Vietnam, Dylan And Cuba

That photo on page two of last Monday’s Tribune–next to the accompanying headline: “Dylan Jams in Vietnam”–took me aback. Probably some of you too. For there was iconic anti-war troubadour Bob Dylan on a Ho Chi Minh City stage singing “Highway 61 Revisited” and a lot more.

Imagine, Dylan Plays VIETNAM. THAT Vietnam.

For those who missed some minutes of past meetings, the Vietnam where 58,000 American G.I.’s died and another 2,000 servicemen and civilians remain MIA’s from that ill-fated, foreign-policy nightmare of the 1960s-70s. The Vietnam where 1.5 million Vietnamese died.

But that was then, and this is not. Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s financial capital and one of Asia’s boomtowns. It courts foreign investors the way Dylan used to lure anti-war protestors.

It has also made a case for a revamped U.S. approach. The Cold War-era horror show is long over. What’s to be gained by maintaining an economic embargo and a diplomatic blackout?  Finally President Bill Clinton lifted the embargo and restored diplomatic relations. And, yes, some Veterans’ organizations and families of loved ones lost in the Vietnam quagmire disagreed. It was understandable. It was personal.

But personal emotion, sensibly enough, never dictated foreign policy a generation removed from the Vietnam War. We all got that, even though most of us didn’t walk in those Cold War shoes–or combat boots.  Eventually, bi-lateral trade agreements followed. The Vietnam War’s most famous prisoner-of-war, John McCain, even revisited his old “Hanoi Hilton” cell–and moved on. And now Dylan sings “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” in Vietnam.

And yet.

We still can’t normalize relations with Cuba. A country we haven’t been to war with. A country that doesn’t haunt our history with the blood of thousands of Americans. Jimmy Carter visits notwithstanding, the best we can do after half a century is to loosen the tightened screws applied during the George W. Bush Administration.

But not unlike those Veterans’ organizations and Vietnam-afflicted families, this also has a personal prism. Only this prism is also a prison for United States foreign-policy. The South Florida exile community, and we know all too well who they are around here, still wields outsized clout. That’s why even Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Washington insider and President Obama’s newly appointed head of the Democratic National Committee, isn’t outraged at their holding America hostage to their vendetta agenda.

And that still lingering, Little Havana political clout is the principal reason the Obama Administration’s approach has been one of timid incrementalism. Even though the status quo of non-normalization is counterproductive to the best interests of the U.S. For reasons that are more than manifest: humanitarian, geopolitical and economic.

This country has real enemies, and Cuba is not among them.

Sure, Cuba’s an economic Marxist mess. Sure, it continues to live down to its reputation for being democracy-challenged. Sure, it uses Uncle Scapegoat for domestic politics. But it won’t make any short list of the most egregious violators of human rights, most of whom–from China and Saudi Arabia to virtually any country ending in “stan”–we currently have normal diplomatic and trade relations with.

Perhaps there’s a gig awaiting Dylan some time in Havana. If so, that would make it official: “The Times They Are a-Changin.'” Ninety miles away. Finally.

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