Nabraska's Gov. Goes Wobbly With Cuba

Fire of Liberty

Well it seems that Nebraska's Governor David Heineman has decided to put the economic/agricultural interests of Nebraska above the moral and political policies of freedom and democracy with his August 13-17 trade delegation to the gulag known as Fidel Castro's Cuba. Even though the federal government has a stated policy against trading with the dictator led Cuba, the governor and his ten person trade delegation are heading to Cuba in a effort to strike a trade deal in which the Cuban government would be able to purchase dried beans as well as various other commodities from the state of Nebraska. It's really amazing that a governor who serves has been duly elected in a free and democratic election would be willing to make any deals with a tyrant like Fidel Castro.

I know the governor is facing an election and wants to bring money into the state to help the farmers and ranchers but he needs to think about what this move will do to the people of Cuba. Time and time again, history has demonstrated that as long as you make trade deals and have open relations with the various tyrants of the world you are giving a green light to these evil regimes to continue their bad behavior. Thankfully, there seems to be a groundswell of voices in Congress that have called for Heineman to base his trade deals on Cuban granting economic/political freedom as well as cleaning up its dismal human rights record. Here's a brief sampling of what the Congressmen and various human rights groups have had to say about the four day trip to Cuba:

The congressmen and scholars of Cuba said yesterday, however, that products sold to the government of Cuba rarely reach the Cuban people. "It is important for you to know that in totalitarian Cuba, all commercial transactions take place through a dictatorship which oppresses its people. Castro directly controls - and exploits - the distribution of all goods and services in Cuba," they wrote.

The director of the Washington-based Center for a Free Cuba, Frank Calzon, said yesterday that while Mr. Heineman probably felt he was simply securing business for his state, he was likely an unwitting aide to Mr. Castro in his efforts to get America to lift its trade embargo on Cuba.

"As far as Castro's concerned, he's not buying agricultural goods," Mr. Calzon said. "He's purchasing a lobby."

Lincoln Diaz-Balart, meanwhile, said that beyond the economics, Mr. Heineman's mission was offensive on principle. "It's like saying politics is not part of a trip to Hitler's Germany in the 1930s," Mr. Diaz-Balart said yesterday. "It's not a question of politics - it's a question of elemental human decency."

Mr. Diaz-Balart's criticisms came as new reports of efforts by Mr. Castro to thwart the island's increasingly active pro-democracy movement emerged from Havana yesterday - and as Ms. Roque issued stern criticisms of European accommodation of Mr. Castro.

According to the Miami-based support center for the Assembly to Promote Civil Society in Cuba, a follow-up meeting to the May 20 gathering was violently interrupted yesterday as agents of Mr. Castro's regime harassed pro-democracy activists in their homes before the meeting, and then formed a double human chain outside the meeting, preventing the democracy activists from gathering.

Let's hope the "better angels of our nature" will intervene and convince Gov. Heineman that freedom of the Cuban people is far greater than making trade deals that further extend the behavior of Castro. A better economic policy for the Governor and the Cuban people will be the end of Castro's reign, sooner rather than later.