Bush stern warning to Cuba. Another Castro is unacceptable.

[Christians4LessGvt]

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.

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 Ra?l.

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.?

In effect, the speech will be a call for Cubans to continue to resist, a particularly strong line coming from an American president. He is expected to say to the Cuban military and police, ?There is a place for you in a new Cuba.?

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.

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, 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.?

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.?

Some of the sharpest parts of the speech, however, will be aimed directly at Ra?l Castro. Mr. Bush is expected to make clear that the United States will oppose an old system controlled by new faces. The senior administration official said that nothing in Ra?l Castro?s past gives Washington reason to expect democratic reforms soon. And he said the United States would uphold its tough economic policies against the island.

Mr. Bush would hold out the possibility of incentives for change, if Cuba demonstrated an openness to such exchanges, the official said. 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.

John Kavulich, senior policy adviser at the U.S.-Cuba Trade andEconomic Council, said those demands would likely be non-starters for Cuba. 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.

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, Ra?l Castro?s rise caught the administration off guard.

President Bush has remained largely silent, Mr. Peters said, while Ra?l 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. 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.

?The administration realized they had missed the boat,? Mr. Peters said. ?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.?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/washington/24cuba.html?_r=2&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[_JS]

Or what will happen?

Oh, a call for Cubans to continue to resist.

Wow. 

[Lanya]

A stern warning to Cuba?  What on earth for?  Oh...maybe give him a little jolt of popularity among his Cuban immigrant supporters.   
   So much kabuki, done for show, without the least regard for the price that has to be paid or might have to be paid. 

[BT]

So much kabuki, done for show, without the least regard for the price that has to be paid or might have to be paid.

What cost? What price?

[Lanya]

Being a bully and issuing "stern warnings" while our armed forces are involved half-way around the world fighting 2 wars and maybe a third any time now....well, I laugh.  It's ridiculous. It is acutely embarrassing.
And if I laugh, and I'm an American, I love my country,  how do you think China and other countries view us? 
Really now.  "Castro! Don't you dare hand over power to Raoul, who's like 3 years younger than you! Nah ah, I said NO!  You are officially in Time Out, Cuba."

Please.  Spare me.

Oh, the price is loss of face.  We might not "get" that, but other countries sure do.  Boy do they.  It has real life consequences, as in, no one gives a fig what we say or how we posture or anything anymore.  Thus loss of bargaining power, loss of diplomatic pressure.   Loss of countries willing to ally with us, back us.

[Amianthus]

Oh, the price is loss of face.  We might not "get" that, but other countries sure do.  Boy do they.  It has real life consequences, as in, no one gives a fig what we say or how we posture or anything anymore.

Well, according to you, we lost that years ago.

So, there is no price after that, then?

[Lanya]

 We had lots of respect after 9/11 and very little now.    It can go lower, though.  The more foolish we look and act the more we lose. 

[_JS]

I think Lanya is right.

What's the point? It is clearly a speech written for the older generation of Cuban-American voters. As a foreign policy instrument a threat (and quite clearly "threat" is a bit of a stretch if one reads closely) is useless in this context.

[Christians4LessGvt]

"The more foolish we look and act the more we lose"

[Amianthus]

We had lots of respect after 9/11 and very little now.

The dancing in the streets and claims of "America deserved it" seem to belie that statement.

[_JS]

We had lots of respect after 9/11 and very little now.

The dancing in the streets and claims of "America deserved it" seem to belie that statement.

That represented the majority of world sentiment, did it?

[BT]

I think Bush's remarks were rhetorical. I doubt anypowers of consequence  put any credence to them. It is no more outrageous or bullying than Putins remarks that we need a date certain to withdraw from Iraq.

Both are preaching to the choir and nothing will come of it.

I don't see long term costs to this at all. And the only tangible benefit is to those Bush Bashers who have about a three day cycle within which they can wring their hands and sit on the pity pot.

[Amianthus]

That represented the majority of world sentiment, did it?

Didn't realize that any world-wide polls were done.

[_JS]

That represented the majority of world sentiment, did it?

Didn't realize that any world-wide polls were done.

I didn't realize we were using a few select photos limited to a specific, and small region, to represent worldwide sentiment.

[Xavier_Onassis]

It makes precisely as much sense for Juniorbush to say the US will not accept another Castro brother as it would for Castro to declare that Cuba will not accept another Bush (Prescott, Jeb or Jenna).

I imagine that Fidel is still more popular in Cuba than Juniorbush is in the US. This is just more tired old stupid American posturing.

The embargo has not worked for nearly 50 years. It only allows a very small minority of Cubans in the US to profit immensely from peope who merely want to help their families in Cuba.

A phone call to Puerto Rico costs maybe 5 cents a minute: to Cuba, it costs 50 cents. To mail a package to the Dominican Republic is $2 a pound. The same package mailed to Cuba costs $8.00 a pound. The profit goes mostly to a very small elite here in Miami. They are huge donators to the Republican Party, andf that is who this asinine speech is intended for.

I am all for free elections in Cuba. By free, I mean no American publicity companies, no American advisors no foreign advisors of asny kind can be allowed.

This is not the sort of democracy that Juniorbush believes in. To make him happy, the "exiles" (old ruling elite) here in Miami should be placed on the throne, to rule the rest of the island with an iron hand there, but kiss the butts of the American oligarchy here.  This won't happen, because the poeple of Cuba won't let it happen.

Fidel and Raul are expert politicians, but they are far from excellent leaders of the Cuban economy, which is in horrible shape. There is no reason why there is not enough food in Cuba, no reason to ration rice and beans and milk and meat. Cuba is a very fertile tropical island with a relatively small population. There is no reason why it should not be able to feed its people. But under Fidel and Raul, it doesn't, and that is not the fault of the embargo.

Cubans, the ones who live in Cuba and those who are wiulling to return to stay perhaps, are the only people who should decide who runs Cuba. Not Juniorbush, who should only be allowed to decide who runs his mouth. (I suspect that he doesn't actually do this, either.)