Every single piece Ive read with regards to Cuba and US policy lately has been replete with references to the Lugar report. You can read the report in pdf, right here.
Said report was entirely based on a four day trip to Cuba by Lugar staff members:
Richard Lugar, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, directed committee staff member for Latin America, Carl Meacham, to “evaluate U.S. policy towards Cuba”. During the trip to Cuba, staff met with government officials, clergy, diplomats, business people, international press, and Cuban citizens.
I cant find anything on who actually funded the trip – whether it was a government entity, PAC or corporate “donation.”
Needless to say, now all arguments on US-Cuba policy are being based on this report. Fifty years of historical data and fifty years of recorded human rights abuses and lack of basic civil liberties in Cuba have been and are being completely ignored.
In four days a group of staffers who probably couldn’t find Cuba on a map have not only determined the fate of the freedom of the Cuban people, but made it crystal clear that the United States of America is ready, willing and able to do business with a dictatorial regime and thus condones the systematic violation of human rights in Cuba.
Update: Well well well. the plot thickens. Seems the trip was paid for by the Lexington Institute – a Washington Dc based “think tank” whose primary focus is defense, the military, Homeland security and the like, but has a spoon into the Cuba stew, led by Phil Peters, who has been linked to Sherritt International.
In the words of Deepthroat: Follow the money.
Yes, there are numerous unprincipled, despicable SOBs around who don’t give a shit about Cuba except as a means to their ulterior ends. Unfortunately, Cubans have spent way too long expecting way too much from non-Cubans. Too many Cubans talk one way and act another, and as long as their actions favor Castro, Inc., all the talk in the world is hollow and largely useless. Practically all the non-Cuban world is just fine with the status quo being maintained in Cuba. Nobody but Cubans is ever going to do much of any substance to free Cuba. If enough Cubans aren’t serious enough about seeing Cuba free and act like it, it’s pretty hopeless.
The Lexington Institute is a lobbying firm posing as a think tank, at least when it comes to Cuba. They were bored during the Bush administration because nobody in the White House was buying what they were selling. But Obama is buying everything in sight and it’s no surprise that it’s Lugar who Obama claimed time and again to have forged a bipartisan relationship with. To hell with both of them.
Until all Cubans who want freedom in Cuba, leave the details out and make a united front in all countries where they’re spread out, and speak out together, the world will never give a rat’s ass about Cuba.
The more the diaspora breaks up into factions divided by political differences, rather than worrying about those details after Cuba is free, the less of a voice Cubans will have, and stronger voice they’ll give to the regime and their followers.
If you can’t beat them, join them! That’s the bottom-line for these so-called realists. They claim it’s in our ‘national interests’ to cuddle the regime, yet, the two areas they focus on, migration and counter-narcotics, have been addressed at low-levels for over a decade. So, why do we need to change policy if we’re already successfully working these issues without totally prostituting our principles or giving away our bargaining chips. It’s absolutely asinine reasoning, like the Army Colonel who recently published his anti-embargo editorial in El Nuevo Herald. He says we need to unconditionally drop the embargo, but still encourage Cuba to move toward a free society – how friggin stupid can you be! BTW, wasn’t Carter’s establishment of the US Interests Section in ’77 supposed to accomplish the same goals – ya know, if we just talk with them things will turn our way. Well, it’s been 32 years and absolutely NOTHING has changed!! These people are unprincipled at best, and idiots at worst.