25th
Dumb, American Style
One great thing about the current U.S. president is his complete and utter lack of irony. Or rather, it’s the fact that he does and says things without being the least bit cognizant that they drip with irony.
Take, for instance, the speech Shrub is planning to deliver at the State Department concerning the current political situation in Cuba. Story from the New York Times. Snarky annotations from me.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — President Bush is planning to issue a stern warning Wednesday that the United States will not accept a political transition in Cuba in which power changes from one Castro brother to another, rather than to the Cuban people. [If only Cuba has issued its own stern warning when the House of Bush regained the American crown from the House of Clinton, we might not be in such a mess today.]
As described by an official in a background briefing to reporters on Tuesday evening, Mr. Bush’s remarks will amount to the most detailed response — mainly an unbending one — to the political changes that began in Cuba more than a year ago, when Fidel Castro fell ill and handed power to his brother Raúl. [Since, you know, it wouldn’t have been more forceful to have made such a pronouncement back when this temporarily-cum-long-term transition was being made.]
The speech, scheduled to be given at the State Department before invited Cuban dissidents, will introduce the relatives of four Cuban prisoners being held for political crimes. A senior administration official said the president wanted to “put a human face,” on Cuba’s “assault on freedom.” [Unlike our normal strategy when it comes to “assaulting freedom” in Cuba, which involves NOT allowing human faces to be seen.]
In effect, the speech will be a call for Cubans to continue to resist, a particularly strong line coming from an American president. [Especially since that worked so well the last time an American president encouraged Cubans to resist.]He is expected to say to the Cuban military and police, “There is a place for you in a new Cuba.” [I hear Gitmo’s nice….]
The official said Mr. Bush would make the case that for dissidents and others pursuing democracy in Cuba, little has changed at all, and that the country has suffered economically as well as in other ways as a result of the Castro rule. [Much like little changed in the reign of Bush XLIII versus that of Bush XLI, except for War in Iraq and Economic Downturn: Part Deux! being even longer and more calamitous than the original.]
He will say that while much of the rest of Latin America has moved from dictatorship to democracy, Cuba continues to use repression and terror to control its people. [And could probably learn a thing or two from the way America uses repression and terror to control its people held in Cuba at Guantánamo.] And, the administration official said, Mr. Bush will direct another part of his speech to the Cuban people, telling them they “have the power to shape their destiny and bring about change.” [Ditto the American people.]
The administration official said Mr. Bush was expected to tell Cuban viewers that “soon they will have to make a choice between freedom and the force used by a dying regime.” [Is it the regime dying in Cuba or the one killing America?]
Some of the sharpest parts of the speech, however, will be aimed directly at Raúl Castro. Mr. Bush is expected to make clear that the United States will oppose an old system controlled by new faces. [That’s actually a change in policy, now isn’t it? Previously, the United States has been quite content with using cosmetic changes in leadership to mask the fact that the same key players are pulling the strings from behind the curtain.] The senior administration official said that nothing in Raúl Castro’s past gives Washington reason to expect democratic reforms soon. [Nor would anything in Washington’s recent past give us reason to expect democratic reforms here. (Hello, Electoral College!)] And he said the United States would uphold its tough economic policies against the island. [Canadian purveyors of Cuban cigars and rum were reported to rejoice at the news.]
Mr. Bush would hold out the possibility of incentives for change, if Cuba demonstrated an openness to such exchanges, the official said. [That’s funny, I always thought the reason we didn’t have such exchanges with Cuba was because the U.S. Treasury Department essentially made it illegal.] Those steps might include expanding cultural and information exchanges with Cuba and allowing religious organizations and other nonprofits to send computers to Cuba and to award scholarships.
However, he is expected to reiterate the administration’s long-standing demands for free and transparent elections, and the release of political prisoners. [Just not from the part of Cuba the administration actually controls and operates as an extraterritorial prison camp where standard U.S. human rights law supposedly doesn’t apply.]
John Kavulich, senior policy adviser at the U.S.-Cuba Trade andEconomic Council, said those demands would likely be non-starters for Cuba. [Duh.] He said the technology and educational opportunities Mr. Bush intends to offer are being provided to Cuba by Venezuela and China.
He suggested that the real constituency for Mr. Bush’s speech was the politically-powerful exile community in Miami. [I hear there’s some nice bayfront property in Cuba that might interest those Miami exiles.]
Phil Peters, an expert on Cuba at the non-partisan Lexington Institute, said he saw Mr. Bush’s speech as an attempt to reorient a policy that had fallen behind the times. American policy, he said, had been centered around the idea that the Communist government would fall once Mr. Castro left power, and that Mr. Castro, 81, would be forced out of power only by death. Instead, Mr. Peters said, Raúl Castro’s rise caught the administration off guard. [Evidently the administration hadn’t been paying attention, since Fidel announced years before he became ill that he intended Raúl to succeed them. This surprises whom exactly?]
President Bush has remained largely silent, Mr. Peters said, while Raúl Castro consolidated his control over Cuban institutions by establishing his own relationships with world leaders, and opening unprecedented dialogue with the Cuban people about their visions for their own country. [Hmm, that actually sounds vaguely encouraging, like it just might augur well for future change.] Meanwhile, all the doomsday scenarios predicted for Cuba once Fidel Castro left power — a violent uprising by dissidents and a huge exodus of Cuban refugees — never materialized. [Also, a second CIA-backed invasion never materialized. Maybe the Mafia was busy that weekend.]
“The administration realized they had missed the boat,” Mr. Peters said. [Rimshot.] “Succession has already happened. They can no longer have a policy that keeps them waiting for Castro to die when the rest of the world has moved on.” [That policy has worked so well for, oh, about forty-nine years. I see no reason not to stay the course.]
