Posted on 05/24/2002 9:07:06 AM PDT by xsysmgr
In defiant opposition to President Bush's firm stance against Fidel Castro, the Cuba Study Group (CSG), a perfectly divided bipartisan network of 42 congressmen — a jump of eight members in just three weeks, is working feverishly to lift the trade embargo to Castro's island prison.
The marketing pitch of the Embrace Castro movement, which is spreading like wildfire on Capitol Hill, is best summed up by its ringleader, Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), who proclaims, "If engagement will work in China, it will work in Cuba as well."
Engagement with Cuba is absolutely necessary, but the real question is how. Do we engage the despot and strengthen his regime, thereby institutionalizing communism? Or do we, as President Bush proposed this week, circumvent Castro and directly engage the Cuban people to foment freedom? The answer should be obvious, yet the CSG inexplicably wants to engage Cuba on the same terms as other foreign companies do now, by cozying up to Castro.
The false premise of CSG's "China" argument is that trading with or investing in communist Cuba is the equivalent of engaging communist China. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that Cuba sits 90 miles off our shores, the parallel just doesn't hold up upon closer inspection.
In one sense, our current policy with China is a matter of sleeping in the bed we've made, but more significantly, trading with China is qualitatively different than with Cuba.
Trade with China has traveled a messy and imperfect course over the past 25 years. Without a doubt, China is a much freer and more open nation than before foreign trade and investment. Sweatshops still flourish on the mainland, particularly in the south, but there are also pockets of free markets scattered throughout urban centers, most notably in Shanghai, where someone can actually open up the want ads and choose a job.
China is really no longer a true communist nation; it is more a market-socialist economy run by the Communist party. The government opened up the economy because it had to for its very survival. As the world now knows from the collapse of the Soviet Union, communism, left to its own devices, will inevitably self-destruct and implode. It's only a matter of time.
By its very nature, communism is parasitic. It feeds off existing wealth, depleting resources without replenishing them. The Soviet Union held on as long as it did because it raped Eastern Europe after World War II, stripping away every last vestige of prosperity.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is dynamic and regenerative. Not only does capitalism not eat away resources, it builds and creates new wealth. Communism must eventually feed off the unique rejuvenating character of capitalism once its own well has run dry. In short, communism needs capitalism in order to survive.
China and later Cuba have both turned to capitalism as a last ditch effort to preserve communism. In China, it has worked. The communist dictatorship across the Pacific is stronger from 25 years of foreign engagement, but it has come at the price of a burgeoning middle class and new freedoms afforded to millions that never existed before Nixon's fateful visit. Without America's trade and investment, however, China's communist dictatorship likely would have already collapsed under its own dead weight.
Knowing that trade has facilitated the continued survival of communism in China, maybe we didn't choose the best path. But hindsight is irrelevant, because you cannot put the baby back in the womb. With China a major trading partner — and growing, a sudden fall of the regime is far from America's interests.
In Cuba, however, we have no existing economic interests, and Castro is an old man. There are a few heir apparents, but Castro's cult of personality is the glue holding the deteriorating machine together. So long as the embargo remains in place, Castro's successor, and with him communism, will fail.
Doing business with Cuba unavoidably props up the regime because of the way Castro has designed the rules of the game. Castro double-dips from joint ventures: first by splitting the profits, and secondly by stealing from the Cuban workers. Foreign companies don't employ Cuban workers; they rent them. Companies must pay Castro for each worker, in cash, and the regime in turn pockets 95 percent, doling out the remaining 5 percent in pesos.
At least in China, those employed by American companies are paid directly by the corporation and usually have the benefit of exposure to American culture and values. Chinese employees of American companies are immediately vaulted into the middle, and often the upper-middle, class. Many of these employees of American corporations make enough money to send their kids to private schools, a freedom that would never be allowed in Castro's brutal society.
More importantly than the different nature of trade with China, though, is the simple geographic fact that Cuba is a stone's throw away from our shores. Our foreign policy has always recognized a distinction between the Western and Eastern Hemispheres. Reagan began the push for freedom in Latin America as a move to enhance our national security. Normal trading with Castro, in fact, would be an exception from our policy toward thugs in Latin America.
Nesting 90 miles off the coast of Florida with a seething hatred for America, Castro is not just another tyrant. He's the only living dictator who tried to get the Soviet Union to nuke the United States. Now Castro's developing at least the capability for biological weapons, and he's got the right connections with rogue states to cause us migraine headaches.
Fortunately, the White House fully appreciates the threat posed by engaging Castro. Bush has pledged to veto any bill that would bolster the communist dictatorship, and his new initiative to engage the Cuban people is already finding favor on Capitol Hill. To be sure, Bush is fighting an uphill struggle against the CSG, but in the end, moral clarity should carry the day — even in a place like Congress.
— Joel Mowbray is a columnist for Townhall.com.
All this really means is that the Communists have adapted to augment their income with trade from the west ... so they can continue indefinitely.
They are still a communist led, one party nation. A totalitarian government.
I believe that our current "engagement" policy with the PRC will prolong their totalitarianism rather than end it. Now they have source for wealth and finance that doesn't run dry and they are using it for ends that will prove dangerous and destructive to our national interest. We should approach them as Reagan did the Soviets IMHO.
Dragon's Fury - Breath of Fire
FRegards.
I would assume that this propagandist believes that allowing mail to be sent to and from Cuba as 'engaging the despot'.
Of course China is 1,000 times more sinister and more dangerous than Cuba. Cuba is under embargo because there's a bunch of very noisy hyphenateds in Florida who are still dreaming about intalling their own corrupt regime to replace Castro's.
If everyone thinks the embargo against Cuba is justified because they are a communist country, and not just because of political lobbying by the anti-castro groups, fine I agree with that but let's embargo ALL the communist countries regardless of political lobbies and corporate interests.
They are still a communist led, one party nation. A totalitarian government.
Bump!
The current CCP is no different than the old feudalistic powers of old. "Communist" is only part of it.
The CCP has its realm, and it started by telling everyone how great communism was. Then the people got sick of their great ideas. Then the CCP, in a bid to save their own necks, started a new ideology.
Emperors of old told the people that they had tian ming, communist started their reign under the guise of a communist powerhouse. Now they are trying to gain world superpower status through economics while maintaining their hold on power. The fundamentals of "zhong guo" thinking have yet to change. Its a huge lust for power with an emperial power of some sorts at the center with an ideology propping him/it up.
In the end it all boils down to controlling the mind, and having an ideological reason to support the party. The system has not changed in 2,000 years. It is fundamentally the same now, as it was in any other time in history. A dynasty is what they are. A dynasty that will mow down any competition that gets in the way.
The US threatens their power because our system provides a strong second opinion about theirs...not to mention that we 'step on their sphere of influence'.
I believe that our current "engagement" policy with the PRC will prolong their totalitarianism rather than end it.
While I agree, I have to say, it depends on who is running the engagement, and what kind of engagement there is. In other words, strategic engagement, if it is aggressive enough, is far better than 'China is our old buddy so lets go play ping pong while we buy your cheap exports'...
Aggressive engagement stands a far FAR better chance, while still an extreme long shot, of actually changing the system
Patty caking around only does exactly what you said it does... extends the length of time of the problem.
What we need is an aggressive policy similr to what Reagan used on the Soviet Union. ... "Change, or we do no business with you, and the change must be substanative and verifiable ... or, we'll let you bankrupt yourself trying to keep up with us."
What we are doing now is selling out a major portion of our own production capablility in so many areas ... hoping that somehow translates into "liberty" for the masses hile making a neat profit off the cheap labor. It will not turn into "liberty" and the profits will be fleating IMHO. I have been to that part of the world on numerous occassions as an engineeering consultant and what it is translating into is more power, influence and more fuel to the ambitions of those who hold abject power. One day we will wake up and all of that will be theirs and unavailable to us. And unless we change, it will occdur on a timetable completely of their chosing and totally to their benefit.
FRegards.
We could have gotten rid of Castro if we really wanted, but we don't. He is more convenient as a red cape to distract the bulls. Castro has been in power during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations. None of these guys could get him? Please.
Side note. The Miami Cubans are nuts. They are irrational. They throw hissy fits en masse at the drop of a button, and they have dreams of returning a Batista style government to Cuba.
The reason that Castro was able to seize and keep power is because of the abuses committed by Batista and his followers. Cuba was a country run by the mob. I am so glad that Castro has held on long enough that the original gangsters that fled Cuba are either dead or too old to do much harm when communism falls in Cuba.
There will be a democratic Cuba, and it will piss off the Miami crowd to no end.
They have built this strength by supporting unlimited Cuban emigration to the US and by supporting the right of Cubans here to violate the embargo by sending dollars and goods to the island.
They have a perfect right to take these stands of course, but we should be aware that both policies have not weakend Castro's grip - indeed they have had the exact opposite effect.
1998 Montes (Later determined to be a spy for Cuba) tagged along with two senior aides to Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) on a trip to Cuba; Helms was at that time the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and one of the most vehement opponents of Cuba’s leftist government.
May 1998 Secretary of Defense William Cohen testified in Congress that Cuba possesses advanced biotechnology and is capable of mass-producing agents for biological warfare.
May 13, 1999 An incident recorded by the Federal Communications Commission in which Cuban electronic-warfare specialists penetrated New York's air-traffic-control system by simulating U.S. Air Force flight codes. The signals, which seriously threatened to disrupt air traffic, were traced to a 1,500 kilowatt transmitter operating west of Havana. (The Chinese have also established for themselves a sophisticated network of electronic espionage in Cuba to be used against the U.S. The bases are operating under the cover of Radio China short wave transmissions to Latin America and the U.S. Their principal bases are at Bejucal and near Havana. They are capable of interfering with U.S. air traffic control, according to the FCC. On the 13th of May at 4:48 p.m., the Chinese sent a communication to the air traffic control in New York, falsely identifying themselves as OPEC21, a U.S. Military C130 plane. )
Sept 12, 1998: Ten people allegedly operating as a Cuban spy ring "have been arrested and accused of collecting information on U.S. military installations and anti-Castro groups in Florida, federal officials announced today. The arrests, carried out Saturday [12 Sep. 1998], ended the most extensive espionage effort involving Cuban agents ever uncovered here, U.S. Attorney Thomas E. Scott said."
December 23, 1998, three Cuban diplomats at the United Nations were ordered to leave the United States. "The three men were linked to espionage after an investigation by the FBI that led to the arrest and indictment of 10 suspected Cuban agents in Miami three months ago. The three men in New York have diplomatic passports, which give them immunity from prosecution as spies."
Feb 2000: Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) official Mariano Faget, charged in February 2000; he was subsequently convicted of using classified information for business purposes, a technical violation of the U.S. Espionage Act, and was sentenced to five years in jail As of this time he was the highest ranking Cuban spy known to operate in the US. March 2000, Amarylis Silverio Santos and her husband, Joseph Santos, along with several (14?) others of the group, pleaded guilty to "charges of acting as unregistered agents of a foreign government." John Elvin, "Jail Time for Cuban Spies," Insight on the News, 6 Mar. 2000.
May 2000: Castro visits Iran
August 2000: Three Afghani nationals and suspected al-Qaeda members caught trying to deposit $2 million in a bank in the Cayman Islands were found to have entered the British colony on a commercial flight from nearby Cuba using false Pakistani passports.
May 10, 2001: Agence France-Presse reported that Castro, in an apocalyptic speech, told his Muslim audience in Iran: "America is weak. I have studied its weaknesses from very close by. I tell you, the imperialist king will finally fall."
May 25, 2001: The U.S. says that agents copied incriminating material from a computer in (Cuban spy) Montes’ home.
August 31, 2001: George and Marisol Gari were arrested and charged with "conspiracy to act as agents of a foreign government without proper identification or notice to the attorney general." U.S. authorities say that they were members of "the largest Cuban spy ring ever detected,... 'La Red Avispa,' or the Wasp Network, five members of whom were convicted in June of conspiring to spy on the United States for Fidel Castro's regime."
Sept 11, 2001: Castro was ordering a military alert in Cuba and calling up reserves.
6:30 p.m. on Sept. 14, 2001: Ana Belen Montes, a senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), walked into a public telephone booth outside Washington's National Zoo and made two calls to pager numbers later traced by federal agents to Cuba's Directorate of General Intelligence (DGI). She already had compromised the identities of CIA agents, revealed U.S. military secrets and exposed the contents of classified files. But, as Montes sent repeated signals to her DGI handlers during the days immediately following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the twin towers of the World Trade Center, the FBI was given orders to act.
Sept 21, 2001: Ana Belen Montes arrested
October 19, 2001: Putin announces that Russia will close its listening post at Lourdes, near Havana, Cuba- just hours before the APEC meeting in Shanhai which Bush would attend.
Cuba also has some interesting relationships with several terrorist groups, notably FARC.
I never said Cuba was a saint, the comparison here was between Cuba and China with us having an embargo against Cuba but an open arms policy with China....my point being what's good for one should be good for the other unless hypocricy is the order of the day.
In a detailed report in the Communist Party newspaper Granma, the men were identified as Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert, a flight instructor; Ramon Labanino Salazar, an economist by training; Fernando Gonzalez Llort, a graduate of the International Relations Institute; Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, a civil engineer and expert on airfield construction; and Gerardo Hernandez Nordelo, also an International Relations Institute graduate.
We had already heard one of the earlier spies caught had tried to obtain work at Lockheed. But this guy is a different agent. So one of the latest Cuban spies from the Wasp network was a flight instructor. He was assigned down here in Florida. Have either of you heard of that, and do you know where he worked and if it was in an area near Atta and friends' known haunts?
Should be May 2001
And further info on the Afghans that were detained in the Cayman Islands in 2001 prior to Sept 11:
Mohammed Raza Hassani, Nez Nezar Nezary, and Ali Sha Yusufi-three Afghan men were detained in the Cayman Islands. They carried fake Pakistani passports and claimed to have gotten off a boat bound for Canada from Turkey. The police commissioner, however, determined that they actually had arrived by plane from Cuba.
Well stated.
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