[NYTr] Bush's Speech a Flop: He May Be Crazy but Toothless on Cuba

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[A roundup of the negative reaction, domestic and international, to
Bush's Cuba speech of Wednesday, from links compiled by The Cuban
Nation - Oct 27, 2007 
http://www.thecubannation.com. 
Spanish version: http://www.lanacioncubana.com/ ]


AFP via Google - Oct 25, 2007
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jaIhbSEZEaEQbQe26XObPqJ6ltvA

Bush call for Cuba democracy fund likely to fall on deaf ears: experts

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President George W. Bush's plea that the world
community contribute to a fund to promote democratic reform in Cuba
likely will fall on deaf ears, and may actually strengthen the hand of
its ailing leader Fidel Castro, experts said.

Bush on Wednesday, in his first address since 2003 to focus solely on
Cuba, called on the world to help transform the communist island from a
"tropical Gulag" by investing economic and political capital in its
pro-democracy movements.

Bush said the United States would seek contributions for the
billion-dollar "freedom fund" to provide financial support to Cubans --
but only after their government has fully embraced freedom of speech,
freedom of the press, multi-party elections and other attributes of a
democratic society.

Various respected experts on America's Cuba policy, however, called the
initiatives pointless, and possibly even counterproductive.

"This so-called 'multimillion freedom fund' is simply a figment of the
president's imagination," Wayne Smith, senior fellow and director of
the Cuba program at the Center for International Policy.

A longtime critic of America's economic embargo and other hardline US
policies toward the communist island, Smith called the Bush
adminstration's entire package of Cuba reforms "absurd."

In the first place, far from having too little money for development,
Cuba at the moment is awash in development funds, Smith said.

"They are already getting billions of dollars from Venezuela and China.
The Cuban economy is doing OK," he said, adding that the monies have
helped the island weather the decades-old economic embargo -- which
Bush during his speech insisted he would only lift after democratic
reforms take place.

The US leader also called on other countries to make more public shows
of support for pro-democracy activists in Cuba, and warned that there
may be a price to pay for countries that fail to help.

"The dissidents of today will be the nation's leaders tomorrow. When
freedom finally comes, they will surely remember who stood with them,"
said the president on Wednesday.

Bush said the time is ripe for such pro-democracy initiatives with
Castro, 81, aging and infirm, still recovering from gastrointestinal
surgery he underwent in July 2006 and possibly on the way out of power.

For the time being, Castro's younger brother Raul Castro, 76, who is
also the country's defense chief, is serving as interim president of
Cuba.

Smith said however that Washington's current unpopularity -- on the
heels of the fiasco in Iraq and other perceived foreign policy failures
-- make it unlikely that any countries other than Washington's most
loyal allies will answer Bush's call.

"I'm sure that (the Czech Republic) and maybe Poland will say that they
will contribute. I don't think anyone else will," said Smith.

Ian Vasquez, of the CATO Institute, took matters even further, calling
the speech was a "strategic blunder" by the Bush administration.

"He fell into Castro's trap," Vasquez said.

"With this speech, Castro can say that the North American imperialists
once again has interfered in Cuba's internal affairs, and it allows him
to more easily discredit efforts to promote democracy on the island."

Even America's influential and well-heeled Cuban exile community, which
generally welcomed Bush's speech, criticized the plan as lacking a
clear strategy to bring about such change.

And Michael Shifter, vice president for policy, Inter-American
Dialogue, said the time has passed when Washington could simply impose
its will in Latin America or twist the arms of its European allies.

"Bush's words have an anachronistic ring. For the international
community, and certainly Latin America, references to a 'transition' in
Cuba seem premature, presumptuous, even offensive," he said.

"If anything can revive Fidel Castro, it is President Bush's speech,"
Shifter added.

"It's the perfect tonic for the ailing dictator who has always counted
on Washington to deliver sharp, confrontational rhetoric that plays
into his hands and has helped sustain him in power for so long."

Copyright © 2007 AFP. All rights reserved.

                            ***

Radio Jamaica - Oct 26, 2007
http://www.radiojamaica.com/content/view/2427/88/

UK could ignore US call for Cuban democracy fund 

US President George W. Bush. Experts say a plea by US President George
W. Bush to the world to contribute to a fund promote democratic reform
in Cuba will most likely fall on deaf ears.

According to Rob Miller, the Director of Cuban Solidarity in the UK,
says he does not think that Britain would be interested.    

"I would be extremely surprised if the British government was to
contribute to this kind of ill-informed international policy. The
British government has diplomatic relationships with Cuba, we have
reasonably good relations with the island," said Mr. Miller.

"The Labour Members of Parliaments certainly want to see better
relations with the island, in fact we have 160 Members of Parliament
including Tories and Liberals who have signed a parliamentary motion
calling for better relations with the island," he continued. 

                                ***

Granma International - Oct 25, 2007
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/octubre/mier24/43gov-i.html

New Mexico Governor Richardson Responds to Bush on Cuba

By Gabriel Molina

BILL Richardson, governor of the U.S. state of New Mexico, responding
on Wednesday to President George W. Bush’s statements on Cuba earlier
in the day, said that the U.S. embargo of the island had failed.

Richardson, who is in the race to become the Democratic Party
presidential candidate, told the CNN network that if he were to become
president, he would get rid of the measures adopted by Bush for
strengthening the so-called embargo. He added that, with the purpose of
creating a transition, he would remove the restrictions on travel to
the island and would encourage trade in order to open up a dialogue
with the Cuban government, because the punitive measures of more than
40 years have failed.

Another Democratic contender, Democrat Chris Dodd, who supports easing
travel restrictions, said Bush "continues to allow his fixation with
the Castro brothers to stand in the way of a sensible policy with
respect to Cuba. Nearly 50 years of a failed Cuba policy must end."

President George W. Bush says he is seeking change in Cuba and asking
other countries to help by offering money and political capital. In a
speech at the U.S. State Department dedicated exclusively to the
subject of Cuba, the leader of the powerful northern country indirectly
showed concern regarding recent successful initiatives of the Cuban
government. These include the thousands of Latin American young people
who are studying there on scholarship and have graduated from the Latin
American School of Medicine (ELAM), as well as the brigades of Cuban
doctors who are bringing medical attention for free to low-income
people in the most neglected areas of the Third World, the now-famous
"Army of White Coats."

During his speech, apparently aimed at his followers in Miami and Latin
America, Bush, who has offered Cuban doctors encouragement to desert
those contingents, proposed creating an "international fund" to someday
"help to rebuild the country"; to give U.S. licenses for private groups
to provide Internet access to Cuban students, and to invite Cuban young
people to study under a scholarship program.
 
                               ***

Even the Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer panned Bush:

Salt Lake Tribune - Oct 26, 2007
http://www.sltrib.com/Opinion/ci_7291926

Bush administration is playing into Castro's hands

by Andres Oppenheimer

Should President Bush be making major policy speeches on Cuba, as he
did Wednesday? Or does that backfire, giving Cuba's dictatorship
much-needed ammunition to claim it's a victim of U.S. aggression?

Before I tell you my answer to the riddle that has torn U.S. policy
analysts and Cuban exiles for decades, let's take a quick look at what
hard-liners, moderates and appeasers have to say about it.

Hard-liners say it's the United States' obligation as the world's
biggest democracy to try to bring democracy to Cuba. The 2004 report
from Bush's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba and the
president's speech Wednesday are steps in the right direction, they say.

Washington cannot accept a succession from ailing leader Fidel
Castro to his brother Raul. Just as the United States imposed economic
sanctions on South Africa to help end that country's apartheid regime,
it's the United States' duty to put economic and political pressure on
the Cuban gerontocracy to open up that country's political system,
hard-liners say.

And whatever one might think about the U.S. economic embargo on
Cuba, lifting it now would provide a major propaganda victory to a
dying regime, the hard-line argument goes.

Moderates say the situation on the island has changed since Fidel
Castro transferred Cuba's day-to-day leadership to the younger Raul
last year. The White House should use the opportunity to help
accelerate changes in Cuba, they say. 

For instance, Washington should open up the U.S. travel ban to
Cuba, which in addition to denying Americans their basic right to
travel anywhere, is keeping Cubans on the island isolated and
uninformed, moderates say. 

Furthermore, Washington should put the Castro regime on the defensive
by offering a gradual lifting of the U.S. trade embargo in exchange for
Cuba's steps to open up its political system, they say. Why not
unilaterally lift 25 percent of the U.S. embargo and invite Cuba to
make a move on the freedom of expression front, they say. 

Granted, Cuba will most likely not take the bait, but Washington would
no longer be seen by many as the main culprit in the Cuban drama, they
say. 

Appeasers, finally, think that the United States should lift the travel
and economic embargoes at once, and unconditionally. 

The United States conducts brisk business with other communist
dictatorships such as China and Vietnam, they say. Furthermore, the
sanctions on Cuba have not worked and are becoming increasingly
meaningless at a time when Venezuela is pumping more than $2 billion a
year into the island, appeasers say. 

U.S. economic sanctions only help give Cuba an excuse to delay a
political opening. Let's do away with all sanctions, and the sheer
impact of U.S. tourists and trade will bring about change on the
island, the let's-lift-all-sanctions camp argues. 

My opinion: The decades-old shouting match between Washington and
Havana only helps distract world attention from the real conflict,
which is the one going on between the Cuban dictatorship and the Cuban
people. 

As leading Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya told me in a telephone
interview from Havana hours before Bush's speech, ''We are not going to
tell the Cuban government or Bush to shut up, but what we are saying is
that it's time for both of them to listen to the Cuban people.'' 

Bush - and whoever succeeds him - should de-couple U.S. rhetoric on
Cuba: step up the defense of human rights, while setting aside U.S.
''programs'' and ''commissions'' for Cuba's transition that smack of
U.S. interventionism. 

The defense of universal human rights is an international obligation,
which the United States and all other countries should be proud to
uphold in Cuba. Creating programs and commissions for Cuba's transition
smacks of meddling in Cuba's internal affairs. 

Bush deserves praise for having spoken out in support of fundamental
freedoms in Cuba when much of the rest of the world is scandalously
looking the other way. But he plays into Castro's hands when he
announces U.S. plans for Cuba's transition. It's time to do more of the
first and less of the latter.

[ANDRES OPPENHEIMER is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami
Herald]

                             ***


TIME Magazine - Oct 25, 2007
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1676501,00.html?xid=rss-world

Keeping Up the Hard Line on Cuba

By Tim Padgett/Miami

Few would argue that democracy and human rights are as rare in Cuba as
meat and modern appliances. That was duly underscored on Wednesday when
President Bush invited the relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents to the
State Department for his first policy speech on Cuba in four years. But
any expectation of a major policy shift was dissipated after listening
to the President. Bush simply gussied up some of the same old bromides
— "The socialist paradise is a tropical gulag" — that have marked
U.S.-Cuban relations for decades.

Bush reiterated his hard stance against lifting the 45-year-old U.S.
trade embargo on Cuba if the seriously ill Fidel Castro, as expected,
is succeeded by his brother Raul, who already runs the government.
Predictably, Fidel said Bush's speech reflected the U.S.'s desire to
"reconquer" Cuba. And the Castro brothers aren't exactly cowed by these
traditional verbal assaults. They have thrived on it in the past:
heated U.S. rhetoric usually bolsters their image at home as the
island's anti-Yanqui defenders. With plenty of material support from
Hugo Chavez in Venezuela (about 90,000 barrels of oil per day on highly
favorable finance terms), the embargo, though still onerous, is not as
painful as it once was.

As a result, critics of Bush's Cuba policy argue his address simply
helped preserve rather than undermine Cuba's nebulous status quo. And
they're urging Washington again to consider stepped-up contact with
Raul Castro — widely regarded as more pragmatically flexible than Fidel
— as a more effective means of jump-starting a democratic transition.
"President Bush is right when he says this is a unique moment in Cuba,
but he's missing that moment," says Jake Colvin, director of USA Engage
in Washington, which favors moves like lifting the ban on U.S. travel
to Cuba — something even most Cuban-Americans in Miami now favor, and
which many Cuba watchers suggest the Castros actually fear. Bush
insisted that engaging Cuba now would just give "oxygen to a criminal
regime." But, argues Colvin, "American citizens have always proven the
best ambassadors of freedom and democracy."

Bush may also be alienating the very people he is reaching out to by
suggesting Washington will be Cuba's post-Castro arbiter. In the eyes
of ordinary Cuban citizens, that is perceived as surrogacy for the
Miami Cuban exile community — whose anti-Castro hardliners, with their
dreams of resurrecting a pre-Castro Cuba, are as disliked by many
Cubans on the island as the Castros themselves are.

What's more, by attaching his Administration to Cuba's dissidents so
publicly, Bush may actually compromise the position of the Castro
critics who remain on the island, whose credibility often rests on
being seen as a movement independent of the Miami exiles. In past
interviews with TIME and other media groups, Oswaldo Paya, an engineer
who is the most prominent of Cuba's dissidents, says he is
uncomfortable whenever the White House tries to co-opt him and his
colleagues. He says it simply makes their goals more difficult to
achieve.