Word: embargos
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...things engender hypocrisy more broadly than U.S. policy on Cuba. It's embarrassingly inconsistent for Washington to maintain a trade embargo against Havana and to bar U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba when the U.S. gleefully does business with regimes like China, whose human-rights violations are more egregious than Cuba's. At the same time, it's curious at best that embargo foes like California Representative Barbara Lee, who led a congressional delegation to Havana last week that met with President Raúl Castro and his brother Fidel, rarely mention Cuba's jailed dissidents but will...
...problems in Latin America has to go through Havana," says Larry Birns, head of the Council on Hemispheric Relations in Washington. Obama seems to acknowledge two conclusions staring at the U.S. from across the Florida Straits. The first is that the 47-year-old trade embargo, meant to dislodge the Castro regime, is a spectacular failure and should give way to commercial and diplomatic engagement with Cuba. The second is that Cuba still lacks freedom of expression and basic rights like opposition political parties. (What tourists can expect to see in Cuba...
...family members in Cuba. It also announced measures to get broader cell-phone and television service to Cubans, which White House officials said would "open the flow of information" on the island. Either way, many hope Monday's moves will eventually lead to a dismantling of the trade embargo. But the moves should at least be followed this year by an end to the travel ban for the rest of the U.S. population - that is, if Obama throws his support behind a new bill to end the ban, which may or may not have enough votes in Congress to pass...
...other Cuba-policy watchers consider the general travel ban a violation of U.S. citizens' rights to move freely, and they argue that continuing to make it illegal for non-Cubans to visit the island sends a half-baked message to the rest of Latin America, which views the Cuban embargo as a symbol of Washington's historically imperious approach to the region as a whole. "To have in place a Cuba travel policy that privileges just one small segment of the population," says Birns, "suggests you're still catering to politics in Miami," where the powerful Cuban exile lobby...
Backing the elimination of the general travel ban would signal a more robust interest in opening dialogue with Cuba. At the same time, it would just as decidedly put the ball in Havana's court. The Castros have insisted that they won't accept conditions for having the embargo lifted. Still, Fidel Castro wrote in an op-ed for Cuba's state-controlled media last week that Havana wants to negotiate "mutually advantageous" agreements with the U.S.; he even asked Lee's delegation what he and his brother could do to help Obama's efforts to improve U.S.-Cuba relations...