……………. Formed in 2001, the Cuba Policy Foundation lobbied lawmakers, encouraged them to visit Havana and held town hall debates on Cuba policy around the United States. TOP LEADERS At the forefront was Sally Grooms Cowal, a former deputy secretary of state for inter-American affairs under former President George Bush. Cowal is better known in Miami for arranging a place to house the father of Cuban boy Elián González during his stay in Washington.
Among the others heading the foundation: William Rogers, chair, former assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President Gerald Ford, who pushed for normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations in the 1970s; and Diego Asencio, former U.S. ambassador to Colombia and Brazil.***
So what's to be done? Simply extending the U.S. embargo from here to eternity is unlikely to achieve much, but neither is it consonant with the lessons of history that rewarding criminals stops crime. At the least, voices must rise in fierce condemnation, and from all over the civilized world. The dissidents must be encouraged, their tormentors excoriated. The free world must not let go of its outrage, but beat the drum regularly, turning to other sanctions if effective, humane ones can be found, while insistently seeking the release of all Castro's political prisoners and the demise of his government by thuggery.***