If only Castro is gone - America should play a quiet, discreet role in a post-Castro Cuba
If only Castro is gone - America should play a quiet, discreet role in a post-Castro Cuba
Georgie Ann Geyer, a syndicated columnist based in Washington: Universal Press Syndicate
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published August 4, 2006
WASHINGTON -- If there is one word that most definitely does not define Fidel Castro--in any of its possible meanings--it is "resigned."
Castro has never been resigned to anything, not across his whole life. He created worldwide power out of a powerless little island in the Caribbean and remains today, at nearly 80 and having outlasted nine American presidents, the quintessential modern revolutionary. Nor did he ever, ever seriously think of resigning from his position as the Cuban totalitarian version of El Supremo. Cuba would not exist without him!
So when the Cuban president "resigned" his position this week because of illness--a "sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding"--the world took notice. Oh, it was to be temporary, two weeks, and his little brother Raul, 75, and six other top Cuban leaders would temporarily take power. But the world is changing before our eyes, and everyone knows it: The Fidel Castro era is coming to an end.
But what is to come next? The scariest part of the scenario is that the U.S. administration--once again--knew exactly what was right for the old-new Cuba! The White House and even the supposedly more analytical State Department did not miss a beat, a deadline or a breath. Before Castro could even settle down in his hospital bed, we were already constructing the new Cuba, to be built, apparently, on our recent successes in constructing the new Iraq, the new Afghanistan, the new Palestine and the new Lebanon.
"If Fidel Castro were to move on because of natural causes," President Bush said on Miami's Spanish-language Radio Mambi just before the illness was announced, "we've got a plan in place to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under. No one knows when Fidel Castro will move on. In my judgment, that's the work of the almighty."
Then, after the illness was announced Monday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow put the administration's thoughts in further order. There would be no reaching out to Raul Castro, because "Raul Castro's attempt to impose himself on the Cuban people is much the same as what his brother did. The one thing that [Bush] has talked about from the very beginning is his hope for the Cuban people, finally, to enjoy the fruits of freedom and democracy. ... We stand ready to help."
But already such ideas were moving far beyond words in Washington. Only three weeks before the reports of Castro's deteriorating health, the results of a presidential commission on what comes after Castro were released. They called for an $80 million program to bolster non-governmental groups in Cuba, "assistance in preparing the Cuban military forces to adjust to an appropriate role in a democracy" and an entire program of "aid" to the new Cuba that in fact only amounts to more historical American meddling on that island 90 miles to the south.
Perhaps it is prudent here to see Cuba the way the president and his avid democratizers see it. Obviously, they see a long-suffering people yearning for freedom, for American tutelage, to be just like the Americanos. Sort of like our original ideas about Iraq, only now in the tropics, close by and so much easier to get to!
But this is not Cuba today--and, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Cubans have over the years chosen the danger of leaving for the United States, it will not be the post-Castro Cuba. This will be a Cuba of sullen, frightened people; of people who have known only one leader for 47 years and who have submitted to him; of people who will feel both guilt at that submission and some fleeting joy, but who will not know where to go next; of people who will rightfully fear that the Miami Cubans will come back and reclaim their old property; of people who have to be de-ideologized from Castro before they can become something else.
And, remember, Latin America is deep into the process of moving toward Castro's authoritarian-caudillo far-left example, whether Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador or Argentina. There are tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, sports trainers and teachers working and being paid well in leftist Venezuela; are they, or the military that has supported Castro so passionately for nearly five decades, going to turn around and say to El Norte, "Hey, you were right. We've been wrong all these years. Here we are, take us!"
I am not one to dwell on America's past mistakes, but it is a foolish person in foreign policy indeed who does not acknowledge them--and their outcomes. We have a very checkered history with Cuba, ever since, at the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898, we took the victory away from the Cuban fighters in Santiago de Cuba, leaving them on the outskirts of town.
The task of America in the next stage of our relationship with this important neighbor should be not to threaten them, as we did this week, with more American intervention, abhorred across Latin America, but to do what Bush's wise father and Secretary of State James Baker did with Eastern Europe. When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was letting the East go free, they were quiet, discreet, prudent, not rubbing anyone's nose in anything but only taking actions that would work instead of backfire and create more years of misery.
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E-mail: gigigeyer@juno.com
Georgie Ann Geyer, a syndicated columnist based in Washington: Universal Press Syndicate
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Published August 4, 2006
WASHINGTON -- If there is one word that most definitely does not define Fidel Castro--in any of its possible meanings--it is "resigned."
Castro has never been resigned to anything, not across his whole life. He created worldwide power out of a powerless little island in the Caribbean and remains today, at nearly 80 and having outlasted nine American presidents, the quintessential modern revolutionary. Nor did he ever, ever seriously think of resigning from his position as the Cuban totalitarian version of El Supremo. Cuba would not exist without him!
So when the Cuban president "resigned" his position this week because of illness--a "sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding"--the world took notice. Oh, it was to be temporary, two weeks, and his little brother Raul, 75, and six other top Cuban leaders would temporarily take power. But the world is changing before our eyes, and everyone knows it: The Fidel Castro era is coming to an end.
But what is to come next? The scariest part of the scenario is that the U.S. administration--once again--knew exactly what was right for the old-new Cuba! The White House and even the supposedly more analytical State Department did not miss a beat, a deadline or a breath. Before Castro could even settle down in his hospital bed, we were already constructing the new Cuba, to be built, apparently, on our recent successes in constructing the new Iraq, the new Afghanistan, the new Palestine and the new Lebanon.
"If Fidel Castro were to move on because of natural causes," President Bush said on Miami's Spanish-language Radio Mambi just before the illness was announced, "we've got a plan in place to help the people of Cuba understand there's a better way than the system in which they've been living under. No one knows when Fidel Castro will move on. In my judgment, that's the work of the almighty."
Then, after the illness was announced Monday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow put the administration's thoughts in further order. There would be no reaching out to Raul Castro, because "Raul Castro's attempt to impose himself on the Cuban people is much the same as what his brother did. The one thing that [Bush] has talked about from the very beginning is his hope for the Cuban people, finally, to enjoy the fruits of freedom and democracy. ... We stand ready to help."
But already such ideas were moving far beyond words in Washington. Only three weeks before the reports of Castro's deteriorating health, the results of a presidential commission on what comes after Castro were released. They called for an $80 million program to bolster non-governmental groups in Cuba, "assistance in preparing the Cuban military forces to adjust to an appropriate role in a democracy" and an entire program of "aid" to the new Cuba that in fact only amounts to more historical American meddling on that island 90 miles to the south.
Perhaps it is prudent here to see Cuba the way the president and his avid democratizers see it. Obviously, they see a long-suffering people yearning for freedom, for American tutelage, to be just like the Americanos. Sort of like our original ideas about Iraq, only now in the tropics, close by and so much easier to get to!
But this is not Cuba today--and, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Cubans have over the years chosen the danger of leaving for the United States, it will not be the post-Castro Cuba. This will be a Cuba of sullen, frightened people; of people who have known only one leader for 47 years and who have submitted to him; of people who will feel both guilt at that submission and some fleeting joy, but who will not know where to go next; of people who will rightfully fear that the Miami Cubans will come back and reclaim their old property; of people who have to be de-ideologized from Castro before they can become something else.
And, remember, Latin America is deep into the process of moving toward Castro's authoritarian-caudillo far-left example, whether Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador or Argentina. There are tens of thousands of Cuban doctors, sports trainers and teachers working and being paid well in leftist Venezuela; are they, or the military that has supported Castro so passionately for nearly five decades, going to turn around and say to El Norte, "Hey, you were right. We've been wrong all these years. Here we are, take us!"
I am not one to dwell on America's past mistakes, but it is a foolish person in foreign policy indeed who does not acknowledge them--and their outcomes. We have a very checkered history with Cuba, ever since, at the end of the Spanish-American war in 1898, we took the victory away from the Cuban fighters in Santiago de Cuba, leaving them on the outskirts of town.
The task of America in the next stage of our relationship with this important neighbor should be not to threaten them, as we did this week, with more American intervention, abhorred across Latin America, but to do what Bush's wise father and Secretary of State James Baker did with Eastern Europe. When Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was letting the East go free, they were quiet, discreet, prudent, not rubbing anyone's nose in anything but only taking actions that would work instead of backfire and create more years of misery.
----------
E-mail: gigigeyer@juno.com
posted by Carlos T Mock at 10:38 AM
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