Miami Herald headline: "Bush to talk tough" on Cuba

They are catching on, even at the Miami Herald. This administration is not much good at getting things done, but enjoys talking tough.

W promotes numerous attitudes toward Cuba: aid “if Cuba takes a democratic turn,” as the Herald summarizes it. Well, that’s looking into the future, for sure. Just how is that democratic turn supposed to happen? Nothing done in that area.

Meanwhile, numerous suggestions for actually influencing events in that direction have come up and withered for lack of attention from Washington – and not only in this administration, one has to confess.

The human right of keeping family connections? No, under W we’re going the other direction – banning Cuban Americans from visiting family in the mother country more often than every three years.

Your blogger spent many years abroad as a news correspondent watching as the Soviet empire decayed, and it was not advanced by banning family visits. The direction went the other way: encouraging family visits, more often the better, so that Western ideals and ways of life could be seen by those behind the Iron Curtain.

And the Iron Curtain is no more. In fact, its life, measured from the end of World War II until 1989 when the Berlin Wall opened, was 44 years. How long has Castro been able to stay in power? I don’t know whether it’s because of – or in spite of – the U.S. policy on Cuba. It’s an ineffectual policy. Increasingly unpopular. It’s only ideology that keeps it alive.