In only this first year, Raul is daring: He not only allows, but encourages, a genuine debate over Cuba's 90 percent state-owned economy. He even talks of opening negotiations with the United States -- and "in a civilized fashion"!
Small but real examples of the changes: Under Raul, the state has raised $25 million in payments to milk and meat producers, is filling the empty streets with new Chinese buses, and is even talking about opening the economy to foreign investment.
In a brilliant piece in the summer issue of The Washington Quarterly, former CIA top Cuba analyst Brian Latell, author of the informative "After Fidel," pointed out that "the first months of Raul's provisional government augured well for continuity and stability," in part because "any serious instability would delegitimize the successor regime in its infancy."
Most important, Latell also argued convincingly, "in a departure from Fidel's standard rhetoric ... the new regime is admitting that the country's economic problems are SYSTEMIC, the results of corruption, inefficiency and overly rigid central planning. Internal scapegoats and the U.S. economic embargo are no longer incessantly being blamed. ... Previously persecuted groups ... are beginning to see in Raul the makings of a Communist reformer" and "a man of methodical creativity."
But then, Raul has always been different. Unlike his messianic and Machiavellian older brother, Raul is highly organized, an expert at military management and a man whose mind is more open to the world than his brother's.
And in a country where the numbers of youth are gaining, researchers have found a direct correlation between the young and support for democratic and economic changes. In fact, in an amazing recent survey conducted by the congressionally mandated International Republican Institute (IRI) in Cuba by Central American pollsters, nearly three-quarters of the 584 Cubans surveyed said they would like "to vote to decide who succeeds Fidel Castro as president." Indeed, a stunning 83 percent of Cubans believe that transformations toward a market-based economy would "improve their lives."
Meanwhile, one hears that the irreplaceable but still hidden Fidel is writing "editorials" about the world. One would think that he might leave us poor ink-stained wretches to our own business, but, no!
What would seem obvious to any thoughtful observer or analyst is that, given this new situation and handed these new possibilities, the United States, with its complicated history of intervention in Cuba, should effectively do nothing. Let these changes work themselves out. Make it appear that the United States is willing to gradually build a new and mature relationship with the Cuban people. In short, stop interfering!
Instead, President Bush's recent speech on Cuba exceeded even his speeches toward Iraq in terms of ire and insults. Washington would help the "new Cuba," the president said, with Internet access, with computers, with scholarships -- but only if Cuba met American conditions like total freedom of speech, action and political processes.
The civilian brigades of Cuban doctors who are serving around the world? Bush urged them to desert those contingents. The Cuban military, which has been proud of its service to Cuba? Bush disdainfully and high-handedly told them: "There is a place for you in a free Cuba."
Seldom has one heard a speech so insulting to another people -- and, therefore, so incapable of reaching the desired conclusion.
So here we are again -- still without the faintest idea of how to deal with a tiny but obstreperous island that has caused us an inordinate amount of trouble over the entire 20th century. One does not have to be pro-Fidel or anti-American to see that this is hardly the way to wean the old Castroite Cuba away from the dictatorships of the past.
Georgie Anne Geyer
COURTING CUBA
Tue Oct 30, 6:09 PM ET
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucgg/20071030/cm_ucgg/courtingcuba
WASHINGTON -- Turn directly to the south and cup your ear toward Cuba. You might just hear some mysteriously evocative new messages flying back and forth between Havana and Washington.
In fact, there has not been a better chance for forging a truly workable, if not creative, relationship between the two quarrelsome nations since 1959, when Fidel Castro came to power and everything shut down. But is anybody here listening? One fears, particularly after President Bush's hostile speech last week, that instead of rewriting history at this unique turning point, we are in danger of repeating it.
A discerning observer might think, at a classic moment of change like this in Cuba, that wise American leaders might tread carefully, speak softly and hide their sticks behind new intentions. One might dream that we could be on the watch for wise diplomatic openings to use to our advantage after 48 years of alternating deadly silence with explosive violence in the straits.
Look first at the lineup on one side: An extremely ill Fidel voluntarily "retires" in the summer of 2006 before his 80th birthday, naming "little brother" Raul, no kid himself at 76, to power. A collective leadership, including top leaders of the Communist Party and younger, more worldly generals, many of whom have traveled and grasped the realities outside Cuba, is established.
In only this first year, Raul is daring: He not only allows, but encourages, a genuine debate over Cuba's 90 percent state-owned economy. He even talks of opening negotiations with the United States -- and "in a civilized fashion"!
Small but real examples of the changes: Under Raul, the state has raised $25 million in payments to milk and meat producers, is filling the empty streets with new Chinese buses, and is even talking about opening the economy to foreign investment.
In a brilliant piece in the summer issue of The Washington Quarterly, former CIA top Cuba analyst Brian Latell, author of the informative "After Fidel," pointed out that "the first months of Raul's provisional government augured well for continuity and stability," in part because "any serious instability would delegitimize the successor regime in its infancy."
Most important, Latell also argued convincingly, "in a departure from Fidel's standard rhetoric ... the new regime is admitting that the country's economic problems are SYSTEMIC, the results of corruption, inefficiency and overly rigid central planning. Internal scapegoats and the U.S. economic embargo are no longer incessantly being blamed. ... Previously persecuted groups ... are beginning to see in Raul the makings of a Communist reformer" and "a man of methodical creativity."
But then, Raul has always been different. Unlike his messianic and Machiavellian older brother, Raul is highly organized, an expert at military management and a man whose mind is more open to the world than his brother's.
And in a country where the numbers of youth are gaining, researchers have found a direct correlation between the young and support for democratic and economic changes. In fact, in an amazing recent survey conducted by the congressionally mandated International Republican Institute (IRI) in Cuba by Central American pollsters, nearly three-quarters of the 584 Cubans surveyed said they would like "to vote to decide who succeeds Fidel Castro as president." Indeed, a stunning 83 percent of Cubans believe that transformations toward a market-based economy would "improve their lives."
Meanwhile, one hears that the irreplaceable but still hidden Fidel is writing "editorials" about the world. One would think that he might leave us poor ink-stained wretches to our own business, but, no!
What would seem obvious to any thoughtful observer or analyst is that, given this new situation and handed these new possibilities, the United States, with its complicated history of intervention in Cuba, should effectively do nothing. Let these changes work themselves out. Make it appear that the United States is willing to gradually build a new and mature relationship with the Cuban people. In short, stop interfering!
Instead, President Bush's recent speech on Cuba exceeded even his speeches toward Iraq in terms of ire and insults. Washington would help the "new Cuba," the president said, with Internet access, with computers, with scholarships -- but only if Cuba met American conditions like total freedom of speech, action and political processes.
The civilian brigades of Cuban doctors who are serving around the world? Bush urged them to desert those contingents. The Cuban military, which has been proud of its service to Cuba? Bush disdainfully and high-handedly told them: "There is a place for you in a free Cuba."
Seldom has one heard a speech so insulting to another people -- and, therefore, so incapable of reaching the desired conclusion.
So here we are again -- still without the faintest idea of how to deal with a tiny but obstreperous island that has caused us an inordinate amount of trouble over the entire 20th century. One does not have to be pro-Fidel or anti-American to see that this is hardly the way to wean the old Castroite Cuba away from the dictatorships of the past.
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