Posted on 07/24/2002 3:16:44 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the third time in as many years, the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday defied White House veto threats and supported lifting the four-decades-old ban on Americans traveling to Cuba.
The House voted 262-167 to lift the travel restrictions as it debated an $18.5 billion bill funding the U.S. Treasury and general government operations in the next fiscal year. It is expected to pass the spending bill sometime on Wednesday.
In the past, the Cuba travel effort has failed in the Senate. This year, however, the Senate also is moving to lift the ban, setting up a clash with President Bush.
The White House last week threatened to veto any change in U.S. policy toward Cuba, accusing Congress of providing "a helping hand to a desperate and repressive regime."
But proponents of ending the travel ban say it infringes on U.S. citizens' constitutional right to travel freely and has demonstrably failed to weaken the grip of President Fidel Castro on the Caribbean island nation.
"For 42 years we've had the same, failed policy," said Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake, the chief House sponsor of the effort. "And the question occurs: after 42 years isn't it about time to decide maybe we need a change here?"
House Republican leaders and the influential U.S. Cuban exile community staunchly oppose the move, arguing that the ban should be lifted only once Castro releases political prisoners and returns fugitives from U.S. justice.
AID TO CUBANS OR CASTRO?
"Any revenue from increased travel or trade will go to support Castro's regime, and the Cuban people will continue to live lives of oppression and poverty," said New Jersey Republican Rep. Chris Smith.
House leaders sought to outflank the vote on the travel ban by trying to add a proviso that it could only be lifted if Bush certified Cuba was not developing biological weapons or aiding terrorists -- but the move was rejected by the House.
Currently, U.S. citizens must get a license from the U.S. Treasury to travel to Cuba, and those are generally limited to Cuban-Americans visiting family, journalists, academics, government officials and groups on humanitarian missions.
But Americans are increasingly finding ways to reach Cuba anyway by traveling through third countries, with an estimated 176,000 visiting the island in 2001. The House action would cut the funds the Treasury uses to enforce the ban.
The House, as it did last year, also rejected a bid to lift the full U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, voting 226 to 204 against the broader move.
But it did back amendments to loosen rules limiting the amount of money U.S.-based Cubans can remit to relatives on the island each year, and to make it easier for U.S. farmers to take advantage of an earlier easing of curbs on food sales.
Don't be rude. The girl does have a name, you know.
I do believe you're asking the wrong question. I'm not an American, so you'll forgive me, but I think the real question is "How does this help Cubans?" and "How does this help the freedom and democracy in Cuba?" instead of "What's in it for the US?"
No, the appropriate question is "What's in it for the US?"
If you want your country to do what's best for other countries instead of what's best for itself, well, that's your business. But as far as you dictating what's right for my country, I'll be polite and suggest you GFYS.
In the middle of the war against terrorism, American legislators are betraying their own country and supporting a terrorist state at 90 miles from our shores. SHAME ON THEM!
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.***
If it eventually comes to open Cuba tourism, I think the openness should be used as a way to undermine them in every way we can, bring in anti-Cuba propaganda. The flip side is that American tourists would be contributing to the funding of that communist regime in one of the few lucrative areas they have: cigars, rum, tourism, prostitution, joy rides in 1950s cars, etc., etc. But I doubt the tourist ban will be lifted, so it is entirely academic at this point I suppose.....
Are Americans the only people able to carry and transmit the virus of democracy? Castro has a very effective and proven vaccine against that virus, the “paredon” and the Cuban infamous political prisons. An apartheid system in Cuba is brutally enforced to avoid contacts between tourists and the Cuban people. Furthermore, Castro’s intelligence services have been proven to be on par with the Israeli’s Mossad, and his repressive apparatus is as brutal as Stalin’s. For years Castro’s spies have moved freely inside our government, including the Pentagon, and Castro’s alliance with the “Axis of Evil” is well recognized as being one of the main country sponsors of international terrorism by the State Department
Just this week the European Union denied granting Cuba any economic help due to their dismal human rights records and lack of democracy. Now, when all those countries that were foolish enough to deal with Castro, after sustaining huge losses and realizing their idiocy, decided to stop bankrolling the Cuban regimen, a group of “useful idiots” in the Senate and the Congress, jumped to the rescue of the Cuban terrorist tyrant.
AMERICANS DON’T ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE FOOLED BY UNSCRUPULOUS POLITICIANS!
OPPOSE THOSE WHO WANT TO SEND YOUR HARD EARNED MONEY TO HELP KEEP IN POWER THE CUBAN TYRANT!
Washington Times | Tuesday, July 23, 2002 | Christopher Cox and Lincoln Diaz-Balart
As we approach the first anniversary of September 11, we can take comfort that the entire civilized world has joined in condemning the terrorism in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Nowhere has this support been stronger than in our own hemisphere, where the leaders of every nation have joined our fight — all except one.
The Castro regime does not support the war on terrorism. According to Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill in an extraordinary joint letter to Congress:
"The Cuban government has refused to cooperate with the global coalition's efforts to combat terrorism, refusing to provide information about al Qaeda. On June 8, 2002, [Fidel] Castro compared the U.S. campaign against terrorism with Hitler's Third Reich. Castro said, 'What is the difference between [America´s anti-terrorism] philosophy and those of the Nazis?' "
It doesn't end there. Cuba is working with Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to undermine America. In a meeting with Mr. Khamenei last year, Mr. Castro said that, in cooperation with each other, Iran and Cuba can destroy America. He added that "the United States regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."
Senior State Department officials have discussed publicly the threat of Cuba's bioterrorism program. As we rush to protect our citizens from smallpox and anthrax, Mr. Castro is diverting the resources of his desperately poor economy to offensive biological-warfare research and development, and selling biotechnology to other rogue states. "We are concerned that such technology could support bioweapons programs in those states," says John Bolton, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.
Even more than with al Qaeda terrorists based in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Somalia, Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States offers Mr. Castro's agents opportunities to infiltrate and gain access to U.S. territory and our critical infrastructure. In this connection, the current regulations on U.S.-Cuba travel are a crucial tool for law enforcement to prevent the use of bioweapons against the American people.
This week, Congress will vote on legislation to lift aspects of the embargo on Cuba. Doing so at this time would be a grave mistake. The theory of the legislation is that more travel and trade with Cuba will liberalize the regime — but in reality, virtually all of the money that Americans might spend in Cuba will go to the government. Worse, a significant expansion of human traffic between our nation and Cuba would hopelessly complicate the job of Customs, the FBI and counter-terrorism officials who are trying to protect against the smuggling of weapons of mass destruction into the United States.
Because all investment in Cuba must flow through Cuba's government, any easing of the current embargo will directly subsidize Mr. Castro's biological weapons program. Consider this: Every employee hired for a new hotel will be selected by the Cuban government, which will bill the hotel in U.S. dollars. The government will pay the employee in Cuban pesos — keep 100 percent of the dollars for itself — and keep 98 percent of the value of the employee's labor.
More is at stake than preventing terrorism. The advancement of human rights and democracy in Cuba depends upon U.S. constancy. Other countries have lifted their bans on Cuba travel and trade, with no effect on Mr. Castro's behavior. The repression of the Cuban people has continued unabated, despite significant foreign tourism. But Mr. Castro has an industry with which he has been able to stay afloat.
According to the State Department's most recent report, Cuba continues to "violate systematically the fundamental civil and political rights of its citizens. . . . Members of the security forces and prison officials continued to beat and otherwise abuse detainees and prisoners, including human rights activists." The Cuban dictatorship actively suppresses all opposition and dissent by the Cuban people — using undercover agents, informers, rapid response brigades, so-called "Committees for the Defense of the Revolution," surveillance, phone tapping, intimidation, defamation, arbitrary detention, house arrest, arbitrary searches, evictions, travel restrictions, politically motivated dismissals from employment and forced exile.
President Bush has wisely determined that lifting any aspect of the embargo is dependent upon Mr. Castro's beginning to change these practices. On May 20, the president declared America's clear policy goal: a free Cuba, achieved through a democratic transition. This must begin with the release of all political prisoners, the legalization of all political parties, the press and labor unions, and the scheduling of free, internationally supervised elections.
The embargo — and the promise of lifting it — provides the necessary leverage for the president to achieve these objectives. If Congress were to give Mr. Castro the trade and tourism dollars he seeks now, without any reform in exchange, we would simultaneously undermine U.S. policy and subsidize our hemisphere's most notorious state sponsor of terrorism.
Mr. Castro would use any easing of the embargo to redouble his efforts to undermine America, and to tighten his grip over the Cuban people — but we must not give him that chance. As we continue to wage the war against terrorism, now is the time to fully support Mr. Bush by giving him the tools he needs to win.
Rep. Christopher Cox, California Republican, is chairman of the House Policy Committee. Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Florida Republican, is chairman of the House Policy Subcommittee on the Americas.
Exactly! Everyone I've known who has visited Cuba recently comes back totally against Castro. I know Germans who have gone to fancy hotels for vacation, and hated it bgecause the Cuban people have none of the advantages hotel guests have. I know liberal Seattleites who went a couple of years ago and changed their tune about Castro. I know a communist who extolled Castro to the max and visibly blanched when I said I'd been to Cuba....he didn't want me to see what communism was really like.
Having Americans visit Cuba gives Cubans a chance to talk to us. They're pitifully eager to do so! They know Castro has been lying about us all along. It isn't the same when Americans visit on official tours, which are 100% controlled by the Cuban tourist regime. You have to wander around and poke into places, talk to people. The net-net, IMO, is a big win for Democracy and a slap in the face to Castro. Naturally, there will be those Ugly American sex tourists, just as there are ugly Italians, Germans, etc., but I truly believe that most Americans who would want to go to Cuba would be good people curious about the place. They can do the Cuban people a world of good.
Absolutely not true. Any tourist is free to wander around and talk to everyone. Some Cubans look over their shoulders and want to talk in private places where you cannot be overheard, even by just walking down the street together, but they most certainly want to talk. In fact, when they find out you're an American, they come rushing up to you! 40 years of anti-American propaganda has not convinced them that we're their enemy. I know this from personal recent experience. I've never been to a place where people were more delighted to meet real live Americans! We were invited to many homes, they brought their friends to meet us. Sometimes we passed the government snitch on the way upstairs...there's one on every block at least. But that didn't stop the Cuban people from extending their hospitality. And I mean ordinary people, not commie elitists.
Or vice versa? All travel bans between the two countries should be lifted today. But one will come first--and lead to the other.
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