[NYTr] Here's One Castro Foe Who Isn't Fooled by Obama's Cuba Bull

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Steve Chapman is obviously as fond of Sen. Slither as he is of Fidel,
whom he comically calls a "dictator" who runs a "tropical prison
camp." -NYTr]

Chicago Tribune - Aug 23, 2007
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0823chapmanaug23,0,139341.columnchicagotribune.com


Commentary

No signs of audacity on Cuba

by Steve Chapman

'Experience keeps a dear school," said Benjamin Franklin, "but fools
will learn in no other." But if someone who will learn only from
painful experience is a fool, what do you call someone who won't learn
from painful experience? Answer: a supporter of our policy toward Cuba.

For nearly half a century, the United States has maintained an economic
embargo in an effort to dislodge Fidel Castro from power. The
81-year-old dictator, however, has easily outlasted a succession of
American presidents bent on his political demise. Even today, with the
dictator incapacitated by poor health, his regime looks more durable
than the British monarchy.

A plausible conclusion is that if our boycott didn't achieve its
purpose in the 20th Century, it will not do so in the 21st. Yet it
remains firmly in place, unchallenged by either Republicans or
Democrats.

The other day, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) reopened the discussion of
Cuba policy with an op-ed in The Miami Herald that accused President
Bush of "blundering," stressed the need to "help the Cuban people
become less dependent on the Castro regime," and promised to "grant
Cuban-Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send
remittances to the island."

This may sound like a bold and refreshing attempt to overhaul our Cuba
policy. In fact, it's a cheerful embrace of a strategy that has proved
its futility year after year. The crucial message of his article is not
how much Obama would change President Bush's approach, but how little.

The rules against travel to Cuba, long part of our policy, have grown
tighter under Bush. This crackdown has gotten a strange reception among
Cuban-Americans. A poll last year of those in South Florida found that
only 28 percent disapprove of the president's overall Cuba policy, but
45 percent oppose his efforts to keep them from visiting or sending
money to their relatives there.

Anyone who expected the Democratic takeover of Congress to make a
difference on Cuba must have been hallucinating. House Democrats have
done everything possible to show they can match anyone for blind
obstinacy.

In past years, under GOP control, the House voted several times to make
it easier for U.S. farmers to sell their crops in Cuba. But when a
similar bill came to a floor vote this year, it got trounced. A bill to
ease the travel rules, meanwhile, hasn't even gotten a committee
hearing.

By supporting more travel, Obama proved himself to be less timid than
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), who shuns the idea. But even his
proposal offers less than meets the eye. He does not suggest anything
so revolutionary as, say, letting all Americans decide for themselves
whether to visit Castro's tropical prison camp. The only people he
would allow to go, or send money, would be Cuban-Americans.

As for our vain effort to starve Havana into submission, Obama says he
would be willing to "ease" the blockade -- not lift it, merely ease it
-- only if, after Castro is gone, the "government begins opening Cuba
to democratic change." Well, imagine that.

It's not bad enough that the embargo has been the diplomatic equivalent
of the Chicago Cubs -- an infallible loser for an astonishing length of
time. It's also at odds with our approach to most other communist
governments, most notably China's. There, we trust that over time,
commerce and contact with the West will undermine state control and
foster freedom. The experience of recent years validates that belief.
Yet the U.S. government takes the position that any policy appropriate
to China cannot possibly work in Cuba.

The explanation for this lapse in logic is political. Cuban-Americans
mostly support the embargo, and they constitute a small but active
voting bloc in Florida, a state that can easily decide a presidential
election (as it did in 2000). So both parties are leery of challenging
the status quo.

Obama's proposal would be notable if it risked losing votes among
Cuban-Americans. In fact, it roughly approximates the position taken by
John Kerry in 2004.

It may not be a shock to find that Obama, who vows to change the way
Washington works, plans no such change when it comes to how Washington
works on Cuba. But it does suggest that the only place to find Obama
and audacity in close proximity is on the cover of his book.

[Steve Chapman is a member of the Tribune's editorial board.]

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune