[Marxism] Obama's Disappointing Incrementalism on Cuba

[Eli Stephens]

URL: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/2008/04/conservatives_a/

Conservatives Angry at More Wars in Koran-Zone & Obama's Disappointing 
Incrementalism on Cuba

by Steve Clemons

Yesterday, I had coffee with a former three-star general who has outed himself 
as a political conservative in his post-military life. Joining us was a former 
conservative member of Congress, a conservative CEO, a top tier conservative 
organizer, and a conservative pundit. I discussed the Iraq War, 
Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan/Pakistan, nukes, and Cuba with them.

The anger among the serious strategic-thinking conservatives about the state of 
the country, its foreign policy position, the value of the dollar, and the 
beleaguered military is serious -- and John McCain seems to have no idea how 
much frustration is boiling among conservative patriots with his saber-rattling 
about hundred year deployments and more wars in the "Koran-zone."

But one of the really interesting lines from the general and heartily agreed to 
by the conservative organizer and also the pundit was:

     No one serious can support our policy towards Cuba. Fifty years of failure. 
We need to engage those people. Commerce and travel, exchange between their 
people and our people. . .well, you know what I mean. Cuba is an easy fix. 
Castro's brother, Raul, is lifting all sorts of restrictions on his public, and 
we're doing squat. If we want to steal Hugo Chavez's thunder in Latin America, 
then open up to Cubans and see where the currents take us. Can't get worse than 
the "zero" we have achieved thus far.

If serious conservatives can say this, why can't the serious Dems running for 
the White House?

I asked a serious person, Susan Rice, what she thought of our US-Cuba policy on 
a recent Obama campaign conference call. I respect Rice who is on leave from 
Brookings now while advising the Obama campaign. However, her response on the 
embargo seemed the same kind of triangulation on the issue that a calculating 
political cynic might offer -- not a campaign ready to crash through cynicism 
and more optimistically rewire and redraw the lines of how we think about U.S. 
foreign policy challenges.

I asked Rice if Obama -- who has been the most progressive among the three 
standing presidential candidates on US-Cuba policy -- would at least go back to 
the 'status quo' during the Bush administration in 2003. Before Bush tightened 
up the noose on Cuban-American family travel, remittances, and other exchanges, 
there was quite a bit of "non-tourist" travel to Cuba -- usually for educational 
and cultural reasons.

Rice's response was "no." She said that those kinds of openings for non-tourist 
travel would depend on Cuba having "fair and free elections", releasing 
political prisoners, adherence to human rights conventions, and the like.

This is out of the playbook of Republican Congresspersons Ileana Ros-Lehtinen 
and the Diaz-Balart brothers of South Florida. The notion that a nation isolated 
for decades from the U.S. will adopt norms of American style democracy in 
exchange for the benefits of non-tourist travel and other exchange is not 
realistic. America hasn't taken that course with China, with Vietnam, and now 
not even with North Korea.

Last year, I praised Obama's stance on Cuba and called it brave and that it 
reflected the future rather than the past. But if Obama is not even willing to 
return to the norm that existed for the first three years of the George W. Bush 
administration, then he and his team are suffering from an incrementalism of 
vision and opportunity that they need to quickly correct.

Interestingly, US-Cuba policy is changing without many folks noticing. First, 
Raul Castro has removed restrictions on the purchase of some computers, DVDs, 
video tapes, and DVD and video players. And this past week, he has removed all 
restriction on the sale and ownership of cell phones.

If I was running for President of the United States and had opened the door for 
a potential new course in US-Cuba relations, I'd say something about Raul 
Castro's moves. But as far as I can tell, Barack Obama and his team haven't 
moved a centimeter or said a word of late.

Quietly though, the Bush administration is diverting some funding away from 
US-based anti-Castro organizations. There is a quiet relaxation underway in 
US-Cuba relations that I fear highlighting because Bush might stop it -- and 
McCain would yell about it; Hillary Clinton would say "now is the wrong time"; 
and Obama might say not until we have a free and fair system of elections and a 
thriving democracy in Cuba.

But Obama doesn't even want to go back to the Bush administration's standard of 
non-tourist people to people exchange. Unacceptable.

Hillary Clinton is far more restrictive of course and would maintain a Cold 
War-hugging stance on Cuba at least until Florida votes were counted -- but at 
least her foreign policy adviser, Lee Feinstein, said that he'd be cool with the 
NY Philharmonic going to Cuba.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton just wouldn't go that far though he said they'd 
"give a hard look" at the possibility.

And yet I have no problem at all getting conservative national leader after 
conservative national leader to parrot former Colin Powell chief of staff 
Lawrence Wilkerson's famous line in GQ Magazine:

     Our U.S.-Cuba policy is the stupidest policy on earth.

Maybe the Dems will eventually get there -- but the Democratic frontrunner's 
Cuba position seems to tilt too much towards the timid and less towards the 
bold. Changing US-Cuba relations is easy -- low-hanging fruit in the realm of 
things a president can do to telegraph to the world that a new era is beginning 
in American foreign policy.

-- Steve Clemons


_________________________________________________________________
Get in touch in an instant. Get Windows Live Messenger now.
http://www.windowslive.com/messenger/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_getintouch_042008