WASHINGTON, D.C.
Current U.S. policy prohibiting trade with Cuba “bears no relationship to reality,” according to one conservative Republican congressman.
“After 49 years, I think it’s time to re-evaluate,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday, adding that the policy “has been the biggest enabler” of the Cuban regime by making America a convenient scapegoat for the island’s communist dictatorship.
Flake has long criticized the U.S. embargo -- which dates back to 1959, when Fidel Castro’s communist government seized power in Havana -- that not only bans U.S. trade with Cuba but also prohibits Americans from traveling to Cuba.
Last year, Flake introduced legislation co-sponsored by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) that would end the travel ban. Flake visited Cuba in 2006 as part of a congressional delegation and said the experience was the kind of “valuable lesson” that should be more widely available.
“Every American should be able to see the mess that man [Castro] has made of that island,” Flake said Wednesday night at an event in Washington hosted by Reason Magazine, a libertarian journal. “You can see what happens when government controls everything.”
Some have predicted that if the United States lifted the travel ban, Cuba would respond by imposing its own restrictions on U.S. travelers, by Flake said he could accept that. “If anybody’s going to limit my travel, it should be a communist,” he said.
While U.S. sanctions against Cuba were intended to undermine Castro’s dictatorship, that policy has been ineffective, Flake said. He noted that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has estimated that the Cuban economy is currently growing at an annual 8 percent rate. “You’re not going to bring down a regime economically, if that’s the case,” Flake said.
Enforcing the travel ban is a “waste of resources,” said Flake, who suggested that the next president would be more open to ending the embargo. “In any event, I think we’ll have a different (political) environment next year,” he said.
Flake’s advocacy of ending travel restrictions to Cuba is not based in any sympathy for the communist regime that Castro installed after the 1959 revolution. When Castro announced last month that he was stepping aside in favor of his brother Raul, Flake said, “The reign of Fidel Castro marked a brutal and dictatorial chapter for the Cuban people.”
In that same Feb. 19 statement, however, Flake also said, “The U.S. embargo gave Fidel a tremendous advantage in terms of lengthening his tenure. Let's not give his successor the same advantage by keeping the embargo in place.”
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Robert Stacy McCain is a veteran Washington journalist and co-author (with Lynn Vincent) of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party. He blogs at The Other McCain.
