AUSTIN, Texas -- President George Bush's foreign policy is
starting to look like a running gag on "Saturday Night Live." How inept can
he get?
On Tuesday, Bush teed off on Castro of Cuba, saying he "ought to
have free elections," "ought to have a free press" and "ought to free his
political prisoners." All of which is dandy, except Bush was standing right
next to one of our more questionable allies in the "war on terrorism," the
prime minister of Malaysia.
Malaysia is also in serious need of free elections, a free press
and freed political prisoners. Mahathir Mohamad is a far more brutal ruler
than Castro ever dreamed of being. His party has been in power since 1957
(love those free elections). He's been in office since 1981 and the subject
of denunciations by human-rights groups the entire time. His ruling faction
is far ahead of Castro on bloodshed points. And we're offering Mohamad
whatever he wants.
OK, we knew when Bush won the coin toss in 2000 that he was no
genius on foreign affairs. Nobody asked him to find Malaysia on a map, but
where are his briefers? Where are these great advisers who were going to
make up for his lack of knowledge? This was supposed to be the "crack
foreign policy team" with all the experience that was going to prevent the
foreign-policy impaired president from making an ass of himself.
Looks like we need to start with the fundamentals with this
team. Peace is better than war. We like peace. We try to promote peace.
Peace is good. When Jimmy Carter is down in Cuba jawing with the Old Bearded
One (and getting in some great licks for our side), the smart thing would be
to seize the chance to make progress.
Even if you decide to pass on the opportunity -- because Karl
Rove has explained to you that you need the Cuban-American vote to carry
Florida -- it's really not smart to use the opportunity to make things
worse. Announcing in the middle of Carter's visit that you're about to crack
down on Castro yet again doesn't help anything. It isn't even necessary.
Bush can keep the Cuban vote in Florida without that.
U.S. policy on Cuba was perfectly futile for decades and became
utterly ludicrous after the Cold War ended. We're pals with Vladimir Putin,
Bush trots over to China to exchange toasts with President Jiang Zemin, the
Chinese veep Hu Jintao was just in D.C. last week, we've got undemocratic
allies from Saudi Arabia to our paid-for warlords in Afghanistan, but we
draw the line at Castro? I never understood that.
Of course, there was that unpleasant time the Soviets put
missiles down there. Naturally, we freaked -- missiles 90 miles from our
borders. When you think about it, having missiles aimed at you from 90 miles
away is not much worse than having missiles aimed at you from Russia. What
would it take, maybe a minute longer? We like peace.
We've been cracking down on Castro through Eisenhower, Kennedy,
Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Clinton and
now George the II. Fat lot of good that's done. Most reasonable people would
conclude it could well be time for a change in policy.
This lulu Bush stuck in the State Department, Otto Reich,
assistant secretary for inter-American affairs, is the goofball who totally
screwed up during the Venezuelan coup. We haven't looked that bad since the
time the CIA tried to make Castro's beard fall out. Larry Birns, director of
the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, says, "Reich now leads a veritable cabal
of highly directed and radicalized Cuban-American administration officials
intent on fomenting greater hostility between the two nations by concocting
an atmosphere of near-hysteria."
One of the right-wingers at State, John Bolton, chose the eve of
Carter's visit to claim Cuba has "at least a limited offensive biological
warfare research and development effort." So the right jumps all over
Carter, who then tours the research facility in question and gets Cuban
assurances that foreign germ warfare experts can come inspect the place.
Good news, huh? Not according to the right wing -- they're still
in a stew. How dare Carter imply (SET ITAL) from foreign soil (END ITAL)
that anything said by anybody with the U.S. government might be in error?
Horrors. By now, both Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have backtracked on
Bolton's claim, diplomatically disclaiming it.
The right wing, in its nutzoid way, has been on Bush's case
about his supposed lack of "moral clarity" in foreign policy. The fact is,
it's a complicated world and most of us understand that. What I resent is
the administration's pretense that its policies are never hypocritical and
are born solely of virtue and idealism, never influenced by business deals,
strategic considerations, the need for oil and other facts of life. It's one
of those, "How dumb do they think we are?" deals.
The only president I can remember who conducted a foreign policy
that was both consistent (mostly) and in line with America's finest ideals
and values was Jimmy Carter. And he reaped the whirlwind in Iran of others'
hypocrisies.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
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