[NYTr] Bush on Cuba: More of the Same

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Cincinnati Post Opinion - Oct 27, 2007
http://news.nky.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/AE/20071027/EDIT/710270306/-1/OPINION

Editorial

More of the Same

In a major address at the State Department, President Bush announced
that U.S. policy toward Cuba will remain the same, only more so. Thus
another opportunity for fresh thinking by the 10th American president
to deal with Fidel Castro slides by.

The United States has had sanctions and an embargo on Cuba in place
since 1961. Occasionally those restrictions are tweaked. But despite
their proven ineffectiveness, they remain in place, more out of
political inertia than any hope they might actually work.

Since the abortive Bay of Pigs operation and the Cuban missile crisis
of the Kennedy administration, U.S. policy has basically been to
outwait Fidel Castro in hopes that someone would overthrow him or the
actuarial tables would take their course.

In beginning his speech, Bush said with unwitting irony, "Today,
another president comes with hope to discuss a new era for the United
States and Cuba."

Castro is now 81 and his revolution is on course to celebrate its 50th
anniversary about the time Bush leaves office in January 2009.

Many analysts believe that a more promising approach to Cuba would be
to ease trade and travel restrictions on the grounds that the
dictatorship and oppressive police state could not long survive
sunshine, fresh air and its people's glimpse of a better life. It would
be worth a try since nothing else has worked, and it would deprive
Castro of his scapegoat for his regime's shortcomings.

Bush does not buy the scapegoat argument. He believes, and not without
good reason, that the endemic failings of communism are at fault. Nor
does he want to do anything that might enrich the party elite. And so
we come full circle.

The president proposed a few more tweaks to the sanctions: licensing
nongovernmental and faith-based groups to provide computers and
Internet access to similar groups in Cuba; offering scholarships to
children of families that have suffered from the oppression of the
regime; and a multibillion-dollar Freedom Fund for Cuba to rebuild the
economy and fund the transition to democracy, whenever that time comes.

Meanwhile, Castro is ailing and has not been seen in public for over a
year; however, power seems to have passed seamlessly to his 76-year-old
brother, Raul. One thing about the policy of out-waiting Castro: One
day it's bound to work. And one day it will work with Raul, too.