The U.S Presidential Campaign and Policy Towards Cuba and Venezuela



by Cort Greene

Aug. 28, 2007



" We must not lose sight of our fundamental goal: freedom a-la Miami in Cuba. At the same time, we should be pragmatic in our approach and clear sighted about the effects of our policies. We all know the power and results of the freedom and opportunity that America has both embodied and advanced in Latin America. If deployed wisely through tough immigration laws, those ideals will have as transformative effect on Cubans today, attracting their most skilled workers, professionals and athletes to make the U.S. even greater."

Barack Obama - Straight Talk on Cuba



While the U.S. presidential campaigns are starting earlier with each election cycle and this one seems to be going on forever, a major focus of U.S. imperialism has been which of the bourgeois candidates offers the most politically expedient approach to stopping the shinning example that Cuba and Venezuela have shown to both the emerging revolutionary situations in Latin America and to the world.



Months ago John McCain and Rudy Guiliani seemed to be the only ones speaking about these countries with their verbal assaults. McCain when he started his " Stop the Dictators of Latin America " website which states " We have seen this story before. Hugo Chavez , like Fidel Castro before him embraces authoritarianism and aggression, statist economic polices... a time worn recipe for disaster!"



Rudy Guiliani, a former mayor of New York City and the darling of the " Homeland Security " crowd and a partner in a Houston law firm that represents U.S. based Citgo Petrolum a company who is owned by Petroleos de Venezuela, said at a speech to Hispanic small business leaders that Chavez's social programs and those of Cuban leader Fidel Castro " keep people in poverty" and keep people dependent." later in the day while addressing the Latino Coalition's economic summit, he stated that the Chavez government took over the last privately run oil fields and that Hugo Chavez is acting against the interests of the United States and he was the most outspoken on how dangerous " I think he is".



Then weeks ago the attacks on Cuba and Venezuela started to reach a fever pitch at the CNN -You Tube debate among the Democrats at the Citadel Military College, one of the elite training schools for the U.S . murder machine, when a question posed from a person who sent in a video and who happened to be in the audience asked whether any of them would hold talks within the first year of their administrations with a number of countries being mentioned, including Cuba and Venezuela " in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries."



Hillary Clinton gave an infactic " no" because she was concerned of being used for " propaganda purposes" or by "the making of matters worse" and " were not going just have our president meet with Fidel Castro or Hugo Chavez ".

John Edwards said maybe, well sort of , but with certain conditions

Many who consider themselves liberals, progressives or " on the left" and even supporters of these revolutions and who have been yearning for a change in U.S. foreign policy from Iraq to Cuba and Venezuela were encouraged when Barack Obama said " yes" and " thought it was a disgrace that we have not spoken with them."

Then the name calling started and with each one accusing the other of being ' irresponsible and frankly naive" and even the next day Mitt Romny jumped into the fray saying the same things about all the Democrats.



But does Obama really represent a change in U.S. imperialist policy positions when he calls for bilateral talks, trade, easing travel restrictions and such with a velvet boxing glove towards Cuba while calling all options to be open when dealing with Iran and even saying that the nuclear option was to be considered in order to get to Bin Laden in Pakistan ?



Of course the answer is no. This is a cynical charade to get votes by the same man who voted for re-authorizing the Patriot Act, Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State and even for censuring Venezuela for not renewing the broadcast license of the coup-plotting and CIA backed RCTV television station. We didn't see him speaking out against the coup against the democratically elected Hugo Chavez or the "4th generational warfare" now being conducted against the countries of Cuba and Venezuela.



In his book " The Audacity of Hope " which is the vision for his campaign, he writes that it is wrong for left leaning populists to resist America's efforts to expand its hegemony or reject the ideas of the " free market and liberal democracy" and to follow their own paths to development which will only worsen the situation of the global poor.



Does this really sound any diferent than what John McCain says?



I guess many of our good friends forget how it was Richard Nixon who opened up China along with its Stalinist leadership to capitalist restoration and this is the same ploy that Barack Obama wants to use against Cuba and to halt the advancement of the revolutions now taking place in Latin America.



At a time when there is not one stable regime from Alaska to the Tierra de Fuego we should be building solidarity and support with the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions and start learning from their experiences by creating our own grassroots and working class or a Labor party based on a socialist program and policies and certainly not by supporting any of the candidates of the "capitalist" Democratic and Republican parties.



This is just one humans opinion and I leave you with this quote from a North American socialist from long ago.



" I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it than vote for something I don't want and get it."

Eugene Debs

Submission to imperial politics



OF all the presidents of the United States, and those who aspire to that office, I only met one who, for ethical-religious reasons, was not an accomplice to the brutal terrorism against Cuba: James Carter. That assumes, of course, another President who forbade that United States officials should be used to assassinate Cuban leaders. That was the case of Gerald Ford who replaced Nixon after the Watergate scandal. Given his irregular manner of ascending to the office, one might characterize him as a symbolic President.

It is to the illustrious President Eisenhower, not in the least opposed to anti-Cuban terrorism but rather its initiator, that we owe thanks for at least providing a definition of the industrial-military complex which today, with its insatiable and incurable voracity, makes up the motor that is driving the human species to its current crisis. More than three billion years have gone by since planet Earth saw the first forms of life springing up.

One day, Che [Guevara] and I went to play golf. He had been a caddie once to earn some money in his spare time; I, on the other hand, knew absolutely nothing about this expensive sport. The United States government had already decreed the suspension and the redistribution of Cuba’s sugar quota, after the Revolution had passed the Agrarian Reform Law. The golf game was a photo opportunity. The real purpose was to make fun of Eisenhower.

In the United States, you can have a minimum of votes and still become President. That is what happened to Bush. Having a majority of electoral votes and losing the Presidency is what happened to Gore. For that reason, the State of Florida is the prize everyone aspires to, because of the presidential votes it provides. In the case of Bush, an electoral fraud was also needed; for this, the first Cuban emigrants, who were the Batista supporters and the bourgeois, were best masters.

Clinton is not excluded from all of this, neither is the Democratic Party’s candidate. The Helms-Burton Act was passed with his support, with a ready-made excuse: the downing of Brothers to the Rescue planes, those which on more than one occasion had flown over the city of Havana and which had violated Cuban territory dozens of times. The order to fend off flights over the Capital had been given to the Cuban Air Force just weeks earlier.

I must tell you that, close to that episode, Congressman Bill Richardson had arrived on a visit to Cuba on January 19, 1996. As usual, he brought with him petitions asking that several counter-revolutionaries be released from prison. We explained to him that we were by now tired of receiving such petitions, and I talked to him about what was happening with the Brothers to the Rescue flights. I also talked to him about the unfulfilled promises regarding the blockade. Richardson returned a few days later, on the 10th of February, and very earnestly told me, to the best of my recollection, the following: "That will not be happening again; the President has ordered those flights to be suspended".

In those days, I believed that orders issued by the President of the United States would be carried out. The planes were brought down on February 24, some days after the reply. The New Yorker Magazine supplies details about that meeting with Richardson.

Apparently, Clinton gave the order to suspend those flights, but nobody paid any attention to it. It was an election year, and he took advantage of that excuse to invite the Foundation leaders over and to sign that criminal Act, with the approval of all.

Following the migratory crisis of 1994, we learned that Carter wanted to do something to find a solution. Clinton didn't accept it and he called Salinas de Gortari, the President of Mexico. Cuba had been the last nation to recognize his electoral victory. He had contacted him on his inauguration as the new President of Mexico.

Salinas informed me by phone of Clinton’s decision to find a satisfactory solution, and in turn he was asked for his cooperation in this effort. That was how an agreement was reached in principle. That agreement with Clinton included the idea of putting an end to the economic blockade. The only witness we could count on was Salinas. Clinton had thus left out Carter. Cuba was not able to decide who the mediator would be. Salinas relates this episode accurately. Anyone with an interest can read about it in his books.

Clinton was really kind when we informally crossed paths at a UN meeting attended by many heads of state. Moreover, he was friendly, as well as intelligent, in demanding adherence to the law in the case of the kidnapped boy, when he was rescued by special federal agents sent from Washington.

The candidates are now immersed in the Florida adventure: Hillary, the Clinton successor; Obama, the popular African American candidate and several of the other 16 who, up until the present, have proposed their candidacy in both parties, with the exception of Republican Congressman Ronald Ernest Paul and the former Democratic Senator from Alaska, Maurice Robert Gravel, and the other three Democrats Dennis Kucinich, Christopher Dodd and Bill Richardson.

I don’t know what Carter said during his race to the White House. Whatever his position was, I was right when I guessed that his election could avoid a holocaust for the people of Panama, and that is just what I said to Torrijos. He established the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba and promoted an agreement about jurisdictional maritime limits. The circumstances surrounding his term prevented him from taking things any further and, in my opinion he embarked on several imperial adventures.

Today, talk is about the seemingly invincible ticket that might be created with Hillary for President and Obama for Vice President. Both of them feel the sacred duty of demanding “a democratic government in Cuba”. They are not making politics: they are playing a game of cards on a Sunday afternoon.

The media declares that this would be essential, unless Gore decides to run. I don’t think he will do so; better than anyone, he knows about the kind of catastrophe that awaits humanity if it continues along its current course. When he was a candidate, he of course committed the error of yearning for “a democratic Cuba”.

Enough of tales and nostalgia. This is written simply to increase the conscience of the Cuban people.



Fidel Castro Ruz

August 27, 2007.

4:56 p.m.



http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2007/agosto/mar28/35reflex3.html