Reply #2: Rays of reason in Cuba policy [View All]

[Osolomia]

Rays of reason in Cuba policy
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
Posted on Tue, Sep. 16, 2003

(KRT) - The following editorial appeared in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, Sept. 14:

For decades, relations between Cuba and the United States have been as bitter and senseless as a family brawl. Dishes and frying pans keep flying back and forth across the Florida Straits with no other apparent strategic purpose than for Cubans in Havana and Miami to vent their loathing for one another.

Americans have a stake in this fight: We pay for the pans and broken china, even though the continuing melee does not advance U.S. political or economic purposes one inch.

Last week the House easily passed amendments, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., that would lift restrictions on Americans wanting to travel to the island and the cap on the amount of money Cuban exiles can send to their families back home. Similar amendments are expected in the Senate.

This is sound legislation that ought to be approved. It advances American interests on the island and those of Cubans in the island trying to survive under the ever-worsening conditions.

... Not surprisingly, the pots and pans started flying anew shortly after the amendments passed, mostly from Cuban-American representatives but also from GOP Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

The United States ought to back out of this family fight and adopt strategies that advance its interests rather than keep the feud going.

More…
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/6784211.htm