Media reaction to President
Last
Wednesday, October 24, President Bush gave a 30 minute speech related
to Cuba at the State Department. Surrounded by many of the usual
suspects and a number of family members of jailed Cuban dissidents he
had flown in for the event, Bush went on to rail against the Cuban
government and the brothers Castro. The reaction received from a
number of major newspapers from around the country has been anything
but favorable. Progreso Weekly has gathered some of these articles
and editorials and reproduces some interesting excerpts for its
readers.
Keeping
up the hard line on Cuba
By
Tim Padgett
From
TIME magazine — Oct. 26, 2007
Few
would argue that democracy and human rights are as rare in Cuba as
meat and modern appliances. That was duly underscored on Wednesday
when President Bush invited the relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents
to the State Department for his first policy speech on Cuba in four
years. But any expectation of a major policy shift was dissipated
after listening to the President. Bush simply gussied up some of the
same old bromides — "The socialist paradise is a tropical
gulag" — that have marked U.S.-Cuban relations for decades […]
[…] As
a result, critics of Bush’s Cuba policy argue his address simply
helped preserve rather than undermine Cuba’s nebulous status quo. And
they’re urging Washington again to consider stepped up contact with
Raul Castro — widely regarded as more pragmatically flexible than
Fidel — as a more effective means of jump-starting a democratic
transition.
"President
Bush is right when he says this is a unique moment in Cuba, but he’s
missing that moment," says Jake Colvin, director of USA Engage
in Washington, which favors moves like lifting the ban on U.S. travel
to Cuba — something even most Cuban-Americans in Miami now favor,
and which many Cuba watchers suggest the Castros actually fear […]
Argues Colvin, "American citizens have always proven the best
ambassadors of freedom and democracy."
Bush may
also be alienating the very people he is reaching out to by
suggesting Washington will be Cuba’s post-Castro arbiter. In the eyes
of ordinary Cuban citizens, that is perceived as surrogacy for the
Miami Cuban exile community — whose anti-Castro hardliners, with
their dreams of resurrecting a pre-Castro Cuba, are as disliked by
many Cubans on the island as the Castros themselves are […]
**** ****
A
new course for Cuba policy
We’ve
lifted trade and travel embargoes on China and Vietnam; why should
Havana be different?
Los
Angeles Times editorial of Oct. 26, 2007.
Name
three countries that still have highly repressive communist regimes
and lousy human rights records. All three have had bitter political
and military conflicts with the United States within living memory.
One has weapons of mass destruction and is also engaged in a major
military buildup. The U.S. has normalized political and trade
relations with two of the three, on the theory that integrating these
nations into the global economy will at least moderate and at best
undermine their regimes and push them gradually toward democracy.
What distinguishes the third country, which poses no military threat
to the U.S. but remains subject to harsh political and economic
sanctions?
The countries are China and Vietnam, which the United
States recognized in 1979 and 1995, respectively, and Cuba, still an
archvillain in Washington’s eyes […]
[…] But in a major speech
this week, President Bush attempted to put his stamp on U.S.-Cuba
policy through the end of his presidency and beyond with a defiant
embrace of the spectacularly unsuccessful U.S. policies of the past.
[…] He declared the transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his
brother, Raul, unacceptable to the United States […]
This
last assertion deserves more scrutiny. Why does the theory of
economic engagement apply to China and Vietnam but not to Cuba? […]
[…]
Bush may be too unimaginative to try a new policy toward Cuba, but
the next president shouldn’t be. For starters, the U.S. should allow
Americans to travel freely to Cuba, as the only reliable way to
circumvent Castro’s information blockade … The indiscriminate U.S.
embargo, however, only hurts the Cuban poor. Worse, it gives the
Castro brothers a convenient Yanqui
scapegoat for the economic mismanagement and misery they have
inflicted on their people.
**** ****
Editorial
from the Baltimore Sun of October 25, 2007.
When
President Bush suggests, as he did yesterday, that the Cuban people
should rise up against their despotic leader, he conveniently ignores
the fact that U.S. policy toward Cuba has done little to spur a
revolt. Decades of isolation — and his administration’s toughening
of the policy — haven’t lessened Fidel Castro’s hold on power or
diminished the influence of his
brother Raul, now serving as the
de facto president since Mr. Castro took ill a year ago.
Indeed,
the only Cubans who have benefited from U.S. policy are the thousands
of refugees who are given a free pass to live here.
Mr. Bush’s
speech at the State Department was aimed at personalizing the plight
of the Cuban people, and it was his first public response to the
transition of power under way there. But it was no more than the same
tough talk in support of the economic embargo against Havana,
promotion of democracy efforts in the country, and a pitch to the
international community
to stand with the U.S. against the Castro
regime […]
[…] The next White House can’t continue to ignore
the leadership in Havana, even if the votes of Cuban-Americans depend
on just such a myopic course.
To simply tweak the present policy
would be a mistake for the United States and its interests in the
region — and an affront to the Cuban people.
**** ****
Bush’s
hardline Cuba policy buys Castro more time
By
James Klurfeld
From
Newsday (N.Y.), October 26, 2007
OK, we
all understand what President George W. Bush was really up to in the
speech he gave on Wednesday about Cuba.
In asserting that Cuba
would have to change its government before the United States would
end its decades-long economic embargo of the island, he was really
saying: We are about to enter a presidential election year, and
Cuban-Americans who continue to favor a hard-line U.S. approach are
an important voting bloc in a swing state like Florida.
But that
doesn’t mean that Bush’s policy makes any sense. It doesn’t. In fact,
his policy doesn’t make any more sense now than the policy of
isolation followed for the past 40-plus years by both Democratic and
Republican regimes. And there are at least some indications that even
some in the Cuban-American community are beginning to realize that a
policy of active engagement, of allowing U.S. citizens to visit Cuba
— not to mention opening trade and cultural relations — might well
have more impact on forcing change in Cuba than the stale, old policy
of isolation […]
