Friday, February 29, 2008
Cuba and Israel have been foreign policy failures
From the RoundTable blog
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John Freivalds
Freivalds runs an international marketing communications firm in Lexington.
Fidel Castro's recent resignation from the Cuban presidency brought to light two longstanding domestic policy issues: total rejection of Cuba and total support of Israel. Each has gone on almost as long with disastrous consequences for the United States.
First Cuba. Having been there twice on business, having the U.S. Treasury Department come after me wanting to know what I did there, and having sponsored a Cuban family of five that fled Cuba, I know something about what's going on.
The United States ended diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1960. Since then it has tried to invade Cuba, hired mobsters to assassinate Castro, blackballed him internationally, declared embargoes, cut telecommunications and financial links and so on.
All this, of course, to placate Miami Cubans who chose to flee Cuba from a totally corrupt regime. (Godfather II was pretty accurate in its depiction of pre-Castro Cuba.) The Miami Cubans quickly learned how to become a major force in U.S. politics.
It was true that Castro was a dictator, suppressed the free press, jailed opponents and wrecked the Cuban economy. But many Middle East and African potentates fill that bill and we continue to have relations with them, and even invite them to the White House for state dinners.
The U.S. rejection let Castro last much longer than he would have otherwise. He could always blame Cuba's horrid economic situation on the U.S. embargo. So in 48 years of following this policy though 10 U.S. presidents, Cuba did not change its behavior one bit.
Now Israel. The United States was the first country to recognize Israel in 1948, but it wasn't until 1962 that Israel really started to play the political game in the U.S. The recognition was a good humanitarian move, like our recognition of Kosovo today, but it didn't take Israel long to learn how to move U.S. domestic politics in its favor.
In 1960, according to Warren Bass, author of "Support Any Friend," an Israeli diplomat considered American Jews an important asset. He said, "The Almighty placed massive oil deposits under Arab soil, but it is our good fortune that God placed 5 million Jews in America."
At this point, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, sensing an anti-Israeli comment, would probably label me an anti-Semite. To deal with that accusation, I can say I have worked for 30 years for a man that at one time was the head of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith.
John F. Kennedy was the first to face the pressure in approving a major arms sale to Israel in 1962. Israel needed weapons to counter attacks by Arab states, but now needs them to counter Arab terrorists, mostly Palestinians. We have gone from a tilt toward Israel to downright acceptance of whatever it does.
The worst example was last year's invasion of Lebanon. Israel invaded to teach Hezbollah, a group the U.S. has labeled as terrorist, a lesson. We let Israel blow up just about every bridge in Lebanon so that it could stop the flow of arms from Syria. This would be like our blowing up every bridge in Mexico because drug dealers might use them to smuggle drugs into the U.S.
Israel has tried everything to stop terrorists. It has invaded Lebanon twice and occupied it once, erected roadblocks, assassinated suspected terrorists within the occupied territory, built a huge wall to separate Arabs and Israelis, cordoned off Gaza after giving it up, and cut electricity and fuel supplies to Gaza. Still Israel is subject to rocket attacks.
The United States today with neoconservative in power is mute to all this, and AIPAC engages its political muscle to make sure every U.S. politician risks political suicide by speaking against Israel. The United States continues to supply Israel with $3 billion in aid every year and helps arm it to the teeth. Most Arabs hate the United States for this one-sided support, making it easy to recruit more al-Qaida members.
The way we have handled Cuba and Israel can be summed up with John F. Kennedy's comment, "Domestic policy can defeat me, but foreign policy can kill all of us."
