I want to compliment and complement the earlier posting by my colleague Steve Clemons on Bill Richardson.

The most interesting press reports and video links about the governor's trip to Cuba are posted here.

A few substantive excerpts from Associated Press stories are worth emphasizing:

After visiting the Hemingway home

"I think enhancing cultural and artistic and educational ties is a prelude to diplomatic and commercial ties. It always happens that way," Richardson told The Associated Press.

"I'm for enhanced tourism travel for Americans." Richardson said that travel should go beyond the so-called people-to-people educational and cultural contacts promoted by the Bill Clinton administration.

The governor said Washington and Havana aren't ready to discuss lifting the 47-year-old American trade embargo or the release of political prisoners on the island.

Instead, the U.S. government should better solidify President Barack Obama's decision to ease restrictions on Cuban-Americans who want to travel or send money to Cuba, allow more American business leaders, athletes, artists and academics to come to this country, let Cuban biotechnology products be sold on the U.S. market and permit Cubans to attend scientific and business conferences in the United States.

Cuba should allow its citizens to travel to the U.S. with fewer restrictions and fees, accept Washington's proposal to let diplomats from both countries travel more freely in each other's territories and open a dialogue with Cuban-Americans, Richardson said.

"I did raise these issues with Cuban officials. They are considering some steps," he said.

Richardson said the economic meltdown and the health care debate have distracted U.S. officials, but "the United States needs to pay more attention to the Cuban issue."

I have included in my clippings posting a story from the Mexican newspaper La Jornada that added detail about

“un plan de acciones recíprocas para normalizar las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Cuba” (a plan for reciprocal actions to normalize relations between the US and Cuba).

“la propuesta cubana de intercambiar opositores presos en la isla por los cinco agentes cubanos encarcelados en Estados Unidos, pero que el énfasis estuvo en los citados pasos humanitarios” (the Cuban proposal of exchanging political prisoners held in Cuba for the five Cuban agents imprisoned in the US, but that the emphasis was on the mentioned humanitarian steps).

I entirely agree with Steve that Richardson should become the Administration’s point person on Cuba, despite his statement in Havana that a special envoy is not necessary and that the State Department can handle the process. To get things moving the President ought to meet this week with the Governor, and with the three Catholic Bishops who were also recently in Cuba, and act upon their recommendation to enable non-tourist travel. (You can urge he do so here.)

I do not believe in conditionality, but as Richardson said, "there needs to be reciprocity when one side takes action." – as long as expectations are proportional. If President Obama opens the door to educational travel to Cuba, Havana should reconsider its decision to deny exit visas to seventeen Cubans accepted for a non-political US sponsored one year scholarship program at US community colleges. (See Phil Peter’s Cuban Triangle post, Stuck on Stupid.)

John McAuliff

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Resources

The Orbitz petition has gone over 85,000 signers. If you are not among them, click here

Marc Frank reports for Reuters that state employee lunchrooms will be closed, another practical step towards reforming the economy

A special book that helps get beyond immediate policy conflicts
Cuba in the American Imagination, Metaphor and the Imperial Ethos
By Louis A. Pérez Jr

Amnesty International logo

Amnesty International has called today on President Obama and Congress to end the US embargo, which the global human rights organization charged interferes with the right to health enshrined in the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Amnesty's report opens with a reminder to readers that we're not just talking about some mambi-pambi program, but that according our own Government Accountability Office: "The embargo on Cuba is the most comprehensive set of US sanctuions on any country, including the other countries designated by the US government to be state sponsors of terrorism."

And perhaps because it bears repeating, Amnesty's discussion of the embargo's impact on Cubans begins with this finding from the United Nations' development team: "The negative impact of the embargo is pervasive in the social, economic and environmental dimensions of human development in Cuba, severely affecting the most vulnerable socio-economic groups of the Cuban population."

Amnesty's indictment of the embargo is well developed and deeply affecting, and demands attention from U.S. policymakers and influencers (check back here later today for a fuller discussion of the humanitarian dimension). But it was Amnesty's recommendations to President Obama, and to Congress, that really interest me.

Most prominently, Amnesty recommends that President Obama decline to renew the annual declaration (that it is in the US interest to continue certain sanctions against Cuba) - which is less than two weeks away - that is the legal foundation for the presidential authority to continue many longstanding Cuba sanctions.

I'm sure I just lost a whole bunch of you right there . . . but if you're still with me, keep in mind that everything the President - any US President - does must have its foundation in some law giving the office broad or specific authority to act. Back when President Kennedy first declared the embargo, he had broad authority to declare national emergencies and leave them there - often far past their use and beyond the reach of congressional oversight.

So, in 1977, Congressional scaled back that authority for future national emergencies; but it grandfathered in existing authorities (such as the one for the Cuba embargo) as long as the President determined, on a yearly basis, that continued exercise of that authority was still in the national interest. President George W. Bush last signed this determination on September 12, 2008. (Note that Cuba is the only country against which sanctions derived from the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act are still in place.)

And so for close to 3 decades now, the embargo remains in place because of a yearly presidential determination that it ought to. Amnesty's report, coming just ahead of this annual determination (and the first one for President Obama), helps shine a light on President Obama's biggest Cuba decision moment yet: whether to own the embargo he inherited and, not five years ago, said he thought should be ended.

Complicating the picture, however, is that the 1996 Helms-Burton Act made what had largely been a presidentially-declared embargo now law: "The economic embargo of Cuba, as in effect on March 1, 1996, including all [regulatory] restrictions under Part 515 of Title 31, Code of Federal Regulations, shall be in effect" until the President determines that Cuba is undergoing a democratic transition.

So, what happens if President Obama takes Amnesty's advice (it'd be so easy to just not sign that piece of paper, wouldn't it)? How, then, can the Helms-Burton Act require the continuation of sanctions that are no longer the President's right to enforce?

Amnesty reasons that the President's refusal to renew his embargo authority would require Congress to lift the various economic sanctions contained in the Helms-Burton Act, and the human rights group calls on Congress to do so. It's an interesting approach to dismantling an embargo set forth in law. You could maybe say that Amnesty proposed putting the cart (the President) before the horse (Congress), but in this case, it's a pretty clever idea.

President Obama has a choice to make: Refuse to sign that piece of paper and you set off a legal limbo that would lead to the dismantling of the embargo. Sign it - and contradict what we all know to be your real opinion of the 50-year embargo. Sign that piece of paper and it becomes your embargo, Mr. President.

--Anya Landau French, author of Options for Engagement, A Resource Guide to Reforming U.S. Policy Toward Cuba

Many critics of US policy toward Cuba have pointed out its ineffectiveness: no one can deny that the embargo has failed to force political change in Cuba. But to say it is ineffective is unfair: American sanctions have been extremely effective...at punishing ordinary Cubans.

As Anya Landau French pointed out earlier on this page, Amnesty International has taken what represents an historic step for them by illustrating in exhaustive detail the toll that the U.S. policy has taken on the economic and social rights of Cubans. They cite the United Nations office in Havana:

The negative impact of the embargo is pervasive in the social, economic and environmental dimensions of human development in Cuba, severely affecting the most vulnerable socio-economic groups of the Cuban population.

But Amnesty is far from the first to highlight the situation. In 1969 – relatively soon after the embargo was instituted but already long enough to determine that it was working against the Cuban people – the island's Catholic Bishops were more prophetic:

We denounce the injustice of the blockade which contributes to unnecessary suffering and to make more difficult the search for development. We appeal...to the conscience of those who are in conditions to assume concerted and effective actions to...halt this measure.

This statement, made during perhaps the nadir of church-state relations in Cuba, was the first of many. In fact, the Church never wavered in its determination that the embargo only aggravates the situation for the people of Cuba. In 1993, following the disastrous approval of the so-called Cuban Democracy Act, they wrote:

The bishops of Cuba reject any type of measure that, claiming to sanction the Cuban government, contributes to augment the difficulties of our people.

Other human rights organizations have weighed in on the very issue of the embargo's ineffectiveness, pointing out the irony of travel restrictions on Americans (Freedom House) or calling for a new approach (Human Rights Watch). But to my knowledge only religious communities -- Christians, Jews and others -- have pointed out the profound, negative impact our embargo has had and continues to impose on the lives of innocent people on the island, until Amnesty's report.

The Catholic Church in all its hierarchical glory has been the most consistent, down to the visit in August of Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston with Bishop Thomas G. Wenski of Orlando (formerly of Miami) and San Antonio Auxiliary Bishop Oscar Cantu. Bishop Wenski is on the International Policy Committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He told me that they decided to be more vocal about this visit because of the suffering of the Cubans caught in the grip of this seemingly endless standoff, and because there is so much hope for change on the island. “Our position hasn’t changed; we follow what the bishops of Cuba say, as we always have done. The embargo has inflicted even more suffering on the people of Cuba, especially the poor, the disabled, and the chronically ill.”

Earlier this week I sat down to dinner with four Catholic Church workers visiting from Cuba. They hadn't come on a political mission, and weren't meeting congressmen or policy activists. They are clear about their feeling that Cuba has to change, and to become less driven by materialist principles inspired by any ideology (a desire not unheard of among America’s Catholics). I asked them what they thought of the embargo policy, and it turned out to be the shortest answer of the night: “We pray that it ends,” one said, as they all nodded agreement.

Jose Marti Airport reunion ( Javier Galeano, AP / April 14, 2009 ) at http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/nationworld/sfl-cuba-families-reunite-pg,0,995050.photogallery

Well isn't that just timing. One day after Amnesty International slams the U.S. embargo; days after we learned of planned bilateral direct mail negotiations this September; just days before President Obama must "re-up" the embargo on September 14th; and of course, all of this just ahead of what is usually a blistering defeat for U.S. diplomacy in the world, the now-annual United Nations debate condemning the U.S. embargo (this would be year #18) . . .

. . . With all of that in the mix, the Obama Administration finally published regulations today to lift essentially all restrictions on families' remittances and visits to relatives in Cuba. The Administration also published regulations to allow U.S. telecommunications service in Cuba, and establishing a general license for agriculture sales-related travel. The Cuban Triangle has a great summary of all of the new regulations here.

One has to wonder, did the Administration choose its timing (nearly five months after the policies were announced) to send some signal (to the goverment of Cuba?), or to try to influence the UN debate in its favor?

As far as signals - or gestures - go, the announcement signals that, on Cuba, this Administration responds to action-forcing events. That, and that it does know how to keep a promise on Cuba. For that, and for working to reunite Cuban families, the Administration should be commended.

Lifting family travel and remittance restrictions is indisputably a humanitarian measure. But this move was more a gesture to Little Havana, not Havana. And because all of these actions were pored over and anticipated months ago, they don't exactly inject the kind of surprise energy that would much change the outcome of this year's UN vote.

The embargo exemption for U.S. telecommunications is an invitation to Cuba to negotiate real access (they want normal trade, no?), and it is perhaps more inviting because the new opening cracks a door ajar that other U.S. sectors may now push to open. For instance - there's certainly interest in Cuban oil exploration and production in the Gulf, in environmental and disaster clean up and of course, the sale of tourism-related services and products (everything from booking agents to regular commercial flights and ferry and cruise ships).

It remains unclear why the Administration went out on a limb to open telecommunications to Cuba but did not throw a bone to the most consistent and ardent community on the Cuba trade beat: agriculture. The new general license for agriculture sales and marketing trips (with its potentially invasive new reporting requirements) will have to be tested out. But the change agriculture - and its supporters in Congress - had hoped for was the restoration of cash-before-delivery terms of sale (which the Bush administration limited to cash-before-shipment, rendering useless this one of only two allowable food export transactions). Agriculture interests will now have to look to Congress to act.

Finally, it's tough to imagine that an ethnically-based travel policy (favoring Cuban Americans) can stand up long against challenges that it is unconstitutional, unfairly discriminating against non-Cuban Americans. We simply don't know what the Administration may be planning next, but I can't imagine this thought hasn't crossed their minds.

All in all, these new regulations are a good, but limited, first step forward for this Administration. The big winner here is the Cuban family, which is surely and deservedly celebrating on both sides of the straits tonight.

--Anya Landau French

The limit on relatives is noted at "second cousins."

Hooray! -- not.

OK -- it's some progress. But this is progress that the Cuban-American right wing wanted.

What I and other sensible national security strategists wanted was for President Obama to stand by his moral and ethical fiber that engagement is good, that people to people exchange makes sense, that the Cold War is over, and show some understanding today that Cuba is exporting not revolution and arms today -- but doctors.

I remember very well during the height of the Cold War how my father -- who was a US Air Force service man -- used to comment on all the things that the Soviet Union would do to constrain and control the lives of its citizens.

I remember well how he said everyone was required to carry "their papers" and how they couldn't travel without government permission.

It is outrageous and simply unacceptable that Barack Obama, the first ethnic mix of any sort who wonderfully defies categorization residing in the White House, is creating a class of opportunity and privilege for one class of ethnic Americans and perpetuating an anti-American, anti-human rights restriction by the US government on the movement of non-qualified US citizens.

The travel restrictions on Americans have always been wrong -- and have been more consistent with a totalitarian, Communist government than they have been with a traditional American democracy.

Obama and his team should find a way to step back and realize that while they have made progress on Cuba -- this is embarrassing progress, ridiculous progress -- that is anti-American in spirit and at its core.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

President Obama has missed yet another chance to pressure Congress to end the self-inflicted damage of a "unilateral embargo" against Cuba and to take American foreign policy writ large in a new, more constructive direction.

Today, the President officially extended the trade embargo against Cuba for another year -- putting the US at odds again with roughly 183 nations that vote against the embargo each year in the United Nations.

The President's global mystique has been based on a perception that he would shift the Bush era gravitational forces in more constructive directions -- that he would support engagement and exchange as tools of American foreign policy in order to try and get better outcomes in international affairs.

But by continuing an embargo that undermines American interests and even US national security, he chooses the continuity of failure over the opportunity for change and over his own principles.

By arguing that "he will not lift the embargo until Cuba undertakes democratic and economic reforms", Obama is perpetuating a fallacy that conditionality produces results in Cuba's domestic internal affairs. That approach has failed for decades -- and needs to be dropped.

The President has made some progress on Cuba -- but its mostly progress that the most hawkish, right wing elements of the Cuban-American community desired, not progress that was based on the interests of the nation as a whole.

Obama needs to fix his course on Cuba, or despite the modest creep forward recently -- helping a single class of ethnic Americans access Cuba but keeping up prohibitions on other American citizens, he will be added to a long roster of Presidents who maintained a Cold War in the America's backyard that is, as David Rothkopf called it, "the edsel" of US foreign policy.

-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note

I’ve been visiting on the Hill recently. Senators and representatives. Staffers and aides. Both parties. Several different perspectives. But one thing is abundantly clear among them all. Cuba is hardly visible.

With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, instability in Pakistan, tumult in the streets and holocaust deniers in Tehran, nuclear weapons in North Korea, and Russians nearly everywhere, there is little space left.

Add a vitriolic - and barely helpful - debate over healthcare, a much-needed but much-opposed major change to the U.S. program for ballistic missile defense, a simmering economic crisis that no one actually understands that threatens to take U.S. deficits to staggering new levels and that ten thousand of Washington’s most powerful lobbyists are aiding and abetting, and the little space that remains is utterly consumed. And I haven’t even mentioned our energy challenge and planetary warming, thank you Senator Kerry.

Yet into the face of this tumult march a few intrepid folks who want sanity to return to U.S.-Cuba policy after years of failure. You have to admire, I think, our fortitude if not our sense of the possible.

Yet even in the face of this powerful de-prioritization, there is progress.

All over America, op-eds and articles question the embargo and point out how many jobs and how much trade and commerce are being lost. From Salt Lake City, to Tampa, to Denver, local governments are awakening to these losses. Cities like Galveston, Texas; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Mobile, Alabama dispatch teams to Havana. They look at trade, disaster practices (the Cubans are particularly adept at preparing for and dealing with hurricanes), cultural exchanges, and more. To the devil with Washington, they say. Let’s get on with business.

Thousands of Americans every year defy the travel restrictions and travel to Cuba, usually through Cancún or Toronto.

Hotel chains salivate at the prospects for construction of hotel and other infrastructure to support a lucrative tourist trade.

Farmers, now hard-pressed to pay off huge debts and to keep farming, wonder why such a close-at-hand market as the eleven-million Cubans in Cuba, is off limits.

Physicians interested in best practices for delivering healthcare to impoverished areas such as in America’s Appalachian region and elsewhere in hard-hit rural areas, wonder why they cannot conduct exchanges with the best healthcare deliverers in the world - the Cuban medical professionals who specialize in this field from the barrios of Venezuela to the slums of sub-Saharan Africa.

The U.S. military yearns for the time when it can more fully cooperate with what it knows to be the most professional armed forces in the Caribbean - on counterterrorism and counternarcotics missions in particular.

Recently, even, a representative from one of our smaller oil companies, CONOCO, told me that there may not be enough oil off Cuban shores to excite ExxonMobil or Chevron, but her company was ready by golly.

This week too, members of the Environmental Defense Fund met with some of their counterparts from Cuba. Depleted numbers of sharks in the Gulf of Mexico, lack of stringent policies for tuna fishing, and a number of other critical environmental issues were on the agenda.

U.S. Cuba policy cries out for change - in almost every category conceivable, from arts to medicine, from oil to agriculture, from law enforcement to military-to-military relations, from commerce to capital flows, from airlines to tourism.

U.S.-Latin America policy, resting on a single, self-serving approach - the Andean drug initiative - cries out for change almost as loudly. And Cuba is the door of opportunity to begin that change.

So, it may be that Cuba is at the very bottom of the U.S. agenda from Washington’s point of view. But as with so many things in America’s history, it may be too that Washington has to be awakened by the 300 million people who pay its wages.

I’ve a feeling deep down that such an awakening is coming. Today, even the Cuban-American community, in poll after poll, is for change.

The small percentage of Cuban-Americans who are still in favor of current U.S. Cuba policy are about to be shouted down by their own children and grandchildren, brothers and sisters and, yes, perhaps even some in their own midst to whom the epiphany has come.

An official travel policy, for example, that discriminates by ethnic background is unAmerican and unconstitutional anyway. Were I Cuban-American, I would have to feel some shame about having condoned such a policy, let alone constantly paid off my members of Congress to enforce it.

Yes, the ground swell for this lowest priority issue is building. Full travel will come. Full trade will follow. The embargo will be gone. It will be Americans of all types who make it happen.

From time to time, after all, it is encouraging to see democracy really work.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

People gather at the Revolution square in Havana to attend the "Peace Without Borders" concert Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009. (AP Photo/Ismael Francisco, Prensa Latina (Ismael Francisco - AP)

Congratulations to Juanes, all the performers, and the countless invisible people who made this marvelous concert happen. Not to mention thanks for the cooperation from both the governments of Cuba and the US.

How many millions in Cuba and around the world participated in this extraordinary event via television and internet, courtesy of Univision and HITN?

How many of us shared the tears of joy, and perhaps frustration, so visible in the final ecstatic moments on stage?

Carlos Varela of Cuba, from left, Juanes of Colombia, Victor Manuel of Spain, Olga Tanon and Danny Rivera of Puerto Rico, and Juan Formell, director of Cuban orchestra Van Van, wave at the end of the Peace without Borders concert. (ADALBERTO ROQUE, AFP/Getty Images / September 20, 2009)

Let us thank the President and Secretary of State for having made it possible by granting the necessary OFAC licenses as well as Cuba's President and Minister of Culture for opening a prime venue for a profound unpredictable artistic message of paz y libertad.

Let us also express our frustration that any US licenses should still be required. There should be no more White House delay in allowing the libertad they repress, travel for non-tourist purposes by all Americans.

Indeed the concert reflected the contradictory and to date disappointingly cautious policy of the Obama administration toward Cuba.

The President in his Sunday interview with Univision seemed constrained to underplay the significance of an historic breakthrough: “I certainly don’t think it hurts U.S.-Cuban relations. These kinds of cultural exchanges ­ I wouldn’t overstate the degree that it helps.”

He appeared more concerned by old-guard opposition in Miami than guided by his own values. The Barack Obama I worked so hard to elect would confidently embrace the power of his office to allow unlimited visits for cultural, educational, religious, humanitarian and other people-to-people purposes.

John McAuliff
Fund for Reconciliation and Development

(ADALBERTO ROQUE, AFP/Getty Images / September 20, 2009)

Resources

The full concert can be seen on line here If you can't devote five very enjoyable hours, scan for the amazing set by Juanes himself about 2/3 of the way through and the moving final set by Los Van Van joined by all the performers.

Excellent gallery of photos in the Sun Sentinel

The White House can be reached through the Office of Public Engagement here

Washington Post story about the concert here

Reuters photo

Yesterday in Havana, Juanes and more than a dozen other artists from within and outside Cuba played to an audience of hundreds of thousands of Cubans gathered in the Plaza de la Revolucion (not to mention those throughout Cuba who watched the concert live on television) for a daylong Peace Without Borders concert. The popular Colombian singer just wanted to advance the cause of peace, he said.

True to form, there were some in Miami who criticized the concert - but there were quite a few who supported it. One anti-Juanes group, Vigilia Mambisa, brought out a steamroller with which to crush CDs with Juanes' name on them. In Miami and Washington, the media rushed to cover the concert “controversy”. And it got so whipped up that Univision's Jorge Ramos asked in his one-on-one interview with the President this weekend if the concert had his "blessing."

Juanes is a good musician, the President demurred, but the United States is not a concert promoter.

And then he said this: "I think what's gonna be more important is, as we have now opened up travel restrictions and remittance restrictions to Cuba. What I'd really like to see is Cuba starting to show that it wants to move away from some of the anti-democratic practices of the past."

That statement was shockingly out of touch with the reality of U.S.-Cuban relations today.

First, a technicality – and a big one. The President said we have “opened up” travel and remittances restrictions to Cuba. That of course is only a true statement for Cuban Americans, who make up less than half of one percent of Americans across this country. You can’t exactly call that “opening up” travel and remittances to Cuba.

But the President’s remark suggests he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the Cuban government considers the loosening of travel and remittance restrictions for Cuban Americans to be a gesture aimed not for diplomatic engagement with Havana, but to score political points in Little Havana. Raul Castro has also made it clear he’ll talk about anything with the United States; but that Cuba’s internal affairs are not negotiable.

So what exactly, if anything, does the President really expect to gain by calling on Cuba to reciprocate –with democratic reforms – a non-gesture from the United States?

The United States can and should try to dialogue with Cuba about opening greater economic and political freedom and opportunity for the Cuban people. But let’s not harbor illusions about how to advance the cause. Dialogue starts with really listening to the other actor – not making public demands we know won’t be met under present circumstances. The more the President sets lofty expectations for Cuba, the more he undermines them.

Frankly, it’s foolish to expect that the Cuban government will take any real risk it doesn’t need to without a real shift in U.S. policy on the line. Where’s the shift? Current restrictions on Cuba are still tougher than they were when Mr. Obama’s predecessor took office eight years ago.

What possible incentive does Raul Castro have to respond to a President who hasn’t even rolled back most of President Bush’s new restrictions – whether it’s the ongoing ban on people-to-people exchanges, continued harassment of third country banks that accept Cuban dollars, or this Administration’s gratuitous adherence to the single strictest U.S. agriculture export policy toward any other country on earth?

After fifty years, Cuba has learned to live without us. At the rate this Administration is going, we might just be here another fifty.

Photo by Getty Images

Earlier this week, I wrote about what I believe is a lack of either courage or imagination on Cuba in the Administration - and, let's be honest here, a lack of time to think about anything that isn't healthcare, the economy or rogue states that truly threaten U.S. security. And even though I did, you can't really blame them for not having the time.

But if you want to see courage, then look no further than to Colombian pop singer Juanes, who pulled off a minor miracle for the Cuban people by bringing his Peace without Borders concert to Havana last weekend. And increasingly, look also to Miami.

Not to the guy with the steamroller - but to the young people who showed up to give him a taste of his own medicine, to the new line that found its voice and shouted down the hard line.

Cuba Study Group chairman Carlos Saladrigas, finds himself crossing that line. He opposed the Pope's visit to Cuba over a decade ago, but came to regret his stance when he saw the impact on the people the visit had. In a poignant column for the Miami Herald, Saladrigas takes stock of not only what Juanes' concert for peace in Havana did for the Cuban people, but what it did for Little Havana too:

The tea leaves also portend a wake-up call for the Cuban-American community. After all, the hardliners failed to derail this concert. There are still those who will never change, but their numbers are rapidly dwindling. Although we at the Cuba Study Group have for years been saying that Miami is changing, it took Juanes' courageous and bold initiative to let us see it, feel it and to rid ourselves of the fear to say it that has gripped us for so long.

The massive attendance highlighted the large and growing disconnect between the exiled hardliners and the Cuban people. More Cuban Americans have come to the realization that we cannot afford to continue with failed policies to meet the challenges of the future. We need to engage. It is not reasonable to expect to partake in a new Cuba if we don't partake in the process that creates it.

Juanes showed us the euphoria and effectiveness that comes from tearing down walls. The old policies of hurting the regime with collateral damage to the people need to give way to policies that help the people even when they may provide a collateral benefit to the regime. It needs to be all about the people.

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT

TO THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY

September 23, 2009

Excerpts with emphasis on words potentially applicable to US relations with Cuba.

We must embrace a new era of engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and our work must begin now. We know the future will be forged by deeds and not simply words.

Consider the course that we're on if we fail to confront the status quo… The magnitude of our challenges has yet to be met by the measure of our actions.

Nothing is easier than blaming others for our troubles, and absolving ourselves of responsibility for our choices and our actions…

No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. … The traditional divisions between nations of the South and the North make no sense in an interconnected world; nor do alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War.

The time has come to realize that the old habits, the old arguments, are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people…They build up walls between us and the future that our people seek, and the time has come for those walls to come down…

The choice is ours. We can be remembered as a generation that chose to drag the arguments of the 20th century into the 21st; that put off hard choices, refused to look ahead, failed to keep pace because we defined ourselves by what we were against instead of what we were for...

Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect. Each country will pursue a path rooted in the culture of its people and in its past traditions. And I admit that America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy. But that does not weaken our commitment; it only reinforces it. There are basic principles that are universal; there are certain truths which are self-evident -- and the United States of America will never waver in our efforts to stand up for the right of people everywhere to determine their own destiny.

Full text here

Today we hear from New York that the Cubans are approaching the United Nations annual vote on the U.S. embargo, scheduled for Oct. 28, in a more cautious manner than they did when the Bush Administration was on the other side of the table. After seventeen years of running up the score, maybe they figure they can afford to be a bit conciliatory. In any case, they hardly seem ready to give away the store in negotiations. Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has said that Cuba is ready engage the United States in direct talks any time. However, Cuba would not address any "internal issues." And they would expect to talk about how the United States embargo is responsible for $223 billion of damage to the Cuban economy. And they want the United States to change its policy on Cuban immigration. And they want us to stop bombarding the island with Radio and Television Marti. And while they're at it, they want Guantanamo back.

Even in the context of the steady drumbeat of positive moves that the Administration has taken on Cuba, it is not quite conceivable that U.S.-Cuba talks could really brook these types of issues. But we're clearly in a better place in our relationship than we've been in a long time. The U.S. isn't breaking any speed records as it rolls out its review of Cuba policy, but then again, the infrastructure of the embargo was a long time in preparation. The process underway now is clearly what Denis McDonough was talking about when he told the New York Times' Mark Landler that "engagement should be judged as a means to an end, not as a policy goal in itself." That's what we are doing: talking about issues of mutual, practical concern.

This is all to the good, but of course it isn't going to lead to a quick resolution of our longstanding conflict. Most of the commentaries on this page have been highly critical of the Obama administration for not pushing ahead with an opening to Cuba many had hoped for during the campaign. It’s hard not to agree. From a big picture perspective, we have nothing to lose but the chains that have bound us to this anachronism. As we open to Cuba, and time marches on, Cuba will get freer.

If, however, in addition to the steady, quiet drumbeat of positive steps from the executive branch (freer travel for Cuban families, substantive migration talks, re-opening mail links, much more liberal rules around sending packages to Cuba -- this one for all Americans, not just Cubans) the president asked Congress to lift the travel ban, it would signal the end game. Some in Congress would put up a vitriolic fight. But it would be a fight without the broad implications of the many other difficult national debates we face, like on health care or immigration. The fact is, even though the failed Cuba policy has caused tremendous pain for those involved, most of the rest of us wonder what that’s all about and why, in an age when China finances our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we still care what kind of government Cuba has. When Ben Stiller introduced Juanes at the Clinton Global Initiative the other night, it was with an air of gratitude for the man who had brought a million people or so into Cuba’s main plaza. For the vast majority of Americans -- including those Americans who serve in Congress -- this is not a controversy. The vast majority of Americans, like Ben Stiller, think: yeah, why are we still embargoing that country, anyway?

Like it or not, given the packed agenda the administration faces, it would be a mistake to expect the president to jump in with both feet on Cuba. It is the pragmatic modus operandi of this administration to prioritize its challenges and spend its capital only when it's game time. From the Employee Free Choice Act to the public health care option, there’s a long list of issues where the President’s views are clear, but he hasn’t pushed them aggressively right from the gate. Time will tell whether that’s a good move or not; if, in a year or two, he hasn’t gotten anywhere on these issues, that will speak for itself. On the other hand, if he demonstrates progress on the truly difficult issues: Israel/Palestine, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, then he can turn to second-tier foreign policy problems like Cuba. And if things have gone reasonably well, Cuba will not be so a tough after all.

But where does that leave those of us who care about Cuba? It might not be Iraq, but its pretty painful for the families this terrible conflict has torn apart. And it won't get better without sustained, grown-up attention. And that means that, for better or worse, Congress is in the driver’s seat right now. We should hope Sam Farr is right – and not fatally premature – when he says the votes are there to pass the bill that would open Cuba travel to everyone. Keep watching this space! If the broad spectrum of actors from trade and travel spheres can rally around one bill, it is very conceivable that the Congress can let the president ride in the back on this one.