[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 63 (Wednesday, April 5, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S5269]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                          GET OFF CUBA'S BACK

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, William Raspberry's column in the 
Washington Post and other newspapers around the Nation frequently gives 
us insights into our society and our policies that are important.
  Recently, he had a column under the title ``Get Off Cuba's Back'' 
that pointed out how ridiculous our current policy toward Cuba is.
  As I have said on the floor before, if Fidel Castro and the Soviet 
Union had a series of meetings to create an American policy that would 
make sure Castro would remain in power, they could not have devised a 
better policy than the one the United States has followed.
  We should forget our illusions about overthrowing Castro, and move in 
the direction of trying to influence him to ameliorate his policies.
  The William Raspberry column hits the nail on the head.
  I ask that the column be printed in the Record.
  The column follows:

                [From the Washington Post, Apr. 3, 1995]

                          Get Off Cuba's Back

                         (By William Raspberry)

       Why doesn't the United States get off Cuba's back?
       The question is meant literally, not rhetorically. In what 
     way is it in the interest of the United States to cut Cuba 
     off from the rest of the world, to wreck its economy and 
     starve its people?
       When there was a Cold War, the reasons were understandable 
     enough--even to those who disagreed with them. Cuba was on 
     outpost of international communism and right in our back 
     yard. Communist leaders, whether in the Soviet Union or in 
     China, were eager to use Fidel Castro as an annoyance to the 
     United States and as the means of spreading communism 
     throughout the hemisphere. There were even times when the 
     communist-expansion-by-proxy scheme seemed to be working, and 
     it didn't make sense for us to sit idly by and let it happen.
       The alternate? Isolate Cuba from its neighbors, crush pro-
     communist revolutions wherever they occurred in the region, 
     encourage the Cuban people to overthrow their despotic leader 
     and serve notice to the communist world that it would be 
     permitted no exploitable foothold 90 miles from our shores. 
     That, as far as I can figure it, is how our opposition to 
     Castro's Cuba became such an obsession.
       But that was then. This is now, and I cannot find any 
     logical reason for continuing our Cold War attitude toward 
     Cuba--or Castro. Certainly there is no threat that anyone 
     else in Latin America will be tempted to follow Cuba's 
     disastrous economic path. Cuba, no longer anyone's well-
     financed puppet, is hardly a military or political threat to 
     destabilize its neighbors. And If anything is clear, it's 
     that the Cubans (in Cuba) have no intention of overthrowing 
     the aging Castro.
       But even if they did, so what? Absent the Cold War, why do 
     we care that Castro continues to try to manage a communist 
     state? Doesn't China, with whom we are panting to do more 
     business? We're buddy-buddy with the Russians now--lending 
     them money, supporting their leaders and again, doing 
     business with them.
       Isn't there business to be done with Cuba? To this recently 
     reformed cigar smoker, the answer is obvious. And not just 
     Habanas, either. There's sugar and rum and tourism on their 
     side and (prospectively) cars and machinery and other sales 
     and service opportunities on ours.
       Isn't it likely that international trade and the 
     concomitant exposure of Cuban citizens to the advantages of 
     capitalism would do more to move Cuba away from communism 
     than has a 30-year U.S.-led embargo of the island?
       Or can it be that we don't care whether Cuba abandons 
     communism or not? Officially, of course, we do care. It is, 
     ostensibly, what our policy is about. Members of Congress--
     notably Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) and much of the Florida 
     delegation--justify their call for yet tougher sanctions 
     against Cuba on the ground that the new measures will finally 
     topple the regime.
       My fear is that the motivations are less philosophical--and 
     significantly less noble--than that. Two things seem to be 
     driving our anti-Castro policy: Cubans in Florida and sheer 
     vengeance.
       Few politicians with aspirations for national leadership 
     seem willing to take on the Miami-based Cubans who (like the 
     followers of Chiang Kai-shek) see themselves as a sort of 
     government-in-exile and dream of a triumphant return to their 
     homeland. There being no significant pro-Castro lobby here, 
     the hopeful antis carry the political day.
       Keeping these next-Christmas-in-Havana dreamers tractable 
     is, I suspect, one reason for our policy. The other may be a 
     sort of institutional rage that Castro has withstood an 
     international missile confrontation, the Bay of Pigs, any 
     number of unsuccessful CIA plots against him and the demise 
     of international communism--and still sits there as a rebuke 
     to our hegemony.
       Our officials keep hinting that Castro is ailing, or aging 
     or losing his iron-fisted control. No need to think of 
     economic concessions or diplomatic rethinking now. . . just 
     hold out a few months longer, and watch him fall like a ripe 
     plum.
       And, of course, use our political and economic power to 
     shake the tree.
       But to what purpose of ours? Isn't it time to stop making 
     our official hatred of one increasingly harmless old man the 
     basis of our foreign policy?
       Why don't we get off Cuba's back?
       

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