Obama Misreads Cuban Reality
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Tuesday, August 21, 2007 4:20 PM PT
Election 2008: Seeking to change his reputation for naivete, Sen. Barack Obama now presents his new vision for Cuba. But what he thinks is new is in fact already U.S. policy. He's been asleep.
To read Obama's sunny new manifesto on Cuba policy, published Tuesday in the Miami Herald, you'd think he'd invented sunlight.
He paints a picture of the U.S. hopelessly benighted about Cuba, having shut the door to the tyrannical communist regime long ago through a trade embargo, which he calls a failure. He advocates free travel to Cuba and an end to trade restrictions.
"A democratic opening in Cuba is, and should be, the foremost objective of our policy," he wrote, seemingly unaware that that's been the aim of U.S. policy since 1960.
U.S. efforts to spread democracy in Cuba have been more than talk. In July 2006, the inter-agency U.S. Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba recommended $80 million to encourage Cubans to form civil society groups as building blocks for a future democracy. Millions were allocated for for Internet access, civil society support, and education. The commission recommended $20 million for Cuban democracy efforts "until the dictatorship ceases to exist."
That's hardly the "grand gestures" of which he claims the Bush administration has been guilty. If you're a Cuban seeking freedom, it's real help.
U.S. diplomacy has been on the case, too.
Brave U.S. diplomats, like U.S. interests section chief Ambassador James Cason, openly stood up for democracy in statements inside Cuba and ran a news ticker of free world news across the de facto embassy windows in Havana until an enraged Castro erected a wall of black flags.
Meanwhile, Castro's secret police delivered their own payback, intimidating U.S. diplomats by tapping their phones and breaking into their residences, leaving repulsive Castroite mementos like urine in their mouthwash.
All of this happened during the Bush administration, which has taken more steps to encourage, but not force, democracy in Cuba than any other administration.
Having published this screed in Miami, Obama clearly wanted to appeal to Miami Cuban voters, particularly those recent economic migrants who've come to the U.S. claiming to seek asylum but who would really like the freedom to go back and forth to Cuba as part of the privileged class of U.S.-passported tourists.
Obama doesn't say precisely, but he implies he might give these Cuban-American "asylees" special travel rights other Americans don't get. That may be because he doesn't want to advertise the other supporters who want an end of travel restrictions: Castro's own apologists in the U.S. — revolutionary tourists like Global Exchange or Michael Moore, known for doing Castro's bidding.
That brings up what this really is about — dropping the trade embargo and letting more tourist hard currency into Cuba, which is exactly what the Castro regime wants.
More hard currency and travel will strengthen his regime because he controls the entire economy.
Fidel and his brother, Raul, run Cuban hotels, conference centers, nickel plants, shipping companies and tobacco concessions. That's the main reason why Forbes magazine has declared Fidel's net worth at almost $1 billion.
Any business coming into Cuba must be done exclusively through the Castro brothers' personal monopolies.
Obama failed to understand the role of money in entrenching the Castro regime when he wrote: "U.S. policies — especially the fact that Cuban Americans were allowed to maintain and deepen ties with family on the island — were a key cause of that 'Cuban Spring,' " he said, referring to the 1990s when the communists loosened restrictions on small businesses and hard currency remittances.
As a matter of fact, the Cuban Spring was not the result of Cuban-Americans visiting the island state; it was was due to Castro losing his $3 billion-a-year subsidy from the Soviet Union. Fidel was especially desperate for ways to stay off the end of a meat hook as embittered, impoverished Cubans during his "special period" grew restless.
Only the appearance of another sugar-daddy subsidizer, Venezuela's profligate Hugo Chavez, saved Castro with his $1 billion subsidies, which may now be $3 billion.
As soon as Chavez's cash rolled in, Castro ended his "Cuban Spring" in 2003 with a brutal crackdown on 75 dissidents. And he put in place new restrictions on holding foreign currency and ended tiny private enterprises. Cuban-American travel had nothing to do with it.
Meanwhile, there's no absence of trade with Cuba. U.S. food and medicine roll into Cuban ports daily, with more than $300 million in goods sold to Cuba in 2006. The U.S., in fact, now is Cuba's top food source.
Meanwhile, Europe, Japan and Venezuela also are substantial trading partners. It hasn't improved Cubans' material circumstances or freedom in any significant way.
Obama naively said he'd sit down with Castro and talk to him without preconditions, and his new effort to pander to one segment of the Miami Cuban population would give him everything he wanted.
His statements show he's grossly uninformed about Cuban realities, has no idea about U.S. efforts to encourage democracy and would be a pushover for Castro's agenda, without even drinking a cafecito with the dictator.
Even through the controlled medium of print, Obama's showing himself to be naive and not ready for prime time. |
