Posted on 03/23/2002 5:37:38 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Jimmy Carter said Friday that he will travel to Cuba sometime this year -- a trip that would make him the highest-ranking former U.S. official to have visited the island since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.
''We are making plans now and, as we have said, we have been invited to go to Cuba and we intend to go,'' Carter said during an interview with CNN. ``But I'm not prepared at this point to give our goals and the names of people that will go or when we will go because we haven't really made those plans yet.''
The trip could have significant impact on U.S. policy at a time when the Bush administration is under increasing pressure to shift strategies and open up to the Castro regime. While many members of Congress have visited the islands, Carter would be the first former president to travel there since the Cuban revolution.
Carter told CNN that the Bush administration may not like the fact that he's going but likely won't stand in the way. ''I expect to get their tacit approval, not their blessing,'' he said. ``We can't go, obviously, without the permission of the government. My understanding is that they will give that approval.''
REACTION
Cuban Americans reacted swiftly to Carter's announcement.
Joe Garcia, executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation, said his organization welcomes the trip -- if Carter intends to tell Castro to leave power.
Garcia said, however, that if Carter intends to promote better relations with Castro, the influential exile organization would oppose the trip.
''If he is going the way he went to Haiti [in 1994] to tell [Haitian military leader] Gen. Raoul Cedras to leave, then we welcome his trip to Cuba if he is going to tell Fidel Castro to leave,'' Garcia said. ``However, if he's going to give legitimacy to a 43-year-old dictatorship, then I think it would be unfortunate.''
While Carter declined to outline his objectives in Cuba, he indicated to CNN's Judy Woodruff that his intention was to improve relations between Cuba and the United States -- not to deliver an ultimatum to Castro.
Carter indicated support for easing the embargo and allowing U.S. citizens to travel freely to the island, though he spoke strongly in favor of democracy on the island.
VISION FOR ISLAND
''As you probably would remember, when I was president, I departed from my predecessors and unfortunately my successors, in lifting all travel restraints on American citizens to go to Cuba almost immediately when I was president within a few weeks,'' Carter said.
``And I also established interests sections, which is one step short of full diplomatic relationships between Havana and Washington. And those interest sections with staffs representing our countries have never been closed.
``So I think the best way to bring about democratic changes in Cuba is obviously to have maximum commerce and trade and visitation by Americans and others who know freedom and to let the Cuban people know the advantages of freedom. That's the best way to bring about change and not to punish the Cuban people themselves by imposing an embargo on them, which makes Castro seem to be a hero because he is defending his own people against the abuse of Americans.''
My basic premise is that we can directly impact Cuba in several ways by having relations with them instead of pretending they aren't there.
You continue to misinterpret or misstate the economic issue. I said nothing about Castro paying the US. I said that companies from the US should be able to make their own deals without the government preventing them. You remember capitalism don't you? Also, US citizens should be able to freely travel there without playing games getting around the government's restrictions.
By Frank Calzón*
The Miami Herald
Miami
Marzo 14, 2002
Fidel Castro's most persistent trait since assuming power in 1959 has been anti-Americanism. Now he says he wants to help American farmers and to trade with the United States. By Castro's reckoning, selling grain and other commodities to Cuba will greatly benefit American farmers.
The American economy today is grappling with the Enron fiasco, which can be attributed to the company's manipulation of its fiscal data and the unwillingness of executive-branch regulators and Congressional policymakers to ask tough questions.
Congress must today ask whether profits from trade with Cuba aren't another mirage and whether American taxpayers won't take another hit if Castro's campaign to win credits and export guarantees succeeds.
Say what you will about the U.S. embargo, but one of its best-kept secrets is that it has saved U.S. taxpayers millions. Because of the embargo, American banks aren't among the consortium of creditors (among them Spanish, French, Canadian banks) known as ''The Paris Club.'' A consortium that has been waiting for years to be paid what's owed.
Had American banks been permitted to make loans to Castro, you and I both know that they would be pressing Congress to find a way for U.S. taxpayers to cover their losses in Cuba.
American agribusiness believes that there are huge profits to be made by trading with Havana. It argues that foreign-policy considerations should not prevent trade -- even if strengthening regimes such as those of Libya, Iraq and Cuba might someday put the lives of U.S. servicemen at risk.
Providing trade benefits to America's enemies, especially those on the State Department's list of terrorist nations, makes as much sense as the sale of U.S. scrap metal to Japan in the 1930's. Some of it was used to build up the Japanese military, leading to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
As the American Chamber of Commerce of Cuba in the United States reports in its February 2002 newsletter:
``Cuba's economic woes continue to mount as a result of being especially hard hit by the worldwide economic slow down and the fall-off in international travel after Sept. 11.
``Tourism, Cuba's most important economic sector has declined sharply.
``Cuba's second-largest source of foreign exchange, expatriate remittances, are down due to the downturn in the U.S economy.
``Removal of Russian surveillance facilities cost Havana $200 million in Russian rent yearly.
'Vice President Carlos Lage has cited `the hard blow' by a fall in world prices for sugar and nickel.''
Since June 2000, sales of agricultural products and medicine to Cuba have been legal, but for more than a year no sales were made. After a hurricane in November 2001, the United States offered Cuba humanitarian assistance. Instead of accepting it and thanking the administration, Castro turned the offer into a public-relations stunt, insisting Cuba would buy $30 million in U.S. commodities.
His goal: to win U.S. credits and export insurance for future ``sales.''
But Cuba is broke. It suspended debt payments in 1986. According to a Reuters story last month, ``Cuba's Foreign Trade Ministry recently asked some of its biggest creditors to form a consortium to collectively restructure hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.''
The proposal signals Cuba cannot meet payment schedules, which it has been missing anyway since October, Reuters says.
During the last two years, France, Chile, South Africa, Thailand and others have canceled shipments or refused to provide export insurance to Castro.
Yet Castro's U.S. sales pitches are accepted at face value without checking available economic data. Castro desperately needs credits and subsidies, and agribusiness wants Washington to extend them.
Asking American taxpayers to extend credit to Castro is to ask them to finance an international deadbeat. The Bush administration said No when asked to bailout Enron. It should say No, as well, to bailing out Castro.
*Frank Calzón is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba.
Six billion dollars yearly from the Soviet Union and similar amounts, after the demise of the Soviet Union, from Canada, Mexico, the European Union and 150 countries that were unwise enough to give credit to Castro did not improve Cuba's economic or political situation. Evidently, according to your own statement, you want that we American taxpayers assume the burden to keep Castro in power, a burden that bankrupted the Soviet Union with a 50 billion dollar debt in addition to the 5 billion dollars yearly gift, and Argentina that is also in dire economic crisis after Castro defaulted on his $1.2 billion dollar debt. Castro has the Midas touch in reverse.
Please read the last two or three of my posts and tell me were I have committed taxpayer money. I can save you the trouble, I DIDN'T.
If you want to have a discussion with me, I suggest the following format. I'll give and explain my position, you read what I say, if you don't understand, ask. If you want to make up a position for me, I suggest you get a second freeper name and have at yourself.
Which ex-president visited in 1959?
Your ritalin must be wearing off. Here is your reply to one of my posts. Many normal readers might see this as implying something about my view of Castro. You can understand how they might, can you not?
Dear Cecil,
What's the straight dope on Jimmy Carter's once being attacked by a killer rabbit? I hear there are actually photos of Carter swinging for his life at this rabbit, but his people refused to release them because "some facts about the president must remain forever wrapped in obscurity." What the hell is going on? --Donald Lilly, North Hollywood, California
Dear Donald:
Well, right now I'd say it's pretty quiet, which is about what you'd figure, seeing as how the killer rabbit thing happened in 1979. Not that stories about feckless good ol' boy presidents don't have their pertinence these days. Say what you will about Bill Clinton's PR problems, though, Jimmy Carter was in a class by himself. Nice man, but he was one president whose image a couple accusations from bimboes would have probably improved.
The rabbit incident happened on April 20 while Carter was taking a few days off in Plains, Georgia. He was fishing from a canoe in a pond when he spotted the fateful rabbit swimming toward him. It was never precisely determined what the rabbit's problem was. Carter, always trying to look at things from the other guy's point of view, later speculated that it was fleeing a predator. Whatever the case, it was definitely a troubled rabbit. "It was hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared and making straight for the president," a press account said.
The Secret Service having been caught flatfooted--I'll grant you an amphibious rabbit assault is a tough thing to defend against--the president did what he could to protect himself. Initially it was reported that he had hit the rabbit with his paddle. Realizing this would not play well with the Rabbit Lovers Guild, Carter later clarified that he had merely splashed water at the rabbit, which then swam off toward shore. A White House photographer, ever alert to history's pivotal moments, snapped a picture of the encounter for posterity.
Good thing, too. Carter's own staff was skeptical when he told the rabbit story back at the White House. Some ventured the opinion that rabbits couldn't swim, didn't attack people, and sure weren't about to take on a sitting president, even if it was Jimmy Carter. Miffed, Jimmy ordered up a print of the aforementioned photo, but this failed to resolve the issue. The picture showed the president with his paddle raised, and there was something in the water, "but you couldn't tell what it was," an anonymous staffer was quoted as saying. The average politician would have said, goddamit, I'm president of the United States and I say it was a rabbit. But Carter was not that kind of guy. He ordered a blowup made, establishing at last that his attacker was, well, a bunny, or "swamp rabbit," to use press secretary Jody Powell's somewhat fiercer sounding term.
OK, not one of the shining moments of Carter's career, but so far not a major train wreck, inasmuch as nobody outside the White House knew anything about it. Jody Powell took care of that problem the following August when he told the rabbit story to Associated Press reporter Brooks Jackson over a cup of tea. Powell ought to have known that you cannot tell anything to reporters in August because there is nothing else to write about and they will make any fool thing into a front page scandal. Which is exactly what happened. The Washington Post put the bunny story on page one complete with a cartoon takeoff of the famous "Jaws" movie poster entitled "Paws." The media ran with the story for a week, the worst aspect from Carter's perspective undoubtedly being the columnists, who basically all said, yeah, it's just a rabbit, but it shows you the kind of president we've got here. The administration refused to release the photos, although I seem to recall that Reagan's people later found and leaked them. Carter's subsequent drubbing at the polls was a foregone conclusion, hostage crisis or not. Lesson for life #1: if it moves, kill it. Lesson for life #2: if you can't kill it, for God's sake don't talk about it to the Associated Press.
Here's a question for you, if we could get some leverage or concession with the Castro regieme, would you provide taxpayer's money for that.
VOW!! What an amazing and profound statement! Are you by any chance a disciple of Friedrick Hayek; or perhaps a laureate graduate of the Chicago School of Economics?
When did Castro pay for the properties taken from our citizens forty years ago?
Here's a question for you, if we could get some leverage or concession with the Castro regime, would you provide taxpayer's money for that."
Certainly, in Cuba there is not capitalism, and never will be, as long as Castro is alive, as he has repeatedly affirmed. Capitalism means sound business practices, not giving away your products.
The Helms-Burton law and the embargo are the only pacific means to have some leverage for democratic and economic changes in Cuba. The law establishes that as soon Castro free the political prisoners, and abide by the human and civil rights guarantee by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations; the U.S. will cooperate in the transition to a free and democratic government with hope and economic opportunities for all the Cuban people, not for the enrichment of only a very few of the privileged oppressors class.
Another not less important prerequisite is that Cuba must cease to be a terrorist and drug haven. The research and production of biological and chemical weapons must be ended and the Chinese’s electronic base in Bejucal, which counts with cyber-warfare capabilities, must be dismantled, as it was the Russian spy base.
It seems that President Bush strong leadership is beginning to render fruits. The relations between Mexico and Cuba, a country that has been Castro’s strongest ally, is going from bad to worse since the incident of the Mexican Embassy in Havana. We are in the right track thanks to President Bush and we might not need to wait much longer to see Castro's demise.
I see a cart and horse delimma in the current situation. We won't do anything unless he does this first and so on. I believe we should make the initiative by discussing the opening of the door to business and trade. When I said capitalism, I was not referring to current Cuban economic practices, I was referring to getting our government to open the door to see if our capitialists want to take a shot.
But we did not. I'm trying hard to understand why we don't try something new and I think Bush could lead on the issue, unlike the bootlicker we had in there before.
Let's part in disagreement til we cross swords again.
"My basic premise is that we can directly impact Cuba in several ways by having relations with them instead of pretending they aren't there."
Your premise is wrong, damned near every other country in the globe has relations with Cuba, and nothing has changed.
"You continue to misinterpret or misstate the economic issue."
You continue to ignore the theft of American property, and just dismiss it.
Again I ask you, if I steal your car, and by the time you catch up with me, the car is old and worthless because many years have passed. Will you forgive me and allow me to borrow your new car?
"I said nothing about Castro paying the US. I said that companies from the US should be able to make their own deals without the government preventing them."
You know nothing about international trade, go back and do some reading. Some in Congress are already demanding that we extend Cuba credit. Guess whose money guarantees those debts?
Before you set out to discuss international finance, specifically, sanctioned trading between US manufacturers and foreign governments, do some reading.
"You remember capitalism don't you?"
It's free trade, or free enterprise--the word capitalism was coined by either Karl Marx as a demeaning term to call our type of economic structure--neither of which can be accomplished with a totalitarian government at one end of the transaction.
"Also, US citizens should be able to freely travel there without playing games getting around the government's restrictions"
Go, what are you waiting for?
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