Absurdity and tragicomedy mark U.S. policy on Cuba
By
Max J. Castro
You
think U.S. policy toward Cuba could not become more absurd. Then it
does.
Apparently,
Radio and TV Martí, the Cuba Democracy Act, the Libertad Act,
the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, and the Office of
Coordinator for Cuba Transition are not sufficient expression of U.S.
arrogance and delusion. So, last week the Bush administration
announced the appointment of a career CIA officer to the post of
“Cuba
and Venezuela mission manager” for the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence and
released a new government-funded study on ways Cuban exiles can get
their property back in case of a political change on the island.
Nearly
fifty years of futility and failure seem to have taught U.S. policy
makers nothing. By now, the core principles guiding this country’s
wrong-headed approach to Cuba appear to have taken on such a
character of dogma as to have acquired a kind of immunity from
criticism by mainstream political leaders, including the three
leading Democratic candidates for the U.S. presidency in 2008.
Instead of questioning basic assumptions, as any sane businessman or
scientist would have done under similar circumstances, these
candidates and even relatively enlightened past administrations such
as that of Bill Clinton have been content with applying small tweaks
and superficial fixes to a policy that is flawed at the foundation.
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
You
think U.S. policy toward Cuba could not become more absurd. Then it
does.
Apparently,
Radio and TV Martí, the Cuba Democracy Act, the Libertad Act,
the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, and the Office of
Coordinator for Cuba Transition are not sufficient expression of U.S.
arrogance and delusion. So, last week the Bush administration
announced the appointment of a career CIA officer to the post of
“Cuba
and Venezuela mission manager” for the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence and
released a new government-funded study on ways Cuban exiles can get
their property back in case of a political change on the island.
Nearly
fifty years of futility and failure seem to have taught U.S. policy
makers nothing. By now, the core principles guiding this country’s
wrong-headed approach to Cuba appear to have taken on such a
character of dogma as to have acquired a kind of immunity from
criticism by mainstream political leaders, including the three
leading Democratic candidates for the U.S. presidency in 2008.
Instead of questioning basic assumptions, as any sane businessman or
scientist would have done under similar circumstances, these
candidates and even relatively enlightened past administrations such
as that of Bill Clinton have been content with applying small tweaks
and superficial fixes to a policy that is flawed at the foundation.
But
trust George W. Bush to take an absurd policy — on Cuba, Iraq, or
almost any topic — and make it that much worse. But, while Bush’s
bellicose policy have brought tragedy to Iraq, in the case of Cuba
this administration’s lesser cruelties almost have a tragicomic
character.
In
the case of Iraq, bombs and bullets paved the way for proconsul
Bremer and his disastrous decisions. In the case of Cuba, the
administration resorted to naming a transition coordinator…in the
absence of a transition! The brazenness of sending a proconsul out
into the world before the tanks had started their engines or the
heads had begun to roll is such that it even drew a rare ironic
rebuke from the Secretary General of the Organization of American
States, who said: “There’s no transition, and it’s not your
country.”
The
perversity of mounting an alleged offensive against the Cuban
government on the backs of Cuban families — mothers and fathers,
sons and daughters, sisters and uncles who merely want to see their
relatives — through draconian travel restrictions is matched only by
the puerile character of the new Bush measures that have gone as far
as prohibiting the sending of toilet paper to the island.
Meanwhile,
the notion of openly and publicly naming a career CIA official as a
“Cuba and Venezuela mission manager,” as much as it begs the
question of the nature of the mission, seems drawn from the pages of
a satirical spy novel.
Finally,
commissioning a study about the prospects and means for Cuban exiles
to recover property after the fall of the revolution seems like a
clever joke concocted by someone intent on giving hard-liners in Cuba
an early Christmas gift disguised as a bow to Miami hard-liners. And,
turning the job over to a bunch of amateurs with no academic
credentials in the area of Cuba studies or property claims
(apparently because they happen to be at a university where an
administration political appointee studied) is a final stroke of
genius. The sum result is a study that lacks credibility in the
United States but abounds in utility in Cuba.
You
think U.S. policy toward Cuba could not become more absurd. Then it
does.
