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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 5/26/2000 The Confederate Government In Exile--better known as the Congressional Republican
leadership--has decided that trade with China is the right thing to do. Not the right
thing to do as in "best for the long-term security interests of the United States."
Rather, it's the right thing to do as in "our corporate masters want it."
Trent Lott and Dick Armey can somehow muster the poltical courage to normalize trade
with a billion people half-a-world away. But they refuse to do the same with Cuba. The
theory that free trade and communication will eventually undercut China's dictators
somehow doesn't translate into Spanish. But the reason is pretty simple. Lott, Armey,
the aptly-named Tom DeLay and the rest are snugly in the guayabera pocket of the same
South Florida radicals who hate Castro so much they were willing to try and kidnap a six
year old boy.
The politically powerful Miami Cuban exiles have kicked in megabucks to GOP campaign
coffers for decades. So the U.S. has been pretty well content for them to use American
foreign policy toward Cuba as their own sandbox. But Elian Gonzalez and the farm crisis
have changed all that. The rest of the country now sees the narrow-minded anti-Castro
fringe in Miami for what it is--a well-financed group of one-issue fundamentalists
who want to run a mango republic (sorry, we're out of bananas) on U.S. soil.
At the same timem, farms in the heartland are going out of business at a pace faster
even than in the 1980's. Our dot com prosperity hasn't extended to the dot combines.
Farmers want markets, and Cuba's 12 million people are close, and closed-off.
It doesn't take much for the GOP leadership to be out of touch with the American
people, since they still beleive General Lee thought Grant was a blacksmith and handed
him his sword to be sharpened. But for the Republican top brass to be out of touch
with their own party takes a lttle more doing.
Take what happened this last week in the House. The Appropriations Committee
voted to exempt food and medicine from the 38-year old U.S. embargo against Cuba. This
came amid growing noise from rank-and-file Republicans that it was time to chuck the
embargo altogether. The bill, sponsored by GOP conservatives from Kentucky and
Missouri, was pulled from the House calender by Delay and Armey. As Missouri Republican
Congresswoman Jo Anne Emerson noted, "they didn't want a vote because they knew they'd
lose".
Or take last year, when another Missourian, Repubican Senator John Ashcroft,
sponsored a bill to lift the food and medicine embargo against Cuba. It passed with
72 votes, and left Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott so furious he'll still barely
speak to Ashcroft. At one point in the vote, Lott leaned over the desk of Illinois
Democrat Dick Durbin and hissed, "The only ones for this are pinkos and aggies, and
you're both."
The reason for the pigheadedness of the Senate and House leadership isn't hard to
figure. They care less about the national security of the United States than they
do about their own campaign chests. And they're not alone. Vice President Gore did
a shameful about-face on Elian simply because he feared for the millions of refugee
dollars the Democrats had been able to wring out of the Cuban-American machine.
An economic embargo is America's way of saying "We hate your government, so we want
you to rise up in the streets against your rulers, and we'll starve you until you do."
Castro has outlated Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and now Clinton.
All the embargo has done is enable him to blame his own failures on the United States.
National security dictates that we drop the embargo, now. After Castro, the U.S.
wants to be in a position to influence events, to stop a bloody civil war before it
starts, to stop a mass exodus of millions of Cuban refugess to our shore before it
starts. The best way to do that is flood Cuba with U.S. dollars and tourists, snooping
where we're not supposed to, spreading subversive ideas like democracy and free trade
and open communications. That sort of revolution from underneath will succeed where
the Bay of Pigs failed. It would make Castro irrelevant to his own people.
The Cuban embargo will be history soon. And it will be brought down by the
Republican rank-and-file in Congress.
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