A car bomb kills six and wounds 35 in Baghdad. Al-Qaeda is reportedly planning new assaults on the United States. Clearly Fidel Castro is in trouble.
Fidel Castro? What does he have to do with Iraq and Osama bin Laden? Nothing, of course, but that may just be the point. Bush’s preemptive war on Iraq has led to an occupation that isn’t going well. American casualties and suicides are up. The Army brass is in virtual public revolt, with half of our forces mired in Iraq, and brutally long assignments raising fears about re-enlistments and recruiting. Republicans are chafing at the $87 billion Bush wants for next year in Iraq, building schools in Baghdad while school budgets are cut across the country. And the president’s prewar statements painting Iraq as an imminent threat to the U.S. have been exposed as false.
The administration’s response to the debacle has been to roll out an aggressive public relations campaign. National Security advisor Condi Rice is named head of a new coordinating structure (which Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld dismisses as paper shuffling). Bush, Cheney and Rice hit the airwaves to recycle increasingly threadbare justifications for the unilateral war.
A form letter to the editor praising U.S. efforts in Iraq is sent to newspapers as if written individually by U.S. soldiers, some of whom didn’t even know about the letter until it appeared in print over their name.
In the midst of all this, the president appeared in the Rose Garden on Oct. 10 to announce a renewed offensive against … Fidel Castro. “The Cuban regime,” he warned, “will not change by its own choice.” He announced a program “to hasten the arrival of a new, free, democratic Cuba.” He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to increase inspections of travels and shipments to and from Cuba. This is the same department that doesn’t have the resources to inspect shipments coming in and out of the United States. The same department unable to afford training and equipment for our frontline defenders — local police and firefighters.
As the New York Times reported, it is easy to dismiss this as politics, a ploy to “shore up the president’s support among Florida’s Cuban Americans.” Bush needs Florida in 2004; Cuban American votes are essential. So throw a stick and a few harsh words at Fidel. Establish a commission headed by the good-soldier Secretary of State Colin Powell, his credibility already compromised over Iraq; and the Cuban- American Housing Secretary Mel Martinez to plan for “Cuba’s transition from Stalinist rule to a free and open society” and to “identify ways to hasten the arrival of that day.” Ratchet up the failed 40-year embargo that, if anything, has only consolidated Castro’s nationalist credentials.
But there is a more ominous possibility. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, despite the skepticism of the professional military, dispatched U.S. forces to Lebanon and started lobbing artillery into the civil war there. A shocking terrorist attack killed over 200 foolishly exposed U.S. soldiers. Reagan figured he’d better change the subject. Suddenly the little island of Grenada became a threat to freedom in the hemisphere. An armada and U.S. troops were dispatched to invade the tourist paradise and overthrow the rowdy nationalists that had taken over. U.S. troops got out of Lebanon under the cover of victory in Grenada. American students studying in Grenada were “rescued,” bolstering President’s Reagan’s polls, if not his credibility.
Now in Iraq, much of the professional military wants the administration to put Iraqis in charge, and get U.S. troops out of there as fast as possible. That won’t be easy, given the chaos that we’d leave behind in a critical region. The administration is pushing to make it work in Iraq.
But if what the military is now calling a “classic guerilla war” continues to escalate, if U.S. troops continue to die in an occupation for which they are not trained, the president’s political operatives will be looking for a way out – and a little cover. Iran might be too dangerous. But with Fidel Castro now 77 years old, the Cuban economy ground down from mismanagement and from the embargo, the Cuban people increasingly restless, Florida in play in 2004, Cuba just might be auditioned as a modern-day Grenada. The Cuba experts I’ve talked to are skeptical. Cuba is just too tough. Castro still has too much support. The international community would be outraged. They are probably right.
But if the president isn’t cooking up a crisis over Cuba, why are we spending the resources of the already overwhelmed Department on Homeland Security inspecting shipments going in and out of Cuba rather than those coming in and out of the United States?
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