COHA on Cuba

The latest ill-fated salvo in President Bush’s poorly-focused rhetorical war against Cuba, which was just issued, once again fell far short of the target. In minimizing the importance of the reforms now being witnessed in Havana, Bush continues his record of trivializing U.S.-Latin America policy and undermining its lack of coherence and relevance regarding the important reforms now occurring almost daily on the island.


It is not an exaggeration to say that, under Bush, U.S. influence in Latin America is at its lowest point since the end of World War II. Much of the low esteem in which Washington is now held is due to the dead weight of its unremitting sterile policy toward Cuba that has pulled the State Department down to where its regional initiatives are scorned by almost any other country inside or outside of the region.


Ironically, Bush’s wasted words occurred some time after the E.U.’s senior development commissioner, Louis Michel, visited Cuba and urged all E.U. sanctions against the country be scrapped. Whatever shortcomings Cuba now exhibits in terms of the lack of civic guarantees it offers to its citizens—and there are many— President Bush would be well advised to inspect any number of important U.S. institutions that have been gored and disgraced by his own dysfunctional and constitutionally challenged administration and an all but illiterate diplomacy, that has produced neither tangible results nor appreciable leverage, over Cuba. In spite of the unrelenting hostility, the island today has a stronger economy and a brighter history of diplomatic success which consistently has out-trumped Washington on an almost daily basis.


President Bush’s verbiage may make the Florida delegation of exile representatives Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Connie Mack, full of admiration, but it has no standing with most Americans who look upon U.S.-Cuba policy with a sense of embarrassment and despair.

Originally published May 8, 2008