Time to End the Cuba Embargo

Much is being made today of Charlie Crist's supposed reversal of his stance on Cuban travel restrictions. While I am never one miss a chance to beat up the governor for a flip-flop, the shift reported by the Miami Herald seems but a mild softening of position. But however gradual, I think it is telling a Senate candidate in Florida would consider liberalizing his stance on Cuba, and perhaps is a sign the nation may finally move past an antiquated foreign policy.

Now is the time to discuss ending the embargo on Cuba. But it may come slower than I and many other would like. It is a stance Crist has yet to entertain. His shift yesterday put him in line with Democrat Kendrick Meek. The two only support allowing Cuban-Americans greater ability to visit loved ones in Cuba, backing the Obama Administration's position to allow annual visits as opposed to the Bush policy of visits every three years. Republican Marco Rubio, who is Cuban-American, maintains a harder line on travel policy, telling Human Events last year he thinks lighter restrictions threaten the exile status of Cubans. Obviously, there are very academic parts of this debate, but the fact these minor differences among the candidates constitute major foreign policy debate in Florida, and a minor shift in the position of an independent candidate makes headlines statewide, shows something about how extreme this issue has played out in Florida.

But I have never believed Floridians as a whole care so much about keeping an embargo on Cuba, much less limiting the amount of time native Cubans spend there. Indeed, living through the Elian Gonzalez fiasco a decade ago, it seemed most conservatives in the state dislike the policies we have regarding the refugee status granted to Cubans who flee the country and reach dry land. Nearly every conservative I knew at the time was frustrated at national Republican leadership for fighting Juan Miguel Gonzalez Quintana's attempts to have his child returned to Cuba, both because it seemed a family matter undeserving of government interference and because the treatment was entirely different from the stance taken by conservatives regarding immigrants coming into the country illegally from Haiti or Mexico.

On any given Sunday, most Floridians are not thinking about Cuba. If asked, they probably have an opinion of "wet foot-dry foot," but it won't dictate how they vote. The only population where it matters a great deal is within the Cuban-American community, and while they typically make up around 2 percent of the vote statewide, the bloc is critical enough to affect the policies of politicians in both parties. Remember that most of the liberal Democrats Florida sends to Congress are from South Florida. And if you represent Miami or Fort Lauderdale, Cubanos make up a much larger section of the electorate. For the same reason these pols are very supportive of Israel, they usually hold a hard line on Cuba. And since Florida is typically a swing state in presidential elections, the President, regardless of party, also holds this small bloc of Florida voters in disproportionate regard.

And on the issue of Cuban relations, the community acts fairly unilaterally, regardless of other positions. While the Cubans who grew up in the wake of the Bay of Pigs disaster became reliably Republican, those coming up in Florida's ranks today are more politically diverse. For every bright Rubio on the right, there is an Alex Penelas rising within the Democratic ranks.

But while Penelas is a strong liberal, his Cuban policies are to the far right. Going back to the Elian affair, Penelas felt so strongly Gonzalez should be kept in the United States that he openly criticized the Clinton White House, possibly costing Al Gore the election that year. He wouldn't back off his positions five years later when he was running for the Senate himself, and it quite possibly cost him the Democratic nomination. After Al Gore laid out frustrations regarding the Miami Mayor, it pretty much ended Penelas' once-hopeful run in 2004. That would not have happened had most Florida Democrats supported a hard-line stance on Cuba.

So most Florida conservatives dislike the refugee policies regarding Cuban exiles. And many liberals dislike the notion of an Embargo. Will some politician of high regard please stand up and show the courage to call for change?

The American embargo on Cuba, initiated in 1962, is a relic from the missile crisis during the Kennedy administration is out-dated and absurd. It was originally built on Cuba's connections to the now-defunct Soviet Union, but has now outlived the USSR by decades. It has probably done more economic devastation to Cuba than Fidel Castro and communist rule ever could. Restrictions have eased in some ways, as American companies can at least sell food and medical supplies to Cuba now, but a report by Amnesty International shows the embargo is still severely damaging the access of Cuban citizens to proper pharmaceutical goods and medical technology, and is hampering access to clean water and reliable electricity. In 2007, more than a third of children in the country suffered from iron deficiencies, a direct result to poor access to nutrition.

Cuba is an island nation, one which must rely on international trade if it is ever to prosper regardless of the government in place. The U.S. policy has always worked on the assumption the Cuban people would eventually lead an uprising against the tyrannical Castro regime, but the result of the embargo has been more Cubans fleeing the country. The have no power to rebel, no ability to stay and fight. Combined with almost nonsensical positions on the rights of Cubans who arrive on our shore (wet-foot dry-foot is as arbitrary a foreign policy we have regarding most any issue), we have a situation which neither benefits the American people nor encourages change in Cuba.

Fidel Castro will spend the rest of his days in withering away in an undisclosed location, having given up his seat of power to brother Raul nearly four years ago. That should have prompted change, but pundits immediately began the chant that Raul is as bad as Fidel. Regardless, no change in economic conditions or political empowerment will ever come from a policy that places a political bubble over the island of Cuba and effectively freezes the island in time in the year 1962. State-run media continues to dominate the forming of public opinion within Cuba, and that will not change as long as limitations on contact with the outside world are enforced by the United States.

And the reason this continues is because politicians refuse to flour the will of a small section of voters in Florida. If a Senate candidate decided to take a truly bold stand on modernizing relations with Cuba, it could mean both an economic surge for businesses within the state of Florida and a human rights improvement for the people of Cuba. If anyone had the courage to take such a stance, I believe the broader population of the state of Florida, regardless of party loyalty or general political persuasion, would applaud.