OPINION:
White House spinmeisters are working overtime to reframe and reinterpret for us Obama’s diplomatic ’opening’ with Cuba. To them it is innovative, timely, and overdue. But these versions should be swallowed only by those who know little of history and, rather than an ingenious move, it is likely we’ve been had again. Those clever Castro brothers are veteran flim-flam artists and a magnet to naïve U.S. presidents seeking a bump in foreign policy ratings.
I first visited Cuba in late 1958. I worked at Cape Canaveral at the time, making for an easy drive to Key West and a Cubana Airline round trip ticket to Havana was $20. I visited friends at a small college in Matanzas, just east of Havana. Cuba in the pre-Castro days was a playground for rich Hollywood celebrities, organized crime, corrupt dictators, cock fights, great cigars and rum—and American tourists there for the music, gambling, nightclubs, and flesh pots.
Outside Havana was a different Cuba; expat Americans running businesses, refineries, rayon factories, professionals, 1950s Chevys, and a thriving academic community. The conversations at their social gatherings usually got around to Fidel Castro and his rebels in Oriente Province working their way toward Havana. To the business people, Castro was a closet commie and bad for business if he replaced Fulgencio Batista. To the academics, Castro was a dream come true…a socialist, and if his rebellion succeeded they were ready to welcome him.
As Castro moved closer to Havana, Batista and supporters filled their pockets and fled the country. Castro was welcomed, claimed he was no Communist, and was feted by Washington and New York as Cuba’s savior. As a former baseball player—could he be anything less? Washington had no idea of his real politics, but a Castro fastball was heading their way. Castro visited the UN and it was discovered he preferred the company of Malcolm X and Nikita Khrushchev, and showed socialist disregard for bills…his hotel bill, which included damage from cooking live chickens in his suite.
He also quickly nationalized US businesses in Cuba. Castro’s Cuba was now Communism’s gateway into the Western Hemisphere…only 90 miles from the US. So we slapped Castro with sanctions; cutting Cuba’s oil imports and sugar exports. Castro’s response: he replaced U.S. relations with Soviet adoration, ready to supply him oil and buy his sugar.
President Eisenhower finally had enough. He approved a CIA covert action to rid Cuba of Castro—with Navy air support to insure the operation succeeded. When John F. Kennedy took office and reviewed the CIA plan he, and brother Bobby, micro-managed the operation, changed the landing site to the unwieldy Bay of Pigs — a swamp — and curtailed all Naval air support. Those Kennedy boys sure knew covert ops. They made the CIA move ahead with this unworkable version. After the inevitable disaster, it became an international Hatfield-McCoy war of brothers: the Kennedys vs. the Castros.
Khrushchev couldn’t believe his luck; he saw a weak Kennedy who let the Bay of Pigs operation fail, and now had Cuba as Russia’s springboard to checkmate U.S. military superiority. With Castro’s guile, he also had his own covert operation to sneak medium-range missiles into Cuba.
But CIA’s John McCone, the only Republican in the Kennedy administration, had enough evidence to pressure the Kennedys to fly a U-2 reconnaissance plane over Cuba which revealed the Soviet scheme a mere 13 days before the missiles were ready for launch. Khrushchev, knowing he was out-gunned by the U.S. publicly, negotiated a private deal, i.e., agreement from JFK to pull US missiles out of Italy and Turkey, a promise the U.S. would not invade Cuba, and acceptance of continued Soviet presence in Cuba. The Kennedys were bitter despite the public illusion of success in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis, and they pressured a reluctant CIA to formulate assassination plans for Castro.
Hmmm…how serious an effort would the CIA make of this latest cockamamie Kennedy scheme after their botched Bay of Pigs operation?
Fidel would go on batting 1000, gaming U.S. Presidents, one after another, for over a half century, while Cubans risked their lives to escape. Leave it to the U.S. to back into more well-intentioned do-goodism: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore…blah blah blah,” and Castro obliged by expelling to the U.S. the criminal and insane refuse from his jails and asylums to become major U.S. problems. President Carter naively welcomed them, and President Clinton had his own Cuban bad act blindnesses.
The list of Americans murdered by Fidel went on, and amateurish U.S. covert ops continued, a recent one being a USAID scheme to instill democracy in Cuba. Nothing like a true believer.
As for this latest misstep, did we save impoverished Cuba by eliminating the embargoes without any demand for regime change or collapse? Or, more likely, have we just fallen for the boost Raul Castro needed…showing they haven’t lost their touch at bamboozling Americans?
This game has been won by Raul Castro and Pope Francis. It was Raul who began economic reform and political liberalization; setting up a commission to implement economic reforms; created an anti-corruption agency; restructured and reformed basic industries such as energy, mining, sugar, reformed fiscal, credit, energy, mining, sugar, credit and migration; privatized certain markets, consumer goods, real estate, used cars, restaurants, and the list goes on.
Year 2015 will see Cuba inherit the China and Vietnam economic model, i.e., economic gain without regime change or collapse. They will praise the American consumer and American politicians for their good fortune. It will take time before I’ll be able to buy a Cuban cigar here, so I’ll probably have to travel to Cuba to enjoy their weather, cigars and rum. Besides, I hear the best cigars are the ones the young female workers rolled on their thighs, and you can always trust Cuban stories.
Gene Poteat a retired senior CIA Scientific Intelligence Officer.
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