Posted on 05/19/2003 5:23:40 AM PDT by Luis Gonzalez
A U.S. diplomat invites Cuban dissidents into his home. Fidel Castro calls the dissidents "mercenaries" of the "Bush/Hitler-like regime" and imprisons 78 of them, some for as long as 28 years each. For three black Cubans who hijack a Havana ferry in a desperate attempt to reach U.S. shores, it's death by firing squad, but we don't hear a peep from civil-rights activist Jesse Jackson or any other black U.S. leaders who would normally cry racism. Cuba predictably blames its carnage on Uncle Sam. There are protests the world over, even from several of Castro's old commie friends. The U.S. government weighs its options. It expels 14 Cuban diplomats - a record - for spying. Round and round we go in this tit-for-tat diplomacy. Will Cuba kick out James Cason, our man in Havana? Will the United States keep selling any Cuba assets that arrive on our shores? It's another subplot in this 44-year-old power play. The U.S. government has been auctioning off hijacked planes that arrive in Miami to pay a Cuban-American woman who, by court decree, is entitled to big bucks from the Cuban government for having been jilted by her husband, who turned out to be a Cuban spy who infiltrated exile groups. Talk about government policy wrapped in the wrath of a woman scorned. Will there be another rafter crisis as Cuba's bankrupt communist economy continues to struggle? Will Cuba's dissident movement be revived after this latest crackdown? Will Europe and Latin America make Cuba accountable for its human-rights violations? The hard-liners in the exile community want the Bush administration to end direct flights and put a stop to $1billion a year that Cuban Americans send to their relatives on the island. The moderates want to leave the family contacts alone and offer more help to what's left of the dissident movement and expansion of Radio and TV Marti, whose signals constantly get jammed by the Cuban government. The liberals and farm-state conservatives in Congress are actually talking about ending the travel ban on Cuba, as if the communist government should be rewarded with tourists after this latest crackdown on dissent. President Bush will spell out what his administration plans to do. The wisest course would leave U.S. policy alone and concentrate diplomatic efforts on nations in Europe and Latin America that now trade with Cuba without regard to its dismal human-rights record. Tightening the U.S. embargo by making family remittances or direct travel to Cuba illegal would only encourage people to go through third countries to reach family. Most Cuban Americans want more family contacts, not fewer. No, the best U.S. course is to focus on Mexico, Chile, Spain, France, Italy, Canada and all the other countries with businesses on the island. Most of their leaders, including Mexico's President Vicente Fox, already have given the dissidents credibility by meeting with them while visiting the island. European diplomats in Havana, particularly those from Spain, often invite dissidents to partake in their national celebrations. That has put Cuban officials on notice that creating a civil society that values diverse viewpoints is not a U.S.-manufactured plot but a universal goal, spelled out in the United Nations' own declaration of human rights. If Bush focuses on what's best for the Cuban people, he will mount a diplomatic campaign for the European Union and the Organization of American States to put pressure on Cuba and free the dissidents. Cuba's crackdown on dissent merits more than world condemnation, more than protests against the communist regime in Spain or France or New York and Washington. The Europeans and Latin Americans wield the big stick of trade, if they care to use it. If not now, then when?
"For three black Cubans who hijack a Havana ferry in a desperate attempt to reach U.S. shores, it's death by firing squad, but we don't hear a peep from civil-rights activist Jesse Jackson or any other black U.S. leaders who would normally cry racism.
I shouldn't quibble, but this line annoys me, in that it treats Cuban officials as if they were somehow legitimate.
They are not, of course, and the popular reaction in every formerly communist country, at the moment of its liberation, has well proven that these guys have no legitimacy at all.
Whether or not the embargo over the years has been the proper strategy, we are now coming down to the final stretch. This guy is 76 years old. He will not be there two years from now. And probably no one in the regime has what it takes to continue the regime's hold on the island. Not his brother, an apparent non-entity, not any of the generals or secret police, for the simple reason that Castro has made sure over the years that no one with any natural authority would ever emerge during his lifetime.
So within two years he will die, and there will be a transitional government of military officers, who will either free the island quickly or be shaken off like a dog shakes off dust.
The clock is ticking, we are in the final countdown, and there is no reason to compromise with this regime at this late date, unless it is to speed its finish. There is no reason now to allow Castro the legitimacy he spent 40 years rejecting now that he approaches the end of his wasted time on this earth.
In a very short time the men he sentenced to life in prison will be free men, and their jailers will burn their uniforms and deny they ever worked for Castro. No one will drink with them and no one will want to know them. The men who served this regime most enthusiastically are headed for a new world in which everything they have believed and worked for is swept away, and becomes only a bad memory, and in a few years Castro will just be a word you scare little children with. He will be forgotten in his own country.
Our challenge lies in the countries that were never enslaved, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina, where bad government has led to a flirtation with Communism. Communist countries, once freed, are innoculated against it and carry some immunity. But countries that have never been enslaved are susceptible, and Latin America has never completely rejected the false dreams that lead back to totalitarian rule. Mainstream political philosophy is not different from Communist philosophy, except in degree, and so offers no immunity against the disease. This is what we are up against.
It has to be confronted in the jungles, but more important in the field of ideas. So far this has been taking place in the most casual of ways, the voices for freedom are broadcast and filtered by American journalists and by American filmmakers who only barely believe in it. The truths get through, but colored and muted and distorted by the self-appointed truthtellers. We need to find a way to get these truths across directly, without the middle men, and to confront the heresies directly and publicly. This isn't happening in Latin America, there is no Rush Limbaugh there, there is no Fox News.
The Best and the Brightest there will tell you that Chile is prosperous because Pinochet killed all the poor people. With a straight face. They will tell you all of the problems of their countries, they recognize them of course, and then reject the very paths to set them right as being ideas that only work in rich countries, without any inkling that it is the acceptance of these ideas that make them rich, and the rejection of them that guarantees hopelessness.
Cuba is not our problem, that nightmare is almost over. Our problem is that much of Latin American has never rejected the heresy, nor has at least half of our own country, nor Canada, nor the EU. There are bigger battles coming.
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International educators conference held in Cuba [Full Text] HAVANA - President Fidel Castro told a group of educators from around the world that education can create a better world by helping to resolve social problems, such as the nagging racial discrimination that still exists in Cuba. Closing the international educators conference here on Friday night, Castro told hundreds of participants that over four decades his socialist government can boast high marks for its primary school programs. But he said secondary education here needs serious improvement.
Beginning in early 2002, Cuba launched a campaign to improve conditions at its primary schools, but reforms for the older students are still pending. Cuba's secondary school program will be radically improved, Castro declared. "The future developing of our education will have enormous political, social and human connotations," the Cuban leader said.
Despite the huge changes that the 1959 revolution made in Cuban society, some social problems have not been completely eliminated, including racial discrimination, Castro acknowledged. "While science shows unquestionably the real equality that exists among human beings, discriminations lives on," especially among the island's poorest groups, Castro said. [End]
Cuba is not our problem, that nightmare is almost over. Our problem is that much of Latin American has never rejected the heresy, nor has at least half of our own country, nor Canada, nor the EU. There are bigger battles coming.
What you have written deserves reiteration.
Regretfully, Fidel's natural demise has been predicted for a decade or more. Two years from now he will be 78, an age no longer considered tentative in mortality. The best innoculation for the "ripe for seduction" countries of South America would be for Fidel to go out with a bullet in his brain, put there by one of his own. That he should go to his death peacefully would be mitigated, in my mind, only by the wrath of God that he will truly face.
Thanks Luis for keeping up the Good Fight.
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