Mother Jones: Squeezing Cuba

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Last week in the Rose Garden President Bush announced to an appreciative audience of Cuban Americans that he's getting tougher on Castro's Cuba. By tightening the U.S. embargo on the island, dishing out more American visas to Cubans looking to leave, and beefing up restrictions on U.S. citizens going there, Bush hopes to succeed where past presidents have failed, finishing off Fidel Castro once and for all. Optimistically, he also created the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba, a group of feds tasked with planning for a post-Fidel Cuba. (Why didn't they try that in Iraq?)

The Bush administration is operating on the assumption that greater economic pressure is the way to bring down Castro. To hear Bush tell it, his new initiatives will "hasten the arrival of a new, free, democratic Cuba." Once the tourist dollars dry up, and the pro-democracy groups receive more help, regime change will follow. Experience suggests the opposite, says Amnesty International:


"Amnesty International wrote to President Bush last May requesting a reevaluation of the economic embargo, which for 40 years has failed to improve the human rights of the Cuban people, and in some cases has helped undermine these rights. Experts overwhelmingly find the embargo's negative effects are not felt by the decision makers and authorities, but by the weakest and most vulnerable members of the population. The embargo only fuels the climate in which freedom of association, expression and assembly are routinely denied and by providing the Cuban government with a 'justification' for repression."

Even leaders in Bush's own party question the logic of the embargo. Richard Lugar, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote earlier this month:

"I believe that our current Cuba strategy has not worked. More than 40 years of diplomatic isolation and economic embargo have not toppled Castro, brought democracy to the island, or improved the daily lives of average Cubans. The Helms-Burton law, passed in 1996, has failed to deter third countries from investing in Cuba. Too often our Cuba policies have isolated us from our European and Latin American allies and reinforced Castro's efforts to convince many of his people that the U.S. holds a grudge against them."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2003/42/we_591_02c.html