[Marxism] STEVE CLEMONS: Obama's Disappointing Incrementalism on Cuba

[Walter Lippmann]

Obama's Disappointing Incrementalism on Cuba
By Steve Clemons - April 1, 2008, 9:17AM

<http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/01/obamas_disappointing_increm
ent/>

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 publishes the popular political blog, The Washington
Note