Ambassador Susan Rice

Today for the twentieth time the US will embarrass itself in the court of international public opinion when the General Assembly votes on our Cuba embargo..

I feel for Susan Rice, our extraordinary Permanent Representative to the United Nations, or the functionary who will carry her water, as they defend the indefensible, fifty years of unilateral and internationally condemned economic warfare against a neighbor for daring to be different.

Presumably we will again have only Israel by our side, its ears burning from hypocrisy.  Israel's citizens freely vacation, work and invest in Cuba, unlike the Americans whose lonely hand they hold.  The former head of the Mosad intelligence agency for years managed Cuba's largest citrus plantation.  

The world does not know whether to laugh at us for our absurdity, despise us for our bullying or pity us because a tiny minority of embittered exiles so easily dominate our foreign policy.

The President can hardly join the near unanimous opposition to US policy, but he could show the decency to abstain.

Laura Pollan, a founding member and leader of the Ladies in White, passed away in Havana after a brief illness this week.   While many Cubans may not know who she was, those who marched with her these last 9 years are missing her and vowing to keep the group she led moving forward.  The women’s group started as a silent protest after Mass each Sunday, after their loved ones were arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences in the spring of 2003 for what the Cuban government said was collaboration with a hostile foreign power (the U.S. of course).  For many years, the Ladies made a statement by saying nothing, just walking on 5^th Avenue, dressed all in white and carrying gladiolas in their hands.  In the last couple of years, the group was becoming more visible and political, and perhaps it was for that that pro-government crowds began harassing and intimidating the Ladies in Havana and Santiago on a number of occasions.  Whatever one might think of another’s politics – their means, their bedfellows, their objectives  – those who would intimidate only denigrate themselves when resorting to such tactics.  Remembering Pollan, Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez wonders what those who pushed and yelled at Pollan might feel now.

Speaking of pushing and yelling, House Foreign Affairs Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is at it again, so to speak.  This time her target was a Cuban children’s theater group, the famous La Colmenita (the Little Beehive).   The group of performers, ages 6 -15, came to Washington, DC this week and “brought down the house” at the Duke Ellington Theater Wednesday night.  Ros-Lehtinen sent an indignant complaint to the State Department this week.  Her beef is with one of the acts the children perform, “inspired by the story of the Cuban Five who are hailed as national heroes in Cuba for their efforts to prevent militant Cuban exile groups from harming Cuban citizens.”  Ros-Lehtinen characterizes the Five quite differently – they were sent to the U.S. to “carry out illicit operations against our homeland,” and convicted of “espionage activities.”  The Five’s work was indeed illicit – agents of foreign governments must register when they are working in our country, and they did not.  But they weren't targeting the American homeland, they were in Miami keeping tabs on groups that were targeting their own homeland.  La Colmenita's director, whose father perished on Cubana flight 455 (downed by terrorists in 1976), shot back:

“She is treating us as if we were terrorists when the facts are quite the opposite. It is a small segment of the Cuban exile community who has used threats and violence to keep Americans and Cubans apart. We are simply Cuban artists who are coming to the U.S. with a message of social justice, peace and understanding. All we want to do is to share our stories with those Americans who want to know more about the things that are important to the Cuban people...”

It always comes down to the fact that one person’s bad guy is another person’s good guy.  (Ros-Lehtinen should know this as well as anyone, since she campaigned for a pardon for Orlando Bosch, whom the FBI implicated in the Cubana attack, among others.) Ros-Lehtinen suggests in her letter that the State Department is misusing taxpayer funds by allowing exchanges such as this one to take place, though it's unclear why, since the group's visit was funded by a private entity, The Brownstone Foundation.  With the number of snowflakes the Chairwoman sends over to State on Cuba policy these days, it’s a wonder she gets anything else accomplished with her taxpayer-funds. 

Finally, I was going to just leave news of the Israeli-Palestinian thousand-for-one swap alone – I’m no expert on the Middle East – but this post by Elliott Abrams on the Council on Foreign Relations' blog just begged a response:

Lawrence B. Wilkerson and Arturo Lopez-Levy

According to a New York Times story , in his recent visit to Havana, former Governor of New Mexico Bill Richardson told Bruno Rodriguez, Cuban Minister of Foreign Relations, that by releasing Alan Gross, Cuba could begin a process of being removed from the state sponsors of terrorism list. Since both Richardson and the State Department have repeatedly declared that they have been working together on this issue, this is practically a confession that Cuba’s inclusion on the state sponsors of terrorism list is a sham.

The list of terrorist sponsoring nations should be a bargaining tool for dealing with, well, countries that engage in or sponsor terrorism. The misuse of an otherwise effective foreign policy tool must give pause to responsible members of Congress and the Washington intelligence community.  First, it focuses efforts and resources in the wrong direction, taking eyes and dollars from where the real threats are. Second, it sends the wrong message to other countries, diminishing the impact of a warning to countries such as Iran and Syria and the groups they sponsor such as Hezbollah and Hamas.  Third, it weakens the capacity of US allies like Israel , who are real targets of terrorist threats, to make a case for the isolation or monitoring of countries such as Iran whose presence on the list is justified.

When Rene Gonzalez, one of five Cuban agents reviled by Miami hardliners and celebrated by the Havana government and its supporters, walks out of a Miami prison Friday after serving 13 years of a 15 year sentence, where will he go and who will be there to greet him?  This is a question someone in the Obama administration surely must have considered, because how they answer could cost them – and the Miami Dade Police Department - dearly.

The options seem relatively clear: either he goes home to Cuba and stays there (Gonzalez, who is a dual citizen, could remain in Cuba if he renounces his U.S. citizenship), or he stays in Miami to serve out his probation.  A Miami judge denied his request to serve out his parole in Cuba, but I’m not sure that ends the matter.  Surely the administration has other means to bypass Miami and give Gonzalez the boot?   It’s not hard to imagine the headache those who revile him most will create not just for Gonzalez but for the Miami-Dade police, and even for the administration.  And here's a high-ranking member of the U.S. Congress (Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen) who isn't afraid to stir the pot:

“Rene Gonzalez, like the regime he serves, is an enemy of America. He has American blood on his hands and dedicated his life to harming our country on behalf of a regime that is a State Sponsor of Terrorism . . . The Obama administration needs to take every precaution to protect U.S. security and the American people from this enemy of our nation.”

[Incidentally, on this 35^th anniversary of the 1976 Cubana airliner bombing, one has to ask whether Ros-Lehtinen has ever used the phrase “blood on his hands” to describe the masterminds of the October 6, 1976 Cubana airliner bombing, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, both of whom eluded justice and lived out their days as free men in Miami.]

No matter what your opinion of Gonzalez or his crime – and he did commit one by working for his government without registering with ours – it’s hard to see any altercation over his supervised release playing out well for the Obama administration.  It would draw attention to the Cuba issue right as the administration would probably prefer it to fade away (re-election, anyone?), and has police vs. community elements face-off/debacle – remember Elian Gonzalez, folks? – written all over it, but instead of centering on a sweet-faced little boy, the crisis would revolve around a foreign government agent walking the streets of Miami.  And in that harsh light of sudden media attention, the administration would end up catching flack for not shipping Gonzalez off.  After all, the best way to “protect” America from someone is to keep him off U.S. soil.