Clinton and Obama answers to CANF

The anti-normalization Cuban American National Foundation obtained interesting answers from most candidates about their position on Cuba policy. The Clinton and Obama responses are compared below. Where they differ is indicated by boldface. Edwards and Paul declined to respond. Responses of all candidates can be found here at CANF website.


1. Do you support sending direct U.S. government aid to Cuban dissidents?

Yes__HC BO_ No______


2. Do you support the ability to send direct private aid to Cuban dissidents?

Yes___HC BO__ No______


3. Do you support Radio and Television Martí as a vehicle for providing objective news and information to Cuba?

Yes__HC_ No______

BO Comment on No. 3: I support Radio Martí but have voted against Television Martí. The U.S. government funded Television Martí tries to broadcast TV news and cultural programs to Cuba, but it is unfortunately jammed by the Cuban government and does not provide objectives news and information to Cuba.


4. Do you support restrictions on American tourist travel to Cuba?

Yes___HC BO__ No______


5. Do you support restrictions on Cuban-American family, humanitarian related travel to Cuba?

Yes_____ No___HC BO___

HC Please also see statement.


6. Do you believe that the United States should negotiate with Raul Castro once it is announced that Fidel Castro has died?

Yes__BO___ No__HC__

BO Comments on No. 6: A crucial component of the Obama plan to promote freedom and democratic change in Cuba will be aggressive and principled bilateral diplomacy. I will send an important message: if a post-Fidel government begins opening Cuba to democratic change, the United States is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the embargo that has governed relations between our countries for the last five decades. That would be the best means of promoting Cuban freedom.

7. Should the United States require a new Cuban government to make concessions such as freeing political prisoners or allowing a free press before the United States moves to negotiate with them?

Yes__HC__ No__BO____


8. Do you support maintaining current restrictions on trade with Cuba until there is a transition to democracy?

Yes__HC BO __ No______


9. Do you believe the wet-foot/dry-foot policy should be reverted back to the original policy of accepting Cuban refugees into the United States for processing regardless of whether they reach dry land or are intercepted at sea?

Yes_____ No__HC BO___


10. Should United States policy provide for increased assistance for independent Cuban civil society, i.e. independent entrepreneurs, medical clinics, libraries, etc.?

Yes__HC BO__ No______


11. Do you believe in supporting the growth of independent micro-enterprises in Cuba with the goal of helping promote independent Cuban civil society?

Yes__HC BO__ No______


12. Do you believe the United States should negotiate direct mail service to Cuba?

Yes__HC BO__ No______


13. Do you believe U.S. policy should allow for the upgrade of telecommunications equipment in order to facilitate communication between the people of Cuba and their relatives abroad?

Yes__HC BO__ No______


14. Which statement most closely reflects your views on current U.S.-Cuba policy? (you may choose more than one)

I believe current policy is effective and does not need any change___

I believe current policy is effective but is missing a proactive element in support of Cuba’s dissidents___

I believe U.S. policy is not restrictive enough and should be toughened___

I believe U.S. policy is too restrictive and some elements of it should be relaxed___

I believe U.S. policy towards Cuba is a failure and should be completely revised___

HC Please see statement
BO Commentary on No. 14: I believe U.S. policy has failed. That’s why I have called for a new policy that would permit unlimited family travel and cash remittances, but maintain the embargo as an inducement for democratic change on the Island.


15. Do you believe it is important to establish an International Democracy Fund for Cuba through an international or regional body like the U.N. or the O.A.S. in order to provide incentives for democratic change?


Yes__HC BO___ No________

16. Please summarize (1-2 paragraphs) your vision for a U.S.-Cuba policy under your Administration.

HC Democracy, human rights, and the fundamental freedoms all nations of the hemisphere, including the United States, have struggled to protect, will form the foundation of my policy toward Cuba when I am President of the United States.

Over the last quarter century we have seen an unprecedented movement toward democracy and respect for fundamental rights across the world. Cuba, unfortunately, has remained under one-party rule, under a regime and a leadership that is responsible for terrible human rights abuses and political oppression that has held back 11 million talented and hardworking citizens of the Americas. The Cuban people deserve better.

I believe that this is not the time or place to consider wholesale or broad changes to our Cuba policy, including the embargo. The American people must let the Cuban people know that we are on their side in their struggle for freedom and democracy. We can do this by supporting brave voices for freedom like Oswaldo Paya and the Damas de Blanco. The Castro dictatorship has divided Cuban families for nearly half a century. I have voted to support flexibility to allow visits for immediate family members in humanitarian cases. Such ties give hope to the Cuban people and to their families in the diaspora. And they send a message that the American people recognize that the Cuban people, not their repressive government, represent the promise and possibility for a democratic future.

Likewise, supporting other humanitarian measures that will help bring direct material and moral support to Cuban civil society will help the Cuban people gain the confidence and independence to imagine a society free of repression, one in which freedom and social justice, two core values of the Cuban nation for centuries, can exist side by side.

During my presidency, I hope there may be an opportunity to undertake a review of our policy toward Cuba, because there may be changes and fundamental reforms that merit a new approach. Now, however, is not a time for unilateral steps such as lifting the embargo. We must retain a policy of support for the Cuban people, without strengthening the Cuban regime.


BO After nearly 50 years of failure, we must turn the page and begin to write a new chapter in U.S.-Cuba policy to help advance the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba. To write this new chapter, I will keep U.S. national interests, and not partisan or electoral interests, at the forefront. I will strive to empower the Cuban people and aim to position the United States to help foster a stable and peaceful transition in Cuba to avoid potential disasters that could result in mass migration, internal violence, or the perpetuation of the Cuban dictatorship. A democratic opening in Cuba is, and should be, the foremost objective of our policy. I believe we need a clear strategy to achieve this objective—one that takes some limited steps now to spread the message of freedom on the island, but preserves our ability to bargain on behalf of democracy with a post-Fidel government. The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways.

My approach is built around empowering the Cuban people, who ultimately hold Cuba’s destiny in their hands. There are few better ambassadors for freedom than Cuban Americans. And the money they send to Cuba makes their families less dependent on the Castro regime. Cuban American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grassroots democracy on the island. As President, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island. But as we reach out in some ways, it makes strategic sense to hold on to important inducements we can use in dealing with a post-Fidel government, for it is an unfortunate fact that his departure by no means guarantees the arrival of freedom on the island. I will also do what this President has not done, engage in aggressive and principled bilateral diplomacy.

McAuliff Letter to Sun Sentinel on Democrats' Positions

Summary of Democratic candidates' stands on Cuba misses the main point of conflict
January 18, 2008

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-brmail961sbjan18,0,3444871.story

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel's summary of Democratic candidates' positions on Cuba is inaccurate and misses the main point of conflict between them.

Barack Obama has called for unrestricted travel and remittances by Cuban-Americans.

John Edwards has agreed with unrestricted travel.

Hillary Clinton supports the harsh once-every-three-years restrictions on family travel imposed by President Bush rather than the annual plus emergency travel permitted by her husband.

None of them has spoken about the non-tourist purposeful travel authorized by President Bill Clinton but largely eliminated in 2004.

When economic and social reforms are being discussed in Cuba, it is a grave error that the United States has eliminated or drastically reduced people-to-people exchanges by world affairs councils, students, professionals, alumni, museums, religious and humanitarian groups, sports teams, etc.

Such visits do not bring the economic benefit to Cuba of large scale tourism but do help diverse American opinion leaders understand better what is really taking place. They also create a more positive atmosphere between our countries, which encourages the process of reform.

John McAuliff

Executive Director, Fund for Reconciliation and Development Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.

Endorsements of candidates by Cuba activists

Please send notice of additional endorsements to jmcauliff@gmail.com


Obama

pro normalization or travel

Rep. Bill Delahunt

Rep. Barbara Lee

(organizations listed for identification purposes only)

John McAuliff, Executive Director, Fund for Reconciliation and Developement
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/cubadialog

Carlos Lazo, US Army reservist and Iraq veteran, blocked from traveling to Cuba to see his sons
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/carloslazo

Steve Clemons, Washington Note, New America Foundation

Tom Miller, General Counsel, Global Exchange

Ben Treuhaft, Send A Piana To Havana


Clinton

pro normalization or travel

Rep. Charles Rangel

Rep. Jim McGovern

Rep. Lynn Woolsey

anti normalization

Sen Robert Menendez

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz


Mc Cain

pro travel

Rep. Jeff Flake


anti normalization

Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Ballart

Rep. Mario Diaz-Ballart

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

Sen. Mel Martinez


Huckabee

anti normalization

Marco Rubio, Florida's Cuban American state House speaker

Cuba as a National Issue

“The right to know, to converse with others, to consult with them, to observe social, physical, political, and other phenomena abroad as well as at home gives meaning and substance to freedom of expression and freedom of the press.”
--Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

A Gallup Poll in December 2006 showed that 67% of Americans believe that we should be free to travel to Cuba and that the US should normalize relations.

Yet the issue of US-Cuba relations has been absent from Presidential campaign discussion with the notable exception of two niche events, Univision’s Spanish language debates and the December 1st Brown and Black Forum in Des Moines.

During a campaign in which “change” and the US role in the world play a prominent role, Cuba should be attracting more attention as a symbol both of America’s international isolation and of the control of foreign policy by special interest groups and Washington insiders.

At least as much as Iraq, the unilateralism of the US embargo of Cuba and the Bush Administration’s interventionist obsession with regime change, have puzzled and angered our own Hemisphere and long time international allies. For sixteen years, the UN General Assembly has condemned US policy, most recently by a record setting 184 to 4. (Our only significant ally, Israel, votes with us but does not prevent its own people from traveling and doing substantial business in Cuba.)

Big differences do exist among the candidates about Cuba and the issue has occasionally been a flash point.

Except for Ron Paul, the Republicans vie with each other to take a harder line than President Bush. At stake are 10% of Republican primary votes cast by Cuban Americans in Florida.

When Mike Huckabee’s opposition to the embargo as Governor of rice exporting Arkansas was outed by a Fred Thompson campaign press release, Huckabee did a complete flip-flop within 24 hours, and received the endorsement of one of the most intransigent Cuban American leaders, the speaker of the Florida House.

(Thompson does not let his anti-Castro polemics interfere with embargo violating possession and consumption of Cuban cigars, as reported by the conservative Weekly Standard.)

On the Democratic side, the picture is more complicated, as brought out during the Brown and Black Forum in Des Moines.

Before he withdrew, Chris Dodd, as befits the chair of the Senate’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee (and a former Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic), was the only candidate to make a comprehensive policy statement on Cuba, calling for the end of the embargo, all travel restrictions, and the privileged status of illegal Cuban immigrants. Dennis Kucinich agrees on ending the embargo on trade and travel.

Barack Obama supports unrestricted family reunion travel and remittances for Cuban Americans(as did Bill Richardson). Obama deserves great credit for breaking with misleading stereotypes of the Cuba issue by publishing an Op Ed in the Miami Herald in August and following up to an enthusiastic audience in Little Havana. John Edwards favors family travel but not remittances.

Only about a third of Florida’s Cuban Americans are Democrats, but most of them are angry at the restrictive family travel policy of the Bush administration.

During the Forum, Obama reiterated that he saw family travel as a first step that, “would send a signal that we can build on once Castro is out of power.”

Candidates have not been asked about their position on the civil liberties issue of whether all Americans simply should have the same right to travel to Cuba as they do to every other country in the world. Nor have they been pressed on what they think of Bill Clinton’s policy of allowing non-tourist people to people travel by students, professionals, world affairs councils, religious and humanitarian organizations, sports teams, cultural groups, etc. Cuba’s ongoing transition makes it especially timely to renew such channels for informal “track two” contact.

Although Hillary Clinton has not been overtly challenged for her position on Cuba, she is the outlier among the Democrats. Her stance ironically is closer to the policy of Bush rather than that of her husband. She supports the current administration’s harsh move in 2004 to limit remittances to a narrow definition of family and to reduce Cuban American visits from annual, plus emergencies, to one visit every three years.

During the Brown and Black Forum, Clinton also echoed Bush’s belief that, “when Fidel Castro finally does pass on, there will be a tremendous pent up desire on the part of the Cuban people for freedom and for democracy.” This sentiment is common among the old guard in Miami, but not supported by first hand accounts in Cuba by journalists and diplomatic observers.

Clinton’s position is out of sync with the opinion of most Democrats. However, absent the kind of active pressure from potential caucus goers and primary voters that she gets on Iraq and Iran, Clinton reflects the inertia and conventional wisdom of inside-the-beltway foreign policy advisers. Her campaign staff may also have made a political judgment last spring that she had less need for liberal Cuban American voters in the Florida Democratic primary than for their more conservative brethren in the November election.

Clinton has more direct ties than any other Democratic candidate to the Cuban American community. Within days of her public embrace of the Bush policy last June, it was announced that New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez had signed on as National Co-chair of her campaign. Menendez is progressive on every issue but Cuba and a prodigious fund raiser in Miami. In addition her sister-in-law, Maria Victoria Arias, is a well-connected Cuban American who actively opposed US-Cuba normalization within Bill Clinton’s administration.

Nevertheless, neither Clinton nor the other Democrats echo the Republican in simplemindedly equating Fidel and Raul Castro. Nor, however, do they acknowledge the broad gauged debate over economic and social reform that has distinguished Raul’s tenure as acting head of state.

The test will come if Fidel Castro passes away or officially retires during the campaign. Will the Democratic candidates follow Bush and say there is no reason to change US policy? Or will they recognize a new page has been turned and declare that as President they will allow Americans to freely travel and sell agricultural products and will begin serious negotiations to resolve obstacles to normal diplomatic, economic and cultural relations?

--John McAuliff
The author is executive director of the Fund for Reconciliation and Development in New York

Questions for Presidential Candidates

To Hillary Clinton:

Why do you support President Bush's post 2004 policy on travel rather than that of the Clinton Administration?

[Bush post 2004--Cuban Americans limited to one trip every three years, virtually no licenses for non-tourist purposeful travel;
Clinton-- annual plus flexibility for emergency visits by Cuban Americans; liberal licensing for short term student programs and for professional, religious, cultural and people to people exchanges]


To John Edwards and Barrack Obama:

I applaud your support for unrestricted Cuban American family reunions, but have noticed you do not address the kind of travel by other Americans that was permitted by the Clinton Administration. As President would you also immediately authorize a general license for non-tourist purposeful travel sponsored by not-for-profit organizations (short term student programs; cultural, professional and people-to-people exchanges)?


To Representatives Kucinich and Paul:

I applaud your support for the end of travel restrictions and the embargo of Cuba if you become President. What will you do in the coming session of Congress to at least return us to the travel policies of Presidents Clinton and even of President Bush prior to the 2004 election?


Broader questions for any candidate:

Is travel one of the Constitutional rights that needs to be redeemed from politics and fear-mongering?

If you are campaigning as an agent of change, shouldn't you be addressing the need to change an outdated and unproductive US foreign policy which is opposed by two-thirds of Americans and virtually every other country in the world?

How can the goal of restoring US international standing be achieved when our hostile policy towards Cuba is strongly opposed by the rest of the Western Hemisphere and virtually every other country in the world?

Which is more important, the desire of two-thirds of Americans to have normal relations and travel with Cuba or the views of a hard line minority of exiles in Florida?

Would your approach to Cuba continue the regime change strategy of the Bush Administration or treat Cuba like Vietnam, China, Saudi Arabia, Libya and other countries with which the US has normal but critical diplomatic and trade relations?


Or, if you can't ask a question, print out and distribute the Voter Pledge on Cuba at the event, and present a copy to the candidate signed by you or a group.

Huckabee Flip Flops

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-huckabee11dec11,1,96861.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

From the Los Angeles Times

Huckabee does a flip-flop on Cuba

The GOP candidate now supports a trade embargo against the island nation, a stance sure to satisfy hard-line Cuban exiles.

By Peter Wallsten
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 11, 2007

MIAMI — As governor of Arkansas five years ago, Mike Huckabee joined a bipartisan chorus of politicians who concluded that the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba was bad for businesses. Now that he's a top-tier candidate for president, Huckabee has decided he favors the embargo -- so much so that he vowed Monday to outdo even President Bush in strangling the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro and punishing those who do business there.

It was a change of heart sure to please hard-liners among the Cuban exiles who could make up 10% or more of the electorate in Florida's crucial Jan. 29 Republican primary. But it also reflected the latest move by a once-obscure candidate now grappling with how to transform a burst of momentum into a sustainable bid for the White House.

Huckabee's Cuba flip-flop comes just days after he released a new, hard-line plan on illegal immigration described as "radical" by some of the same immigrant-rights advocates who once lauded him for more liberal views. As governor, Huckabee supported in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants and stood up for illegal workers caught in a raid of a meatpacking plant. Now he wants all illegal immigrants to return to their native countries within 120 days.

Huckabee all but acknowledged the political expediency of his shifting views as he stood Monday in a Cuban restaurant in Miami and explained why he wrote a letter to Bush in 2002 describing how the Cuba trade embargo was hurting Arkansas rice growers.

"Rather than seeing it as some huge change, I would call it, rather, the simple reality that I'm running for president of the United States, not for reelection as governor of Arkansas," he said. "I've got to look at this as an issue that touches the whole country."

Huckabee has rocketed to the front of the GOP pack by emphasizing his roots as a plain-spoken Southern Baptist preacher with staunchly conservative views. A CNN survey released Monday puts him in a statistical tie nationally with GOP front-runner Rudolph W. Giuliani.

But Huckabee's evolving views on certain issues are giving his rivals for the Republican nomination ammunition as they try to halt his rise.

On Monday in Miami, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee criticized Huckabee for changing his stance on Cuba "on a dime to appeal to a particular group of people right before an election," according to the Associated Press.

The night before -- when the GOP candidates jockeyed to appear toughest on Castro during a debate on the Spanish-language network Univision -- Thompson's campaign gave reporters quotes from Huckabee's 2002 letter. Thompson had hoped to win support from the social conservatives flocking to Huckabee.

Huckabee on Monday won an endorsement from Marco Rubio, Florida's Cuban American state House speaker, handing the upstart candidate instant cachet in a community that some of his rivals have been courting for years. He said his decision was based largely on Huckabee's new views on Cuba.

Rubio, who has been wooed by all the major GOP candidates, said he decided to back Huckabee after searching for "someone that will fight for what they truly believe in the depths of their heart."

The letter Huckabee wrote in 2002 reportedly argued that the embargo "continues to harm our own agricultural and business interests here at home and has certainly not helped the people of Cuba."

His views on Monday were equally firm in the opposite direction, as he vowed, if elected president, to veto any effort to end the sanctions.

Huckabee pledged to adhere to provisions of a 1996 law that would permit U.S. citizens to sue in American courts for property taken from them during the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Those lawsuits could threaten European businesses with holdings on the island. Bush and President Clinton have routinely avoided conflict on the issue by suspending those provisions of the 1996 law.

"I really wasn't that aware of a lot of the issues that exist between Cuba and the United States," Huckabee said Monday, adding that his flexibility on policy should be viewed as a good thing.

"I'll be the first to tell you I'm always subject -- and I hope we all are -- to learning, to growing, and never being so stubborn and maybe bull-headed," he said.

Huckabee appears to be applying that same approach to his views on immigration, another issue that is important to conservative voters in early GOP contests and an area where he is being attacked by his opponents.

Like former New York Mayor Giuliani, Huckabee has long been viewed with admiration among advocates for immigrants. He supported legislation two years ago in Arkansas that would have given in-state tuition to certain children of illegal immigrants.

And two years ago he reacted with outrage after federal agents raided an Arkadelphia, Ark., poultry plant and arrested and deported many Mexican workers. Huckabee was incensed that federal authorities had separated many parents from their children, and he called for a White House investigation.

"Our first priority should be to secure our borders. I'm less threatened by people who cross the line to make beds, pick tomatoes, or pluck chickens as I am by people like those in Canada making 3-ton bombs," he said in an e-mail to The Times last year. "While we should certainly enforce the law, we need to prioritize." He called in the e-mail for a "process that avoids amnesty, but does provide a path for workers to become legal by paying a fine, getting in the back of the line to register."

But Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant rights group, said he was stunned last week when Huckabee released a new plan calling for all illegal workers to register with federal authorities and return to their native countries within 120 days.

Those who did would face no penalty under Huckabee's plan if they later applied to immigrate to or visit the United States. Those who did not return home would be barred, when caught, from future reentry to the United States for 10 years.

"To me, it's like night and day," Sharry said. "One day he's saying children of [illegal] immigrants should go to college, and the next day he's saying there should be mass expulsion."

Huckabee on Monday said his anger over the Arkadelphia raid stemmed from the fact that local authorities were not told in advance so they could make preparations for the children who were left alone when their parents were arrested and deported. Often, illegal workers have children who were born on U.S. soil and are therefore citizens.

He said raiding a business employing "vast amounts" of illegal workers was a "legitimate thing to do" as long as local officials knew in advance.

peter.wallsten@latimes.com

Huckabee Statements as Governor Against Embargo

The following was distributed by the Fred Thompson campaign. See below re Thompson's hypocrisy.

Contact: Press Office, 571-730-1010; www.Fred08.com

MEDIA ADVISORY, Dec. 9 /Standard Newswire/ -- In 2002, Governor Huckabee strongly advocated lifting the embargo against Cuba saying it "harm[s] our own agricultural and business interests," "has not helped the people of Cuba" and has "provided Castro with a convenient excuse for his own failed system of government."

"All four House members, both senators and Governor Huckabee strongly support doing away with the trade embargo." (Kevin Freking, "Legislators Call For Ending Ban On Cuba," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 3/22/02)

"'The United States' policy of unilateral embargo against Cuba continues to harm our own agricultural and business interests here at home and has certainly not helped the people of Cuba,' Huckabee wrote in his Feb. 14 letter [to President Bush]. It's not right to continue to make American farmers bear the burden of a policy that hasn't worked, he said. Huckabee cited a study by Texas A&M University reporting that the embargo hurt Arkansas more than other states, costing Arkansas lost farm exports of $ 167 million a year and a loss of almost 4,000 jobs." (Michael Wickline, "End of Cuban Trade Embargo Benefits Children, Snyder Says," Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 3/29/02)

"In a letter to President Bush, Mr. Huckabee wrote, 'U.S. policy on Cuba has not accomplished its stated goal of toppling the Castro regime and instead has provided Castro with a convenient excuse for his own failed system of government.'" (Letters, "Time To End Embargo Against Cuba," Washington Times, 2/27/02)

"Huckabee, the GOP governor of Arkansas, wrote to President Bush seeking action against the embargo." (Jeffrey Birnbaum, "Business to Bush: Let Us Into Cuba!", Fortune, 5/27/02)

**********************

[Fred] Thompson's work space looks just like what the home office of a successful politician or CEO should look like--though a little messier: a large desk, dark wood, leather furniture, lots of books and magazines and newspapers, a flat-screen TV, and box upon box of cigars--Montecristos from Havana.

The presence of the cigars and the absence of a press chaperone were clues that Thompson is taking a different approach to his potential candidacy. A campaign flack would have insisted on hiding the cigars--Senator, how did you get those Cuban cigars? Isn't there a trade embargo?

“From the Courthouse to the White House: Fred Thompson auditions for the leading role” by Stephen F. Hayes The Weekly Standard 04/23/2007

http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=13528&R=1136E33842