FREDERICKSBURG, Virginia -- In his travels around Cuba this week former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will meet a friendly, resilient people who have bravely withstood the stupidity and cruelty that have emanated from both sides of the Straits of Florida.
For more than 40 years, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the foreign-policy establishment in Washington have been engaged in an absurd dance that has resulted in incalculable -- and wholly avoidable -- suffering for ordinary Cubans.
On the one hand is the United States, which has always sought to destroy regimes and social movements that challenge U.S. hegemony in Latin America. Ever since Castro rose to power, U.S. policymakers have found in his dictatorship a useful excuse for squeezing Cuba to ensure that it did not develop an appealing alternative to the dependency and subservience that historically have been the fate of Latin American nations.