Washington and the Cuban Revolution Today - The myth of the "Miami Lobby"

[flamingdem]

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/133863

Very long article with an interesting perspective -- I think the Miami Lobby does
have an impact -- for instance Ileana Ros-Lehtinin has blocked legislation that
would lead to improved relations and Marco Rubio forced added restrictions to
the current travel rules. Reduced travel restrictions will pave the way to a
changed policy, eventually, along with the need to sell to Cuba, a potentially
huge marketplace for agricultural interests, etc.

Ike Nahem is a longtime anti-war, labor, and socialist activist living in New
York City. He is the coordinator of Cuba Solidarity New York
(cubasolidarityny@...) and a founder of the New York-New Jersey July
26 Coalition (www.july26coalition.org). Nahem is an Amtrak Locomotive Engineer
and member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, a division
of the Teamsters Union. These are his personal political opinions.

--- excerpts

The essential continuity of US anti-Cuba policy under the Barack Obama
Administration has been a source of mystery and confusion to many who oppose US
sanctions. Within the US academic, think-tank, and media meritocracies – who
often go in and out of government office – many are frustrated, even
embarrassed, by Washington’s continued pariah status over Cuba in Latin
America and internationally as registered in annual lopsided, humiliating votes
against the US policy in the United Nations.

---- snip

The most common explanation for these questions is expressed in the quotation by
Julia Sweig that opens this essay. (Sweig is a scholar with the
super-Establishment Council on Foreign Relations and is their Director for Latin
America Studies. She is the author of the excellent book Inside the Cuban
Revolution and is a very informed observer and analyst of Cuban history and
politics. She is unquestionably a strong opponent of US sanctions against Cuba
and in favor of normalized diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana.)
Sweig and other dissenters within Establishment circles, as well as many elected
officials purportedly opposed to US policy, point to or at the Cuban-American
population and elected officials who form in Washington a so-called, and
supposedly so-powerful, “Miami Lobby.” Some even go so far as to say US
policy and “national interest” is being held “hostage” by this
“Lobby.” Such nonsense crosses over into virtual conspiracy theories.

This argument and explanation turns political reality on its head. It has never
been true and, in today’s world, it has never been less credible. It is a
myth and an illusion that the Cuban-American community and Cuban-American
office-holding politicians are the driving, determining force behind US policies
toward Cuba. US foreign policy in general, and Cuba policy in particular, is
driven by the interests of the US ruling capitalist class of bosses, bankers,
and bondholders. It is primarily mediated through its two political parties and
state institutions and secondarily through its big-business media, think tanks,
and academic minions. Cuban-American bourgeois politicians are part of that
mix, prominent, but far from decisive.

Washington has never, and does not now, need the aging representatives of the
ex-ruling powers of Cuba, or their descendants, to explain to them why they
should oppose the Cuban Revolution and the domestic and international policies
of the revolutionary socialist Cuban government. The actual political affect of
the “Miami Lobby” myth (which through endless repetition has become almost a
mantra) is to take the political focus off the US government and place it on the
Cuban-American community and a handful of Cuban-American elected officials. It
puts the cart before the horse, the caboose at the head of the train

---- snip

The myth of the “Miami Lobby” cuts across building a broad protest movement
and the kind of effective action that can actually force a change in the policy.
By homogenizing (or worse, demonizing) the contradictory and increasingly
polarized Cuban-American community, the myth of the “Miami Lobby” has become
an obstacle to winning over more Cuban-Americans to oppose US sanctions.

The fact is that for over five decades now there has been a bipartisan policy
and a common goal of defeating and eradicating the Cuban Revolution. None of
this has ever been, or is it now, primarily motivated by the interests of the
Cuban-American exile community in Miami. The origins and continuity of
Washington’s hostility to the Cuban Revolution is homegrown. It flows out of
the politics, policies and example of the Cuban Revolution – both inside Cuba
and in its resonance across the Americas and internationally in Africa,


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