[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 124 (Thursday, August 25, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 25, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                 ``YOU THOUGHT THE COLD WAR WAS DEAD?''

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, there is a great deal of attention 
on Cuba right now, and a great deal of irrationality continues to 
dominate American policy.
  Robert Scheer, former Los Angeles Times national correspondent, 
recently had a op-ed piece about Cuba.
  I know talking sense about Cuba is not politically popular, but it 
certainly makes sense.
  I ask to insert his column into the Record at this point.
  The column follows:

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Aug. 19, 1994]

                   You Thought the Cold War Was Dead?

                           (By Robert Scheer)

       Fidel Castro should start futzing around with the rods in 
     his nuclear power plant at Cienfuegos, or hint that he's 
     bought some of the plutonium that's being smuggled out of 
     Russia. Anything to make it look like he's building a bomb. 
     That way the Clinton Administration, following the example of 
     its policy toward North Korea, would feel required to lift 
     the economic embargo that has strangled Cuba for 33 years. 
     Nothing else seems to work to get this Administration to re-
     evaluate a policy of isolating Cuba that made little sense 
     when the Cold War was on and is simply bizarre in its 
     aftermath.
       How in the world can the Clinton Administration justify 
     diplomatic recognition and trade with the communist nations 
     of China, Vietnam and now North Korea while maintaining the 
     trade embargo with Cuba because its a communist country? Is 
     it that the Asian reds are no longer reds, or that they have 
     a better human-rights record, or pose less of a potential 
     military threat?
       To argue any of that would be absurd. North Korea is 
     suddenly presented with diplomatic exchange, trade and 
     billions in nuclear technology without even being requested 
     to make the slightest alterations in what remains one of the 
     world's most tightly repressive and bellicose regimes.
       The opening to China, and more recently to Vietnam, was 
     justified by reference to those countries being open to 
     foreign investment. The U.S. embargo makes such investments 
     on the part of American corporations, and their foreign 
     subsidiaries, in Cuba illegal. Despite severe U.S. pressure, 
     112 joint ventures worth $500 million were put into place in 
     the past three years by British, Italian, French and Spanish 
     companies.
       U.S. Cuba policy is irrational, yet rarely is Clinton 
     challenged by reporters on the obvious contradiction of 
     continuing the Cold War against Cuba. We blockaded Cuba three 
     decades ago because that small island was judged an outpost 
     of Soviet power. Has Clinton not noticed that the Soviet 
     Union no longer exists?
       The sad truth is that Cubans are being denied the benefits 
     of trade afforded the Chinese and Vietnamese because of a 
     hard-line emigre claque in Miami. There is ample evidence 
     that they no longer speak for many Cubans eager to aid 
     relatives on the island, but they are still terrific at 
     intimidation.
       One who is clearly intimidated is Bill Clinton. In the 1992 
     election, he supported the tightening of the trade embargo 
     which George Bush, like Ronald Reagan previously, had 
     opposed. Thanks to Clinton and the Democratic Congress, the 
     embargo was tightened in brazen denial of the changed world 
     reality. This action was condemned by an 88-4 vote in the 
     United Nations. It was a stupidly cruel move that hurt 
     ordinary Cubans while saving Castro the challenges of a more 
     open society.
       As Roger Fontaine, former national security aide in the 
     Reagan Administration, wrote:
       ``The 1992 law is a policy of impoverishing Cubans at the 
     behest of the most militant conservative groups in the emigre 
     community. It is polarizing Cuba--driving many anti-Castro 
     Cubans back into Mr. Castro's camp . . . and enhancing his 
     reputation as a fearless fighter of Yankee capitalism.''
       But let's say the policy works and we succeed in ratcheting 
     up the misery of ordinary Cubans already suffering from the 
     abrupt withdrawal of Soviet subsidies. Is upheaval and 
     disarray in Cuba really in our national interest? Have we no 
     memory of the Mariel boat lift? Are we really prepared to 
     take in millions of more Cuban refugees when we currently 
     imprison Haitian refugees at our Cuban base in Guantanamo?
       We continue to view Castro as nothing more than an outlaw 
     while blindly ignoring our nation's past crimes in his 
     region, including numerous documented efforts to sabotage the 
     Cuban economy and to assassinate Fidel.
       His rule has been complex, filled with major achievements 
     as in education and health and profound failure in civil 
     liberty. There is no need to whitewash Castro any more than 
     to continue demonizing him. But surely, if we can get along 
     with the very people whom we fought in Vietnam and Korea, we 
     can heal the wounds left over from the minor skirmish of the 
     Bay of Pigs.
       If Clinton fails this test of leadership and allows the 
     situation to deteriorate, the cost in the suffering attendant 
     to internecine warfare in Cuba will make a upheaval of the 
     Mariel boat lift, and the more recent Haitian exodus and 
     Cuban rafters, seem like a Caribbean cruise.

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