New York Times
Considering how hard the United States and Cuba have worked to torment one another over the last four decades, it was startling the other day to see Jimmy Carter in short sleeves and a baseball cap tossing the ceremonial first pitch at a game in Havana. Mr. Carter's visit to Cuba this week doesn't mean relations with Havana are about to come out of the ice age, but his trip has shown why it makes far more sense to engage in an open dialogue with Mr. Castro and his nation than to shun them as ideological lepers. It is a shame that President Bush still seems to think that preventing American trade and ideas from crossing the Straits of Florida will loosen Mr. Castro's grip on power. ...
In calling for an end to the American embargo of Cuba and more exchanges between Cubans and Americans, Mr. Carter advanced the common-sense idea that prying closed societies open to global commerce and democratic cultural influences -- including outspoken tourists like himself -- tends to undermine a totalitarian regime's power. Cuba's foremost dissident, Elizardo Sanchez, agrees with that assessment. All the embargo has done is give Mr. Castro something he can blame for his failures.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bush -- trolling for Cuban-American votes in Florida for himself and his brother, Jeb, who is the state's governor -- continues to exempt Cuban policy from America's approach to the rest of the world. ...
The heartening news is that even plenty of Republicans are tired of having American foreign policy hijacked by anti-Castro activists in a key electoral state. ... One of these days, the Bush brothers will recognize that the isolation of Cuba serves neither American nor Cuban interests.
Washington Times
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has been a master at camouflaging the truth in his little Caribbean fiefdom. This week, his stature as liar-in-chief was bolstered by former President Jimmy Carter's trip to Cuba. As for Mr. Carter's own credibility, the trip will probably only serve to confirm the poor opinion many Americans have long had of the man's intelligence.
Mr. Carter has insisted he is in Cuba merely as a private person. But once a U.S. president, always a president. Former office-holders always carry residual dignity conferred by the office. Furthermore, former presidents, by tradition, do not criticize sitting ones, and particularly not from the shores of America's enemies. Mr. Carter's meddling regarding Cuba's potential export of biotechnology was therefore particularly unwelcome. ...
Mr. Carter's ill-considered statements hurt the Bush administration's credibility at a critical time for the nation. The jury is still out on whether Cuba's biotechnology transfers have been generating dangerous weapons proliferation. Still, Mr. Carter's comments seemed to suggest that Mr. Castro has a clean bill of health in this regard, which is just as outrageous as his criticism of Mr. Bush.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day, however, and it could be that Mr. Carter has given the human rights movement a push forward in Cuba. During his speech on Tuesday, Mr. Carter spoke of an unprecedented drive for civil rights, known as the Varela Project ... Oswaldo Paya, the mastermind of the project, has called for a national referendum on free speech, free elections, amnesty for political prisoners and the right to own private businesses. ...
In the past, Fidel has taken advantage of Mr. Carter's naive efforts to advance human rights. During the 1980 Mariel boatlift, Fidel allowed U.S. shores to be flooded not only with political prisoners, but with the most hardened Cuban criminals as well. The former president does not have a whole lot of credibility in dealing with the wily dictator as a consequence. Still, the Varela Project deserves U.S. support -- and would have received it without Mr. Carter's meddling.
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
High-profile visits to Cuba by foreign dignitaries -- former President Jimmy Carter is there this week -- underscore at least two important facts. The first is that while Fidel Castro is getting older (not to mention grayer and maybe even a little rounder), he's not much wiser. The second is that the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba isn't improving much with age, either. ...
Tuesday night, in an address that Castro allowed to be telecast uncensored, Carter urged the Cuban dictator to allow a referendum to end some of these horribly obsolete and indefensible restrictions on basic freedoms. Castro is not about to permit such a vote, but the fact that he allowed Carter even to raise the subject was a concession.
Carter also urged the abolition of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, imposed shortly after Castro took power in 1959. The blockade, which was designed to isolate and eventually depose the Cuban dictator, has been a colossal failure. It remains on the books chiefly because of the political power of Cuban expatriates, centered in south Florida, who continue to insist -- despite four decades of evidence to the contrary -- that the embargo eventually will bring down Castro and lead to a new Cuban revolution.
In fact, the embargo actually preserves Castro's power even as it helps to keep ordinary Cubans locked in poverty. ... It keeps Cuba stuck in the past.
Next week, however, at a campaign fundraiser for his brother -- Florida Gov. Jeb Bush -- President Bush plans to urge that the embargo be tightened. It is natural that the president should seek his brother's re-election, but if the Bush brothers' commitment to democracy in Cuba is more than rhetorical, they will work for an end to the economic blockade.
Fortunately, there are signs, faint but real, of cracks in the wall. Since 1999, eight U.S. senators and 18 members of Congress have visited Cuba. Pope John Paul II has been there. Now Carter. Restrictions on trade and travel, while still tight, have been eased. As more people, products and ideas flow into Cuba, those cracks will widen, and Cuba -- with or without Castro -- will be dragged into the 21st century.
Honolulu Star-Bulletin
Identity theft has become a major crime and threatens to spin out of control through the pilfering and use of stolen credit cards on the Internet. Hawaii residents are especially targeted by cybercrooks elsewhere because of the state's remote location, an impediment to law enforcement. The crime usually crosses state lines and international boundaries, and demands a greater federal effort to combat it.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recognized the problem earlier this month, noting that federal prosecutions increased from 569 in the 1999 fiscal year to 775 in 2000, 879 in 2001 and 816 after only seven months of the current fiscal year. He said as many as 700,000 people a year are victimized by identity theft. ...
Detective Chris Duque of the Honolulu Police Department says identity thieves' understanding of the complications in the investigation and prosecution of crime -- including extradition -- across remote jurisdictions makes Hawaii especially vulnerable. Figures compiled by the Federal Trade Commission rank Hawaii third among states in identity-theft complaints per capita. FBI statistics show Hawaii leading all states in Internet fraud complainants per capita.
Ashcroft called on Congress to enact longer sentences for identity thieves, but first they have to be caught and brought to justice. Heightened coordination of local police, the FBI -- through its wire-fraud jurisdiction -- and law-enforcement agencies in other countries, perhaps through Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, is essential for identity theft in cyberspace to be brought under control.
Dallas Morning News
The relationship between presidents and ex-presidents always seems tricky. Theodore Roosevelt so disliked Woodrow Wilson that he wrote the leaders of France and Great Britain to gloat about President Wilson's failures during the 1918 congressional elections. On the other hand, Lyndon Johnson was so solicitous of Dwight Eisenhower that he repeatedly sought his counsel on issues like Vietnam, all the while hoping it would sway Capitol Hill Republicans.
Jimmy Carter, of course, usually stands in his own category. The Clinton administration never liked his free-lancing in hot spots like North Korea. And the Bush White House held its breath as he traveled to Cuba this week.
Administration officials can exhale because the trip could have been worse, as Mark Falcoff of the conservative American Enterprise Institute concludes. Mr. Carter had his share of inappropriate comments, but he also had positive moments. ...
In sum, Mr. Carter probably did not tilt the balance toward normalizing relations with Cuba. He lacks the standing with grass-roots Republicans to do that.
But the goal of better relations is one that the United States should pursue. An opening could actually pressure Fidel Castro or any successor. They would lose their ability to play the "victim card" and blame the United States for Cuba's woes.
The Bush administration should keep that point in mind as it prepares an even harder-line Cuba strategy. For any opening the United States gives Cuba, it should demand changes on issues like economic freedom. The Cuban embargo is not a sacred cow. Voyages like the one Jimmy Carter took need not look unusual.
Chicago Tribune
The earth is round. The sun rises in the east. Molasses oozes downhill. The United States embargo against Cuba doesn't work.
After more than 40 years in effect, the last item ought to be as self-evident as the previous three, and it is -- anywhere except in south Florida or the inner sanctum of the Bush administration. The embargo, enacted in the early 1960s, was supposed to lead to the strangulation and quick demise of the Castro regime.
It hasn't worked. There's no better proof than news photos this week, showing Castro and former President Jimmy Carter looking like two Boca Raton grandpas out for a round of golf. Except they are still carping about how to restore relations between the two countries, probably the same debate they had a quarter-century ago. ...
The U.S. ban on travel to the island is flouted every year by hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens and Cuban-Americans. There is no compelling argument for the U.S. government to continue interfering with the fundamental freedom to travel by making it more costly or difficult to go to Cuba.
Unfettered travel to the island by planeloads of American tourists indeed will do more to open Cubans' eyes to a life after Castro than a thousand propaganda radio broadcasts from Miami.
Eventually Cubans will decide to send Castro to retirement, a status Carter has enjoyed since January 1981. Maybe then these two septuagenarians will be able to get together to toss a baseball around or play 18 holes.
San Francisco Chronicle
The new deal for Russia to become a partner in some NATO activities tempts government officials to order up another round of obsequies for the Cold War. That is a somewhat dated reaction. The breakup of the Soviet Union more than a decade ago marked the real end of the East-West faceoff for which NATO was created. Russia, while still nuclear-armed, has emerged as a seeker of democratic credentials and economic reform.
NATO finds fresh reasons for its existence as a guarantor of European stability, and is accepting more bids for membership from former Soviet satellites and republics. The U.S.-led military alliance of 19 states is expected to expand to 26 in the fall by adding Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Slovakia.
Moscow dislikes this approach of NATO to its doorstep, but must make the best of it. NATO five years ago set up a Permanent Joint Council to discuss with Russia decisions already agreed upon by the allies. That arrangement was badly strained by NATO's 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia over Russia's disapproval.
The redefined Russia-NATO partnership, approved at a NATO meeting in Iceland, gives Moscow equality with the allies in a NATO-Russia Council to address such matters as terrorism, arms control, regional crises and natural catastrophes. The agreement came a day after U.S.-Russian disclosure of a plan to reduce the countries' nuclear stockpiles by two-thirds.
The fresh NATO arrangement is an outgrowth of Russian cooperation with the United States in the post-Sept. 11 campaign against Afghanistan-based terrorists. Russia's Central Asian presence has helped.
With a seat at the table of NATO allies, President Vladimir Putin advances his aim of closer relations with Western Europe and the United States. That is in this nation's interest as well.
(Compiled by United Press International.)
