The best way to spread democratic and free market values to Cuba is to
expose Cubans to U.S. businesses, academics, journalists and tourists.
The more open the exchange of ideas, people, capital and culture, the
sooner Cuba will become a dynamic and open society.
The other sad part of the embargo is that it robs U.S. businesses of
billions of dollars of profitable investment and trade opportunities.
Once the embargo is lifted, within five years U.S. exports to Cuba
could reach about $6 billion to $8 billion annually and generate some
70,000 to 100,000 American jobs.
So, what gives?
Cuban-American Rep. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has the answer:
Bush is pandering to the Cuban exiles in South Florida.
He hopes their votes and money will give him Florida on Nov. 2 -
perhaps, if needed, with another assist from Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia.
From New York Newsday, 5/30/04:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpzim283821545may30,0,27554.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Bush's pandering for votes hurts Cubans
BY ANDREW ZIMBALIST
While the media have been focused on the atrocities inside Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq, the Bush administration has embarked on another
counterproductive, expensive and irrational foreign policy initiative.
The president announced three weeks ago that he planned to further
tighten the U.S. embargo of Cuba.
It does not require deep insight to see the folly and destructiveness
of this policy.
The embargo was instituted in 1960.
At the time, the Central Intelligence Agency also had various plots to
either:
Assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, or make his beard fall off
by using depilatories or disorient him during a speech by spraying
LSD.
One way or another, Washington has tried, and failed, to topple the
Castro government for 44 years.
Is there a longer U.S. foreign policy failure on record?
One day, an American president will wake up and conclude that the
policy is not working.
But it won't be George W. Bush.
He believes that if the noose around Castro's neck is only 95 percent
tight, then all he has to do is make it 96 percent.
One of Bush's principal new measures will be the use of military
aircraft to fly in international waters near Cuba.
With special equipment, this plane will try to beam U.S.-produced
Television Marti into Cuban homes.
TV Marti has been around and financed by our tax dollars since 1990,
but the Cuban government has effectively jammed it.
At a cost of tens of millions of dollars a year, the United States has
continued to produce the programming.
The cost of the new aircraft is estimated at $18 million a year.
________________________________________________________
Hey, what else could Bush do with that extra dough. It was just lyin'
around there waitin' to be spent, right?
Harry
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