Paul Greenberg. The
Washington Times. February 20, 2002.
The latest senator to call for an end to the American embargo on trade
with Cuba is Arkansas' Blanche Lincoln. Faced with a hard choice between
anti-communist principle and farm-state profit, she has chosen the profitable
course. But she calls it principle. It's a neat trick, and here's how she
brought it off at an international trade conference in Cancun, Mexico:
In one and the same speech, the junior senator from Arkansas (a)
denounced Fidel Castro's always denounceable regime and (b) came out for trading
with the enemy of democracy. That way, she can pay eloquent lip service to
freedom while pleasing those back home with an interest in revving up trade with
Cuba.
How does the senator reconcile her contradictory positions? Ending the
embargo, she explains, would bring democratic reform to that prison isle. Sure
it would. The way our exports of oil and scrap iron to the Japanese Empire in
the '30s turned it into a peaceful democracy. The way continuing Lend-Lease to
Russia after the Second World War would have eased Josef Stalin's grip on power.
Blanche Lincoln has to know better. It was American sanctions, not
American investment, that helped end apartheid in South Africa. Nor has our
trade with Communist China, especially the export of missile technology during
the Clinton years, lessened the danger to Taiwan, the last redoubt of free
China.
But here is the junior senator from Arkansas pretending that doing
business with Fidel Castro's brutal dictatorship will soften it up. To believe
that, you have to overlook the primary aim of every totalitarian regime: to
privilege those who run it. Cuba's ruling elite would like to revive the
island's trade with this country because, you can be sure, they'll get their
share of the profits. The crumbs they'll throw to the masses might allay popular
discontent a while longer.
Communism is less a political or economic philosophy than a criminal
conspiracy. After almost a half-century of Fidelism, Cuba's people may be
destitute, but who ever saw a starving commissar?
When visiting capitalists and well-behaved pols like Blanche Lincoln
come to Havana, the banquets with Fidel are lavish. But while they're being
lectured for hours by a bearded megalomaniac, a few blocks away prostitutes seek
out tourists, and desperate families plot their escape in some leaky tub.
The most common product of all communist countries, whatever their
locale, is refugees. Unable to vote in free elections, people vote with their
feet.
Cuba's people, at least those without connections, are already excluded
from the fancy resorts reserved for foreign tourists, just as the Soviet Union
used to give foreigners special, segregated treatment. To quote a report from
Human Rights Watch, "In a phenomenon popularly known as 'tourist
apartheid,' the best hotels, resorts, beaches and restaurants are off-limits to
most Cubans, as are certain health institutions."
Cubans have been divided into two nations — the few with dollars
and the many without. No wonder the great ambition of so many Cubans is to get
out of Cuba — if they can. Whatever social ills Fidel Castro may see in
capitalism, no capitalist society ever had to build a wall to keep its people
in.
The Cuban regime already takes almost all the pay earned by workers for
foreign companies, and since it allows no independent labor unions, there's no
one to protest such thievery. What makes Mrs. Lincoln think Cuba's little
kleptocracy will not appropriate the lion's share of American trade and
investment, too?
By all means, end the embargo on Cuba — as soon as Fidel ends his
repression. Resume trade with that once vibrant island as soon as its caudillo
allows free elections, restores civil liberties, frees his political prisoners
and respects private property. And not a moment before.
But the senator from Arkansas, the rice bowl of the United States,
knows that relaxing the embargo could mean an estimated $167 million in exports
to Fidel's fiefdom from just this one state. That kind of money is too tempting
to pass up, especially if we can pretend that trading with Communist Cuba will
somehow free its people — instead of tightening their chains.
Like every other communist regime, Cuba looks to the capitalism it
denounces to save it. And there will always be those capitalists eager to
oblige, especially if the cost is to be paid by the American taxpayer, For how
is a broke Cuba going to buy $167 million worth of American products every year?
With a subsidy from the American government, of course. That'll be the next
step.
Cuba's economy is in tatters after all these years of the Maximum
Leader's guiding genius, and there's no longer a Soviet Union to send it $5
billion a year in subsidies. Without outside trade and aid, Cuba's police state
could grow as shaky as its aging dictator. At this pivotal moment, why should
the Land of the Free come to the rescue of Fidel's sordid little tyranny? Let it
fall of its own rot.
Blanche Lincoln isn't the first American eager to do business with one
ruthless dictatorship or another, but by claiming that such trade would
strengthen freedom, she's definitely one of the more imaginative.
Paul Greenberg is a nationally syndicated columnist.
All site contents copyright © 2002 News World
Communications, Inc. | 
