Hypocrisy on Cuban Policy

Whenever any change in U.S. Policy is considered regarding Cuba, we as a nation must endure the same hypocritical moralizing from extremists. Castro is a terrible ruler. The Castros treat political prisoners badly. We can't appease a corrupt regime.

A round of such inanity was fired this week because President Obama was easing travel restrictions for Americans who want to go to Cuba. This is no bold move, mind you. There is still an embargo on Cuba. We still apply the bizarre wet foot-dry-foot policy for refugees. But now certain organized and authorized missionary and school groups, in licensed charter flights, can travel there, and non-family members can send $500 remittances to people there.

This has been labeled by Fox News as a slap in the face of political prisoners, by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as an undermining of foreign policy and security objectives and by Sen. Marco Rubio as an "unthinkable" enrichment of a totalitarian regime.

Now, let me make clear I do not think Cuba is better off for the fact Fidel Castro was ever born. The accusations against him, while typically relayed in a histrionic fashion, are true. The regime has historically been intolerant of dissent and has done more to disempower people living on the island than it has ever done to empower them.

So why do I find such objections regarding Obama's policies so offensive? Because so little regard is shown with similar despots around the world.

Ros-Lehtinen, now the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, proudly boasted her her credential as a hawk to the St. Petersburg Times, and noted her relentless support of Israel, a nation hated everywhere but America for its ethnic segregation policies and unapologetic smothering of dissenting voices. She has also continued to support propping up a corrupt administration in Afghanistan.

Rubio, while far newer to the foreign policy debate in Washington, just returned from a trip to Afghanistan where he said supporting the regime there was a top priority so that denizens don't see the "bad guys" back in power. As if the drug-peddling, vote-rigging administration of Hamid Karzai is the pinnacle of good leadership. On the campaign trail last year, he suggested America wasn't propping Israel up enough.

It is amazing to me that fiscal conservatives would want America acting as policeman for every wicked regime in the world, but if that is the stand they want to take fine. That said, you cannot scream full-throated about the evils of the Castro regime while propping up governments who are far more corrupt and guilty of more heinous human right violations.

And then there is America's alleged ongoing abuse of its foreign prisoners. In Cuba.

Rubio opposes using the American court process to bring those prisoners to justice and favors military tribunals conducted in a country where American civilians aren't allowed to travel. Ros-Lehtinen went further last year and said the administration it was a waste of taxpayer dollars to provide human treatment to Guantanamo prisoners. "It is time for the president to focus on the security and economic needs of the American people, rather than on the needs of those dangerous extremists who seek to do us harm," she said in a statement last February.

Every politician says the endgame of the Cuban embargo is to force Cuba to be a humane regime, yet they support policies which are inhumane on their face, both for our more questionable allies abroad and for our own military if the mood fits. Even though the Raul Castro regime has been far less onerous than Fidel, the rhetoric of American politicians hasn't changed at all.

If we truly want to end such practices in Cuba, we should start with our own actions there.

WikiLeaks Offers Info on Cuba

All the WikiLeaks attention so far has been on Afghanistan, but apparently there is some serious information about Cuba in the dump as well. The Miami Herald, relying heavily on Spain's El Pais, reports that Raul Castro apparently wanted to open secret talks in 2009, but that the administration seems more interested in waiting the Castro regime out and dealing with the next generation of Cubans.

Sadly, this likely means the administration is satisfied with the status quo regardless of any actions Raul Castro is willing to take, but it also shows an envisioned future of open relations with Cuba.

But the most important part of the glimpse at the cables is understanding the realistic philosophies regarding Cuban relations. As I have noted before, the political posturing around Cuba has always been far to catered for extremists within a politically-active population of Castro-haters in South Florida.

The cables seem to show the biggest motivation for limiting communication channels between the White House and the Castros is that the ruling family is becoming increasingly irrelevant within Cuba. That is valuable information, apparently based on ground assessments and revelations that the younger blogger class on the island is increasing filled with dissent. While I personally wish the State department would more earnestly begin good faith talks about ending the embargo, there does seem to be interest in changing the status quo. That seemed to be upheld by further reporting beyond the WikiLeaks dump.

From the Herald:
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State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Thursday that U.S. and Cuban diplomats are in touch routinely, but ``a broader, higher-level dialogue . . . will only be feasible once we see real change in Cuba. . . . We have not seen anything approaching fundamental change.''

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/17/1977391/cuba-sought-secret-channel-to.html#ixzz18OM96txz
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Crowley, by the end of his statement, falls back onto the stick-in-the-mud rhetoric that every White House since Kennedy has chosen to adopt, but his words are not inconsistent with cables which suggest that "real change" may be on its way within the population of regular Cubans rather than the ruling class.

The documents seem to indicate an irritation on the part of the administration that rulers in Cuba only want to open U.S. talks so that U.S. aid can start coming to the island. This is the first time such a frank assessment has come to public light, and while it seems a bit petty, it also offers a genuine justification for the diplomatic recalcitrance that the administration has held onto.

The cables also indicate that the message mostly likely to spur change within Cuba is not a promise of improvements on the human rights front, the main focus of Cuban dissidents in the U.S., but on the opportunities for personal prosperity which come with open travel and communication with the outside world. Turns out they aren't that different from normal Americans, and are most easily wooed with a chance to get rich quick.

I would like to see what Marco Rubio, Mario Diaz-Balart, David Rivera and Bill Nelson have to say about these cables. I hope this leads to something constructive. It may lead to more brutish political statements intended to appease our own older generation Cuban critics. But I hope the revelations made public in these cables encourages a more honest conversation on how to move forward with Cuba.

Rubio's Betrayal of Hispanics

It must be tough being a minority politician and, at the same time, a darling of a movement built on hate. Apparently, Marco Rubio is having as much trouble taking a stance on hating brown people in Florida as he did about hating brown people in Arizona. This tea party crusader lacks the leadership to stand up to race-baiting within his own party, and as bigotry drives more of the political conversation in the Sunshine State, it would be nice for this supposed ideological leader to stand up for something on his own.

The problems increased for Rubio this week when Bill McCollum, in his own rush to out-crazy a crazy, came out with an Arizona-like proposal to discriminate against Hispanics. This law will give police power during "lawful stops" to demand people prove their legal immigration status. I'm sure white people like myself are busy getting their paperwork in order and making room in the glove compartment.

Rubio, though, can't tell this is a bad idea. His campaign declined to take a stance when asked by Politico. This is pure cowardice, and is worse than his queasy back-and-forth regarding Arizona's law because this will actually affect his constituents should he be elected as a U.S. Senator. I've noted his fearful cowering in the face of tea party anger before, but this bill has particularly horrible ramifications in Florida. And for a man so proud to tout his Cuban-American heritage, I would hope he could see the specific ways enforcement of this type of law could go much worse here than in other parts of the country.

Cuban immigrants don't work by the same rules as those crossing the border from Mexico. We have the ridiculous and arbitrary 'wet-foot, dry-foot' policy, a child of the dinosaur Cuban embargo which every Senate candidate this year ardently supports. Sigh. What that means is Cubans who make it to dry land are not illegal. Does this policy make sense? No. But more importantly in this conversation, it makes it much harder to demand a newly-arrived immigrant from Cuba to "prove" his citizenship.

The law makes no sense anyway. The Arizona law, of course, had its controversial sections tossed in court. That law practically requires discrimination, and even if some of the more onerous parts are scrubbed, it remains bad policy.

But while we can blame so-called conservatives for preventing Rubio from taking a firm stance on that law, his tea-carrying ways don't even make sense for the Republican primary in Florida. If the GOP has any long-range future in the state, it will need a foothold in the Hispanic community, and there are no guarantees that will happen. The Bush administration knew this the last time this Senate seat was up for re-election. That was part of why the White House was so happy to see Mel Martinez as their nominee. Martinez, also a Cubano, was deeply aware that the future of the Republican party was deeply dependent on future support among Hispanic voters.

Read this Martinez quote from the 2004 CNN piece linked above:

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"This community is still up for grabs. It's a big factor."

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Martinez won that Senate race in a very close contest with Democrat Betty Castor, and he can thank Hispanics for that. Bush also won Florida in 2004, and did so by increasing his share of the Hispanic vote by 7 percent, according to an analysis that year by the National Review. Bush's win was close, and Martinez's was closer, and I think it is fair to believe the presence of a candidate who would become the first Cuban-American elected to the Senate played a huge role in motivating Hispanic Republicans that year.

That National Review report notes that Florida traditionally has boasted the most conservative Hispanic population in the country, thanks largely to the Republican bent of Cubans in South Florida. So why would Rubio, the Cubano conservative hero chosen to follow in Martinez's footsteps, be so unconcerned about preserving that base support? It is, quite simply, insane.

Of course, one constant misperception about the Hispanic vote in Florida is that it is all Cuban, and all conservative. A Pew analysis of Florida's vote in 2008 shows Hispanic Democrats outnumber Hispanic Republicans in the state both in registration and at the polls. Pew also finds that Cubans make up just the third-largest share of the Hispanic electorate, behind Mexicans and Puerto Ricans.

Rubio ought to think about that as he excoriates Mexicans crossing the border, and as he gets wishy-washy on a law that has most detrimentally affected law-abiding Mexicans across this country. Puerto Ricans, who are all citizens, likely won't be too excited about the consequence of this law either. At least he came down on the right side of the offensive "birthright citizenship" issue, but there is little reason for Hispanic voters to galvanize around an Hispanic candidate if he can't be trusted on Hispanic issues.

Fear of upsetting a fast-growing and influential part of the electorate, though, shouldn't be the only reason to oppose this law. It most likely can't stand legal muster, and does nothing to solve the problems of illegal immigration in the first place. As a U.S. Senator, Rubio would accomplish more in this front by helping improve the impoverished way of life in Mexico, or by helping modernize relations with Cuba. But that sort of intervention, the type that can be done without costing the lived of American or foreign lives, is an obvious no-no with the right. Hate is the only tool Republicans have left that reliably gets voters to the poll.

At some point, Rubio needs to consider with whom he has thrown his lot. These hate-mongering conservatives are the same ones who got Martinez booted as chairman of the Republican National Committee and who questioned the citizenship of Columba Bush. The only thing Rubio should be concerned about is when they will turn on him.

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.