How Engaging Cuba Can Help US - Anya Landau Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION - May 10, 2002 http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0502/12cubamain.html COMMENTARY: A PREVIEW OF CARTER'S VISIT How engaging Cuba can help us Exchange could illustrate folly in Bush administration's tough stance By ANYA LANDAU Forget for a moment what Jimmy Carter's visit to Cuba will do for the island, and think instead about what it will do for America. For 40 years U.S. policy toward Cuba has been the laughingstock of the world. For 10 straight years, the United Nations has voted to condemn the U.S. embargo by ever-increasing margins; for the past three years only the Marshall Islands and Israel, one of Cuba's major trading partners, supported us. American industries now have realized the folly of the embargo: Our allies invest in Cuba, sell food to Cuba, vacation in Cuba. For reasons escaping all logic, however, Cuba remains America's final frontier, a mere 90 miles from our shores. But Americans have been trickling into Cuba on academic and professional exchanges, to seek business opportunities, to tap the Cuban travel market, to discover Cuba's unique allure and its people's surprising hospitality to American visitors. Every year nearly 200,000 Americans visit the island, legally or illegally. Upon returning home, nearly every one of them says, "It's not at all like I imagined." So why are travel restrictions likely to get worse before they get better? Think Florida: everyone's favorite election battleground. THE BROTHERS BUSH Last summer, analysts in Washington were bickering over President Bush's choice for assistant secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich, a Cuban-American with a fierce hatred of Fidel Castro and a tendency to divide rather than unite. Many questioned Reich's capacity for circumspect leadership in the hemisphere given his very public grudge match with Castro and his pro-embargo lobbying for the Cuban exile giant Bacardi Co. But anti-Castro exiles rallied behind Reich. Leading Democratic senators opposed the nomination, and after a surprise straw vote called by Sen. Jesse Helms in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee turned up tepid support for Reich even among Republicans, the nomination seemed dead. So Bush appointed Reich in January by circumventing the Senate confirmation process; Bush waited until the Senate was in recess and then installed his man. It wasn't the first time Bush had looked out for hardline Cuban-American interests; in fact, the Reich appointment fits a pattern, and here's a clue as to why: Right or wrong, Florida's Cuban-Americans are credited with landing Bush in the White House, and their votes are coveted above all others to ensure Gov. Jeb Bush's re-election this November. And so in an all-out effort to feed a hungry constituency in Florida, the Bush administration also has installed Cuban-Americans at the National Security Council, the U.S. Foreign Claims Commission and at the helm of USAID's Latin America program. On the eve of Jimmy Carter's landmark trip to Cuba, the Bush administration rolled out a big gun, Undersecretary for Arms Control John Bolton, to announce that the U.S. suspects that Cuba just might have an offensive biological weapons program. This is a claim that zealous anti-Castro exiles have been urging on the Bush administration for some time. Yet, in a similar speech last November, Bolton did not list Cuba as a potential bioterrorist threat. (But then, Jimmy Carter was not going to Cuba last November.) If Castro's Cuba truly were a terrorist threat, you can be sure that our "wet-foot dry-foot" policy on illegal migration from Cuba would quickly turn into a no-foot policy. (Wet-foot dry-foot: Cubans who are caught at sea trying to come to the United States are turned back; Cubans who make it onto U.S. soil can stay.) A CRACKDOWN ON TRAVEL But this house of cards rests on President Bush's vow to crack down on "unlicensed and excessive travel" to the island. From 2000 to 2001, penalty letters sent out by the Treasury Department enforcing the ban literally quadrupled. Suspected Cuba-bound travelers are now tracked in foreign airports and even on the Internet. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill rocked the boat recently when he admitted he would prefer to spend Treasury resources on tracking terrorist funds instead of retired schoolteachers who visit Cuba. When two Cuban-American members of Congress demanded that O'Neill be fired, the White House issued a conciliatory statement. But is all of this pandering necessary? Cuban-Americans differ widely on the embargo -- the latest polls show 50 percent do not support the embargo. Cuban-Americans, who comprise a mere 6 percent of Florida's electorate, historically vote Republican. This year, they certainly won't vote for Janet Reno, who burned that bridge in the Elian Gonzalez saga. The true irony in all of this is that Cuban-Americans want the unrestricted right to send money to relatives and to return home as many times a year as they want. The U.S. crackdown on travel is exactly what the majority of Cuban-Americans -- and Cubans on the island -- don't want to see. ------------------------- AMERICANS' OPINIONS ON THE EMBARGO How well do you think the U.S. embargo of Cuba works? Very well 4% Well 31% Not very well 44% Not at all 22% Do you favor or oppose continuing the embargo? Oppose 57% Favor 43% Should the U.S. allow Americans to travel freely to Cuba? Yes 63% No 37% Source: Institute for Public Opinion Research, Florida International University, 2000 poll of 400 adults nationwide ------------------------- The new generation of Cuban-Americans left their homeland not for ideological reasons but for economic reasons. These people care much more about the social and economic welfare of their friends and families still on the island than about Fidel Castro's politics. They, along with 95 percent of the dissident groups in Cuba, believe that with cultural, political and economic exchanges with the United States will come a flood of information and ideas that will assuredly open Cuban society. Moreover, American dollars do trickle down to ordinary Cubans. Those who would keep U.S. dollars out of Cuba in order to punish Castro -- who surely hasn't missed a meal in 43 years -- are not truly advocates for the Cuban people themselves. If it is true, as President Bush has said, that free trade creates freer nations, why is Cuba the one exception to this notion? CARTER AND POSITIVE CHANGE Those who would criticize or condition Carter's trip should explain how four decades of degrading isolation have helped the Cuban people. The only positive changes in Cuba that have resulted from any U.S. government policies were realized during Carter's administration. Carter achieved the reunification of families and the release of thousands of political prisoners from Cuban jails. We forget, too, that Carter restored Americans' right to travel to Cuba -- a right then taken away by President Reagan. Even with all of the Bush administration's efforts to halt the inevitable, U.S. public opinion favors lifting the embargo. "Try something new" is the mandate in a Congress that is poised to lift trade and travel restrictions this summer. It's really quite simple. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) recently summed it up: "If you have a policy in place for 40 years, and you are not accomplishing your objectives, then it seems to me you might evaluate whether that policy is working." Jimmy Carter's trip to Cuba is emblematic not just of human rights and constructive engagement, but of the freedom of movement and association granted to all Americans by the Bill of Rights. We cannot credibly urge Cuba to respect its citizens' rights when we don't respect our own. Ask me again how President Carter's visit will further democracy in Cuba, and I'll tell you instead how his visit will further democracy in America. [ Anya Landau, a native of Athens, Ga., is an associate with the Center for International Policy's Cuba Project in Washington.] http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/opinion/0502/12cubamain.html (c) 2002 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution source - JosePertierra@aol.com ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytlab-05.12.02-23:02:31-9528