[NYTr] Circles Robinson on Obama's Cynical Cuba Ploys

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[Finally, a clear-eyed look at Beatified Barack Obama and his
opportunistic cynical play for the Cuban Miami vote. Obama's
stage-managed Aug 21 Op-Ed in the Miami Herald, which Robinson satirizes
so well, is available with our own scathing comments here: "Sure enough:
Obama for Cuban-American travel to Cuba," Aug 21, 2007
https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20070820/066986.html
-NY Transfer]


Circles Robinson Online - Aug 21, 2007
http://circlesonline.blogspot.com/2007/08/obama-straight-talk-on-cuba.html


Obama Straight Talk on Cuba

By BARACK OBAMA
re-imagined by Circles Robinson

When my father was a young man living in impoverished Kenya, the
freedom and opportunity of the United States exerted such a powerful
draw that he moved halfway around the world to pursue his dreams here.
My father's story is not unique. The same has been true for tens of
millions of people, from every continent -- including the many Cubans
who we encourage to risk their lives and come to the USA and take
advantage of the Cuban Adjustment Act in place for over 40 years and
which grants them automatic residency.

It is a tragedy that, just 90 miles from our shores, there exists a
society where such freedom and opportunity are kept out of reach by a
government that clings to an ideology that favors the collective good
over the small chance of achieving individual wealth. A democratic
opening in Cuba is, and should be, the foremost objective of our
policy. We need a clear strategy to achieve it --one that takes some
limited steps now to spread the message of the American dream on the
island, but preserves our ability to bargain on behalf of our interests
with a post-Fidel government.

The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today
is to help the Cuban people become more dependent on the United States
in fundamental ways. U.S. policy must be built around empowering the
Cuban people to see that under US stewardship is the best destiny for
Cuba. The United States has a critical interest in seeing Cuba join the
roster of stable and economically vibrant democracies in the Western
Hemisphere that give a free reign to our corporations. Such a
development would bring us important security and economic benefits,
and it would allow for new cooperation on migration, counter-narcotics
and other issues.

ADVANCE POLITICAL REFORM

These interests, and our support for the aspirations of the Cuban
people, are ill served by the further entrenchment of the Castro
regime, which is why we need to advance peaceful political and economic
reform on the island by any means possible. Castro's ill health and the
potential CIA-inspired turmoil looming ahead make the matter all the
more urgent.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made grand gestures to that
end while strategically blundering when it comes to actually advancing
the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba. This is particularly true
of the administration's decision to restrict the ability of Cuban
Americans to visit and send money to their relatives in Cuba. This is
both a humanitarian and a strategic issue. That decision has not only
had a profoundly negative impact on the welfare of the Cuban people. It
has also made them more independent of the US and isolated them from
the consumer paradise message carried there by some Cuban Americans.

In the ''Cuban spring'' of the late 1990s and early years of this
decade, dissidents and human-rights activists had more political space
than at any time since the beginning of Castro's rule, as the US took
advantage of the Cuba’s economic woes to try and speed up a transition
to US stewardship —the equivalent of freedom for the Cuban people.

U.S. policies -- especially the fact that Cuban Americans were allowed
to maintain and deepen ties with family on the island – were a key
cause of that ''Cuban spring.'' Although cut off by the Bush
administration after Castro regime's deplorable March 2003 jailing of
dozens of agent- “dissidents” working for the US government, the
opening underscored what is possible with a sensible strategic
approach. Too bad the Cuban State Security was on to our plan.

We in the United States should do what we can to bring about another
such opening, taking certain steps now and pledging to take additional
steps as temporary openings are solidified into lasting change.

Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right
in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the
beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island. Accordingly, I will
grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send
remittances to the island.

But as we reach out in some ways now, it makes strategic sense to
resort to the old carrot-and-stick approach and hold on to important
inducements we can use in dealing with a post-Fidel government, for it
is an unfortunate fact that his eventual departure by no means
guarantees the arrival of US-style freedom on the island.

BILATERAL TALKS

Accordingly, if elected, I will use aggressive and principled diplomacy
to send an important message: If a post-Fidel government begins opening
Cuba to US interests, the United States (the president working with
Congress) is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the
embargo that has unilaterally governed relations between our countries
for almost five decades. That message coming from my administration in
bilateral talks would be the best means of promoting Cuban freedom. To
refuse to do so would substitute posturing for serious policy -- and we
have seen too much of that in other areas over the past six years.

We must not lose sight of our fundamental goal: freedom a-la-Miami in
Cuba. At the same time, we should be pragmatic in our approach and
clear-sighted about the effects of our policies. We all know the power
and results of the freedom and opportunity that America has both
embodied and advanced in Latin America. If deployed wisely through
tough immigration laws, those ideals will have as transformative effect
on Cubans today, attracting their most skilled workers, professionals
and athletes to make the US even greater.