CubaNews update for Saturday March 29, 2003

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

CubaNews notes for Saturday March 29, 2003
by Walter Lippmann, Moderator, CubaNews

Washington continues escalating its disastrous
war on Iraq. Resistance is growing with each
day and is surprising many who fell for the line
that the US was going to liberate Iraq from its
despotic leader, Saddam Hussein. While there
is no doubt Saddam Hussein is a right-winger
and a reactionary dictator (why else would the
US have backed and supplied him for so long?)
it's also true that Iraq is now a nation under
assault by the most powerful nation on the
planet today. A nationalist response is being
waged on the ground in Iraq. The US media
is now just beginning to allow a small amount
of this reality to get through, and that's good.

Cuban exile rightwingers have called a demo
today in Miami to try to link Cuba to Iraq and
in hopes of getting the Washington to go
after Cuba as it's going after Iraq. Already
this week we've seen US threats against both
Iran and Syria (as if their inability to walk over
Iraq weren't enough!)

The Cuban media is covering this struggle in
an extensive manner on TV and using the
internet. While US television never fails to
provide us all with extensive commercials
to sell us things we don't need, the Cuban
media provides detailed and sale-free news
about what's happening in Iraq. Cuba also
strongly supports the world-wide anti-war
movement and participates as best as it
can. CubaNews list supplies reports to its
readers from the Cuban, the mainstream
and the left-alternative media, so if you're
looking for additional sources we encourage
you to subscribe.

The best thing anyone can do today who's
in favor of a positive reorientation of US
policy toward Cuba is to attend anti-war
demonstrations and encourage everyone
else who can to do so.

The second thing you can do is to listen
to the genuinely alternative media which
is providing a growing number of facts and
trying to inform the people as to the reality
on the ground, in Iraq and elsewhere.

If you're near one of the Pacifica outlets,
listen to Pacifica, particularly to Democracy
Now and their daily peace reports all day.
If not, listen to them on the internet via:
www.pacifica.org

If you are in Miami, or can do so on the
internet, I also recommend listening to
Miami radio talk show host Francisco
Aruca whose English program Babel's
Guide, with lots of news on the war.
Read and listen: www.rprogreso.com

Fifth, write a letter to the editor asking
them to publish Wayne Smith's recent
commentary on Cuba as a counterpoint
to the blizzard of anti-Cuba editorials which
have been published everywhere else.
Here's a sample using the one I sent to
the Los Angeles Times.

Finally, please sign up for CubaNews list
and follow Cuba's struggle to defend its
own soverignty while defending the rights
of small nations everywhere, including Iraq.


Walter Lippmann
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/messages


----- Original Message -----
From: Walter Lippmann
To: letters@xxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, March 29, 2003 9:00 AM
Subject: request for an op-ed in LA Times


This week you published an op-ed and an
editorial attacking what they call human
rights violations in Cuba. The editorial
said US policy makers should "hit the
brakes" on liberalized relations with the
island. But what brakes do you mean?
Under the Bush administration, filled
with right-wing Cuban exiles like Otto
Reich, Washington has escalated its
four decades of hostility toward Cuba.

There has been no liberalization at all,
exactly the opposite, as Wayne Smith,
who knows about these things from his
over four decades of work on Cuba is
best-equipped to demonstrate.

You've done a good service to our
community by publishing commentary
about the Iraq war from Robert Scheer
and others opposing the war. This is a
good example of how newspapers
really should function. Your editorial
was titled "Send a Message to Cuba",
but it was the same tired old message
we've been hearing for decades.

I request that you now publish another,
alternative perspective on Cuba which
I am submitting for you here.

Thanks,


Walter Lippmann
[street address and phone]
==========================

SUN-SENTINEL OF FORT LAUDERDALE
MARCH 27, 2003
Dismal diplomacy
BY WAYNE S. SMITH

It is true that even had we given the U.N. inspectors more
time, in the end we still might have had to use force to
disarm Saddam Hussein. But it is also true that with
competent diplomacy and a little more patience, we could
have gone to war with the full support of the U.N. and of
the overwhelming majority of other nations.

That, however, was to expect too much of the Bush
administration, for whether we are talking about the Middle
East, North Korea, Venezuela or a whole series of other
states and episodes, its diplomatic record is dismal. Its
inept tactics, its bullying style, have alienated countries
around the world -- including many who were once our
close friends.

Cuba, of course, was not considered to be among the
latter; relations with it were already poor, but they are
now nearing a crisis point.

We have read much over the past few days about the Cuban
government's deplorable crackdown against dissidents. Dozens
have been arrested, including a number connected with the
so-called Varela Project. Others are threatened with arrest.
Yet, less than a year ago, during his visit to Cuba,
President Carter met with many of these same dissidents.
He spoke of the Varela Project on national television and
his words were carried two days later by the official
Cuban press. It was thus that many Cubans learned
about the Varela Project for the first time. Further, both
before and after Carter's visit, many other Americans,
myself included, met regularly with these Cuban
dissidents and human rights activists and expressed
support for their efforts to encourage a more open society.

All this was done in a context of full respect for Cuban
sovereignty and as part of a broad effort to emphasize the
need for dialogue and to improve relations between our two
countries. Thus, the meetings were accepted by the Cuban
government, however unenthusiastically, and it seemed that
things might slowly be moving toward somewhat greater
tolerance.

What happened to change that prognosis? Why the crackdown?
Essentially, because of hardening attitudes and more
aggressive tactics on the part of the Bush administration.
For the past six months, for example, the new chief of the
U.S. Interests Section, James Cason, has been holding
meetings with dissidents around the island, passing out
radios and other equipment to them and holding press
conferences after the meetings in which he has been
pointedly critical of the Cuban government.

Questionable diplomatic conduct at best, though obviously
he has been acting on instructions, but the point is that
the purpose of those instructions certainly has not been
to improve relations. Quite the contrary, when seen
against the backdrop of a U.S. policy which, in effect,
calls for regime change, the whole effort seems to the
Cubans subversive in intent. The Helms-Burton Act,
after all, does call for the removal of the two Castros
from power. Hence, state security organs have
arrested the dissidents, not for expressing opinions
against the Cuban government, but for "plotting
with American diplomats."

Cuban suspicions on this score are not assuaged, certainly,
by statements such as those of State Department spokesman
Richard Boucher, who reacted to the whole episode by saying
that the arrest of the dissidents reflected the desperation
of the Castro government, which "realizes that it is nearing
its end." In other words, he is saying, the regime change we
want must be near at hand.

The Cuban government has raised the possibility of closing
the two interests sections in retaliation. One hopes the
Cubans will think twice about that, especially as that would
seem to be precisely what the Bush administration is hoping
for. What better way to close off contact than by provoking
the closing of the interests sections?

Then there are also the matters of massive visa denials to
Cuban officials and academics, of refusals to allow the
donation of computers and other equipment to Cuban
children's hospitals, of tightened travel controls on U.S.
citizens, and of various other newly instituted measures.

What it all comes down to is that rather than responding to
majority public opinion and beginning to ease tensions and
engage with Cuba, the Bush administration is not only
sticking to the same old hard-line policy of threats,
embargo and trying to isolate the island, it is actually
showing increased hostility, perhaps in the hope that just a
little more pressure will bring about Castro's downfall.

But that policy and those tactics haven't worked in over 40
years and they won't work now. Quite the contrary, they are
likely to backfire.

-------------------
Wayne S. Smith's foreign service experience in Cuba extended
from 1958 to 1982, when he retired as chief of mission at
the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. Since then, he has
traveled to Cuba several times a year, as both a professor
at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy in Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel



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