Is there a limit to their gall?

W T Whitney Jr*

The Bush administration has released a 450-page report by its 
Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba. The report outlines 
steps the US Government is taking to bring down the Cuban 
Government. They seek to isolate Cuba, promote internal 
opposition, and make people there suffer, presumably to "soften 
them up".

The report is arrogant, clueless, and belittling of our 
intelligence. It calls for launching a nationwide childhood 
vaccination program in Cuba, once the revolutionary government is 
gone. But 99 percent of Cuba's children today receive both polio 
and "DPT" immunizations.

Talk of a US takeover team upgrading public health in Cuba is, of 
course, ludicrous. Health statistics in Cuba are tops among the 
world's poor countries and rival those of the United States, 
where 44 million people have no health insurance.

The White House report offers "support for pro-democracy efforts 
for Cuban young people and men and women of African origin", as 
if the US were free of racism, as if the Cuban revolution had not 
dedicated itself to hope for children and equal rights for Cuba's 
Afro-Cuban majority.

The Bush administration plans to spend US$59 million over the 
next two years to weaken Cuba's government. The verbiage is of 
building "civil society", or "supporting pro-democracy efforts", 
or planning for "transition". Are we incapable of connecting the 
dots showing that most of the money will go to pay for individual 
Cubans to subvert their own government? Last year US leaders 
denounced as preposterous the charge that 75 jailed so-called 
dissidents were foreign agents, despite videos played at their 
trials showing money and equipment changing hands.

We wonder what happened with the US$24 million set aside every 
year under the Helms Burton law to support an internal political 
opposition? Where might that have gone?

Then there's a plan to fly an airplane over international waters 
around the island to block Cuba's interference with US radio and 
television propaganda. This epitomises US bullying worldwide. The 
annual cost will be US$18 million.

The US leaders' tactical finesse must be slipping. New 
regulations on family visiting and financial support are likely 
to alienate some of their Cuban-American friends.

Aunts and cousins no longer make the grade as close enough family 
to visit relatives in Cuba. Visits are reduced from one a year to 
one every third year, for which special permission is required. 
And the amount of money visitors can spend in Cuba is cut.

Many Cuban Americans already have reservations about US Cuban 
policy, and regulations seen as anti-family may aggravate their 
disenchantment. A recent poll showed that 70 percent of Cuban 
Americans feel that politicians mislead them about their 
positions on Cuba to gain votes.

In this same poll, 55 percent said they would support candidates 
who favour an overhaul of US Cuban policy.

The report reads as if the Cubans' devotion to national 
independence were a fiction. But even prominent dissidents reject 
US meddling. Oswaldo Paya, the Varela Project leader, stated, "It 
is not appropriate or acceptable for any forces outside Cuba to 
try to design the Cuban transition process".

The Cuban people have long memories. They are making comparisons 
between the suffering expected to flow from the Bush policies and 
the death and disorder caused by Spain's General Weyler in 1896 
when he forced Cuban peasants off the land into camps and cities 
to wean support away from independence forces.

Granma, the Cuban Communist Party newspaper, notes: "Our 
people can draw their own conclusions. This is the plan for 
Cuba's annexation and the return to the fake republic of the 
Platt Amendment [which essentially annexed Cuba to the US]. Cuba 
will never return to the horrible, merciless and inhumane 
condition of a US colony."

* * *

People's Weekly World,
*W T Whitney Jr is a paediatrician in rural Maine.