Just when we thought the Bush Administration’s panderfest to Cuban-Americans couldn’t get any more blatant or arrogant, we get the “recommendations” from the government-ordered Commission on Cuba. The 500-page report included a chapter on how to end the government of President Fidel Castro. The remaining chapters strongly suggested ways the U.S. can help a post-Castro government implement democracy.
You don’t have to be a Bush-basher or a blame-America-first leftist to find this beyond the pale. It’s as if Guatemala, Chile or Iran never happened. Uniquely tragic Cuban-American history notwithstanding, it’s not for the U.S. to say what kind of government Cuba should have. It is a sovereign state, like it or not, and entitled to determine its own destiny — even if under the despotic aegis of Fidel Castro.
Appropriately enough, the commission was headed by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is hardly unfamiliar with regime-change scenarios.