[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 59 (Wednesday, April 22, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4529-S4530]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        U.S. POLICY TOWARD CUBA

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last month during the vote on the omnibus 
bill we heard the beginnings of a discussion on the best way to 
encourage change in Cuba. Shortly thereafter several of my colleagues, 
including Senators Dorgan, Lugar, Dodd, and Enzi spoke about their 
bill, the Freedom to Travel to Cuba Act, which I am pleased to 
cosponsor.
  And last week President Obama announced an easing of U.S. policy 
toward Cuba--one that allows for, among other things, greater family 
travel and unlimited remittances to the island. These wise steps begin 
to undo decades of counterproductive policy toward Cuba.
  The President's similarly timed visits to Mexico and the Summit of 
the Americas in Trinidad demonstrate a welcome and hopeful level of 
reengagement in the region--one in which we have many shared interests 
and challenges.
  Yet the debate on U.S. policy toward Cuba raises many passions and 
heart felt concerns.
  While all of us want to see a more open and democratic Cuba, the 
means to reach that goal are often vigorously debated.
  I am under no illusions about the horrendous record of the Cuban 
regime regarding human rights and political freedom. The Castro 
government has regularly jailed those who oppose its rule or want even 
a semblance of political freedom. Many languish in inhuman conditions 
without trial or recourse.
  According to the State Department's most recent Human Rights Report 
on

[[Page S4530]]

Cuba, at least 205 political prisoners and detainees were in jail at 
the end of 2008 and as many as 5,000 citizens, including 1,000 women, 
served sentences this year without being charged with a specific crime.
  Beatings and harassment of human rights activists and political 
dissidents by government-recruited mobs, police, and state security 
officials remain commonplace. Journalists continue to be denied the 
right to openly criticize their government without fear of reprisal. 
And domestic human rights groups are not even recognized or permitted 
to legally function.
  We all want this to change. It must change.
  Yet for almost 50 years the United States has tried the same policy 
with Cuba, one of isolation, and it has failed.
  I wish that were not true, but it is.
  I believe sanctions can be an important foreign policy tool. Their 
use should be carefully considered on a case by case basis.
  Yet after almost half a century of a failed isolation policy in terms 
of Cuba, don't we owe it to ourselves and the Cuban people to rethink 
this issue?
  I am not arguing that we lift all sanctions against Cuba. The regime 
must begin to release its political prisoners and implement political 
reforms before we take any such steps.
  The Cuban government must listen to the brave voices of its own 
people such as Oswaldo Paya, who has collected thousands of signatures 
for a petition given to the Cuban government requesting greater 
political freedoms--a petition process that is in fact allowed for 
under the Cuban constitution.
  But President Obama was right in beginning to change U.S. policy 
toward Cuba.
  Cuba is no longer a serious threat to the United States; we no longer 
need to think in black or white Cold War terms. Since that time, we 
have seen globalization, an unprecedented flow of information between 
people in different countries, and the emergence of many new countries 
seeking democracy.
  Why should the people of Cuba be held back from the benefits of this 
new world? There is already limited use of the Internet and cell phones 
on the island--but I bet if you ask the Cuban people, they would tell 
you they want more access to these links to the outside world, not 
less. President Obama's policy of allowing telecommunications licensing 
on the island should help foster such access to the outside world.
  We should replace the Castro regime with an open, democratic Cuba the 
same way we brought down the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union. We need 
to expand the contact of everyday Cubans with freedom, opportunity and 
people whose lives are inspired by our values.
  Isolation is not the answer. An invasion is the answer--but not a 
military invasion; the invasion of openness and freedom and new ideas.
  It is not a Pollyanna-ish position to argue this. My mother was born 
in Lithuania. Lithuania, a Baltic nation, was under suppression by the 
Soviet Union after World War II, isolated, cut off from the world as 
was most of Eastern Europe. But then the day came when the conversation 
opened, when the doors opened, when the people of the Baltics and 
Eastern Europe could see the Western world and realize how much their 
lives had been denied by totalitarian rule.
  I think the same thing can happen in Cuba. We should not be closing 
the doors to Cuba. We should throw them wide open. I had some friends 
who recently went to Cuba, through Mexico, with a visa. They came back 
and said, ``You know, they are still using oxen for power in their 
agriculture.'' Yoking oxen, in the 21st century, 90 miles offshore from 
the United States? If they knew and could see what modern agriculture 
could bring to them, if they could understand what freedom meant, even 
more, we would have a greater chance of bringing real change to Cuba.
  Earlier this year, Congress eased travel restrictions. President 
Obama has eased them further. The more Americans and Westerners move 
into Cuba, the more they will bring ideas and commerce and opportunity 
and change to Cuba. Isolation for 50 years has failed. Why would we 
cling to a failed policy?
  It is a poor country, a nation that struggles with natural disasters 
as well as poverty of its own creation and one that would be open to 
change and opportunity.
  I might also say that the embargo which we have imposed has hurt our 
chances to export food to Cuba, which is needed. We should open those 
opportunities in the hopes that commerce will not only feed people who 
are hungry but establish stronger relationships and a better 
understanding by the Cubans of what a free market economy could bring 
them. The U.S. policy of isolation strengthens the Castro 
dictatorship. If at a time when we should be opening the doors by 
closing them, we gave Castro, Fidel Castro, and his brother Raul 
excuses for the misfortunes that people realize in Cuba, we have an 
opportunity to change those things, and I certainly hope that we do.

  It was interesting to me when the President of the United States went 
down for this Summit of the Americas, the biggest story that came out 
of it was the fact that he was not rude to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, 
that he actually shook his hand and took a book from him.
  Some of the cold warriors that I hear on television, the commentators 
just cannot get over that. They cannot imagine that we would change a 
foreign policy that we have had over the Bush administration years, a 
policy that sadly did not reach its intended goals of better 
relationships and better respect around the world.
  President Obama is opening negotiations and conversations with 
countries around the world and creating an opportunity, an opportunity 
for new freedom, an opportunity for new strength, and a new image of 
the United States. It may trouble some of the cold warriors of years 
gone by who want confrontation and lack of communication, but that 
certainly does not serve the needs of the 21st century.
  I welcome this change that President Obama has brought to Washington. 
I welcome this opening of foreign policy in the hope that his approach 
and his image and status in the world will bring us to a safer place in 
the 21st century.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, what is the parliamentary situation?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Bennet.) The Senate is in morning business 
with 5 minutes remaining under the majority's control.
  Mr. LEAHY. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to compliment the 
distinguished senior Senator from Illinois for what he just said. As he 
knows, of course, he was the earliest supporter of his then-colleague, 
then-Senator Barack Obama, and he knows I also supported him very early 
on.
  I was asked why I supported then-Senator Obama, and I said because we 
have to reintroduce America to the rest of the world. I believe we are 
a great and wonderful nation. We are the Nation of the Marshall Plan, 
the Peace Corps, the Nation that brought together a coalition to defeat 
the fascists and the Nazis and others in World War II. We are a great 
nation. We discovered polio vaccines. We have done so much. The rest of 
the world had lost sight of that. There is animosity toward our ``it is 
our way or no way'' approach. It is the ``we are right you are wrong'' 
attitude of this country and the reference to ``Old Europe'' and things 
like this that were so dismissively done. Any of us who traveled around 
the world realized how that was.
  As a proud American, as one who believes we do live in the greatest 
democracy history has ever known, I wanted to reintroduce America, the 
America I believe in, to the rest of the world. That is why I supported 
Barack Obama. That is why I was glad to see President Obama reintroduce 
us first in Europe and then in Latin America.
  The Senator from Illinois is absolutely right. It is all I hear in my 
State, a State that has a very strong sense of internationalism but a 
very strong sense of patriotism: Thank goodness somebody is showing 
what America is.
  I commend the President for doing that.

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