Monday, August 31, 1998
U.S. lacks coherent policy on Cuba
ASSASSINS: Hypocrisy seen as America files charges against
alleged assassins
By Howard Kleinberg
Cox News Service
America’s policy toward Cuba and its exile community is much
like the old expression about the weather: If you don’t like the
weather now, wait five minutes; it will change.
In recent days, a U.S. grand jury in Puerto Rico indicted seven
Cuban exiles on charges of plotting to murder Fidel Castro.
Thirty-eight years ago, John Kennedy and probably his brother
Bobby could have been indicted for the same reason – and they were
president and attorney general of the United States at the
time.
In its first reaction to the indictments, in which an officer of
the Cuban American National Foundation was named, the organization
called the move politically motivated.
That’s a broad term. I’m not certain if by "political" they
meant it was something brought on them by the Clinton
administration or by some zealous prosecutor in San Juan.
If anyone knows the policy of the Clinton administration toward
Cuba, please tell me. I assure you it will be as vague and wobbly
as those of the Nixon, Carter, Reagan and Bush administrations.
That the feds say the indictments passed through the highest
levels of the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., would cast a
light on Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, a Miami native who
has experienced a lifetime of dealing with the tender issue of
fervent Cuban exiles.
I do find it odd, however, that after all these years of
threatening and isolating Castro, the United States finds a need to
indict people for plotting to kill the Cuban dictator. For many of
the 38 years of Castro’s rule, covert (if not official) U.S. policy
was to kill him.
For the United States to cast a shocked eye on anyone who would
plot to kill a head of state reeks of hypocrisy, since our country
dearly would love to put one between the eyes of Saddam Hussein;
actually bombed the tent of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, killing his
son; and now is targeting Osama bin Laden – not a head of any
state, but a princely overseer of terrorism.
Shortly after the Castro takeover, Cuban exiles – under the
training and watchful eye of the United States – prepared
themselves to retake the island. History recalls it as the Bay of
Pigs, and the United States was waist-deep in the plotting, only to
leave the invaders stranded on the beach when the situation seemed
lost.
In all the years since, U.S. policy on many Cuban issues has
fluctuated so often that anyone involved has lost track on where we
stand vis-a-vis Cuba.
One minute we’re training exiles to launch raids on Cuba, the
next minute we’re intercepting them. One minute we’re plotting an
invasion of the island, the next minute we’re promising the former
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that we will not.
One minute we allow exiles floating toward the United States in
rubber rafts to reach our shores and stay. Later we change that
policy and begin intercepting the rafts and sending the occupants
back to Cuba.
One minute we’re allowing exiles to return to the island on
humanitarian visits, the next minute we’re not. Then we resume. On
and on it goes, in circles wider than Hurricane Bonnie.
Now the United States has charged exiles with plotting to kill
Castro, a not-unique strategy and one which the United States
embraced and failed at, then stood humiliated before the rest of
the world. (Remember, we’re the ones who tried to poison his
bread!)
Circumstance indicates that those indicted were planning to get
Castro when he visited Venezuela last year, but no attempt was
carried through – the enterprise fizzling because of mechanical
problems and ugly weather at sea.
One could argue that there are laws against doing what they
tried to do, but America itself has been guilty of the same thing
many times. The overriding question is how the Justice Department
decided that this was the time to press charges against this
particular group – and why.Howard Kleinberg, a former editor of the
Miami News, is a columnist for Cox Newspapers. His e-mail address
is [email protected].