The following editorial appeared in the Dallas Morning News on Thursday, May 13:

Before 9-11, President Bush told national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that he was tired of swatting flies when it came to counterterrorism. So why is Bush swatting Cuba’s Fidel Castro? There’s no bigger fly in the world.

Last week, Bush announced a plan to hasten the dictator’s demise. He would spend $59 million to foil Cuba’s jamming of U.S. broadcasts, to help Castro’s domestic opponents and to advertise the leader’s abuses. Family visits to Cuba would be limited to one every three years instead of the present one every year. Cubans in the United States would be allowed to give much less money to their relatives in Cuba.

“It’s a strategy that says we’re not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are working for the day of freedom in Cuba,” Bush declared.

Nonsense. The plan will strengthen Castro by providing a scapegoat for Cuba’s penury and by allowing him to position himself as David to the U.S. Goliath. It will make the dissidents who take the U.S. money look like U.S. agents and give Castro an excuse to imprison them. Worse, it won’t work. If such measures were effective, Castro already would be gone. But 45 years of U.S. embargo, ostracism and fist shaking have only added to his aura of invincibility.

Contrast Bush’s policy toward Cuba with his policies toward two other dictatorships: China and Iran. With China, he has correctly determined that engagement is best and that U.S. businessmen and tourists spread U.S. values of democracy, free enterprise and human rights. With Iran, he has correctly determined that direct support for domestic opponents would make them look like puppets.

Bush treats Cuba differently because it’s to his political advantage. He wants the support of Florida’s Cuban-Americans, who are key to his re-election. So he panders to them. He can afford to do that because Cuba is a fly – a strategically unimportant country that poses no military threat to the United States.

But good politics don’t always make good policy. Bush should stop swatting flies. He should go for the big game – Iraq and al-Qaeda.

-The Dallas Morning News.

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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ARCHIVE CARICATURE on KRT Direct (from KRT Faces in the News Library, 202-383-6064): Fidel Castro

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