In a few hours, President Obama will visit the home of Emilio and Gloria Estefan for a fundraising event that will cost attendees $30,400 per couple.
What could possibly motivate the Estefans and their closest friends and business contacts in South Florida to write such astoundingly large checks? Good government? Financial Reform? Ending the embargo of Cuba?
Let us not be naive.
The Estefans - at the vanguard of Cuban Americans who support the harshest possible line against the government of Cuba -- will use this access "to get Obama's ear on Cuba," just as a columnist in the Miami Herald said on Saturday.
And I am sure that he will get an earful, about Cuba's human rights record, and a whole lot more.
Of course, political conditions on the island should command his concern, as they do all of us. I don't blame the Estefans for exercising their constitutional rights or using their power and wealth to gain this exclusive audience with the president.
But there's a smart and vastly different point of view - one that President Obama will not hear in the Estefans' living room - that says every American interest in democracy and human rights would be better vindicated by ending our current Cuba policy rather than by freezing it, or worse, by making it even tougher.
Just imagine what the President could learn if any of the following luminaries had gotten an invitation to this shindig and had thirty-grand to throw around.
If George Shultz were there, who served as Secretary of State under President Reagan, he could tell the president that continuing the embargo is "insane," as he did on the Charlie Rose Show.
If Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to President George H.W. Bush bought a ticket, he'd tell Mr. Obama, "In foreign policy, the embargo makes no sense. It doesn't do anything," as he said on tape to Steve Clemons at the New America Foundation .
Legislators like Senator Richard Lugar could repeat for President Obama what he told Senate colleagues last year, "We must recognize the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances U.S. interests."
John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, could advise the President, "we have a choice: seek solace in old rhetoric, ignore change and resist it, or mold it and channel it into a new policy to help achieve our goals."
If the Vatican were represented, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Pope Benedict XVI's secretary of state, could remind President Obama of what Pope John Paul II said when he visited Cuba; he called U.S. policy "oppressive, unjust and ethically unacceptable."
Nelson Mandela, a fellow recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, could grab the President's arm and prick his conscience by repeating his support of "the right of the Cuban people to determine their own destiny," and by saying "that sanctions which seek to punish them for having decided to do so are anathema to the international order to which we aspire," as he has said in the past.
Independent blogger Yoani Sanchez, a victim of harassment on Cuba for her opposition activities, could pull President Obama aside, thank him for doing an interview for her website, but then advise the President what Cubans of every political stripe on the island know and think: "I believe that these economic restrictions ? an 'embargo' to some and a 'blockade' to others ? represent a blunder in American policy toward Cuba...it has been used to support the maxim, 'in a country under siege, dissent is treason,' which contributes to the lack of freedoms for the Cuban people."
Instead, the President, who to my knowledge has never met at the White House with a broad cross-section of academics, advocates, and activists who share these views, will be told by the Estefans and their guests that he must not make further changes in U.S. policy toward Cuba this year given the human rights conditions on the island. How could they leave the party without asking for such a commitment?
If the President agrees, this will be a huge mistake. He will threaten changes that are moving forward in Congress to end the travel ban for all Americans and remove restrictions on the export of U.S. agricultural goods to the island. That would deny millions of Americans their basic freedom to travel, and kill the prospect of creating tens of thousands of American jobs in the travel and agricultural trade sectors.
But this is about more than dollars and cents; it is about common sense.
After fifty years of failure, we have to try something new.
Keeping the policy in place would put President Obama exactly in the same position as every president who preceded him since Eisenhower - trying to wring results out of a policy that has failed to change Cuba, and ignoring the advice of foreign policy experts, human rights champions, and freedom advocates in Cuba who believe that changing the policy is exactly the right thing to do, if you have the best interests of the Cuban people at heart and you want to advance American ideals.
Oh, for thirty thousand dollars.
Follow Sarah Stephens on Twitter: www.twitter.com/sarahatcda
I'm a Cuban, and I'm a democrat, and I know how bad one gets marginalized both in Cuba and in the Cuban community in Fla. I want the embargo to end so as to bring the Cuban regime to an end. As Sec. Clinton said, the Cuban government loves the embargo, and uses it as an excuse for all its failures
Why dont you and Democracy in The Ameridcas make a statement about the release of at least the 26 political prisoners that are ill in Cuba? Your lobby group also get a lot of money to get the Cuba Embargo lifted so dont be a hypocrite. I get your e-mails from Cuba Central and you are always usiing an excuse for the actions of the Cuban Goverment. I think Gloria and Emilio have more of a right to talk to Obama about Cuba than some gringos on the extreme left.
Humberto Capiro
Ms Stephens, despite your implications to the contrary, US foreign policy experts obviously disagree on the embargo. And, this is not a partisan issue. President Clinton strengthened the embargo far more than President Bush. Every US President since Eisenhower has maintained the embargo, not in an effort to enlist Cuban American support but, to uphold the democratic, human rights ideals that our country has always championed.
Why do you disregard the Cuban government''s exploitation and human rights record? Are you still with those who naively touted the great achievements of the Castro brothers? In the interest of full disclosure, why do you fail to mention that the greatest motivator for ending the embargo is not altruism but rather it has always been individual and corporate interests eager to exploit new markets in Cuba?
Why do you also fail to also recognize that the embargo's ineffectiveness has not been because it is unjust but because it goes against worldwide capitalistic interests, despite its altruistic justification? Unfortunately, those often self-serving individual and corporate interests have always had their own very loud voices. So, I would thank you to please let the Estafans eat their dinner with the Obamas in peace.
My heart goes out to you and to the people of any country who might yet suffer the tragic fate the Cuban people suffer, by having traded one dictator for another even more abusive, and more adept tyrant. And that, my dear, is the true inspiration to be gleaned from the Cuban tragedy and the debacle once marveled as the Cuban Revolution.
Ms Stephen's, despite your implications to the contrary, US foreign policy experts obviously disagree on the embargo. And, this is not a partisan issue. President Clinton strengthened the embargo far more than President Bush. Every US President since Eisenhower has maintained the embargo, not in an effort to enlist Cuban American support but, to uphold the democratic, human rights ideals that our country has always championed.
Why do you disregard the Cuban government''s exploitation and human rights record? Are you still with those who naively touted the great achievements of the Castro brothers? In the interest of full disclosure, why do you fail to mention that the greatest motivator for ending the embargo is not altruism but rather it has always been individual and corporate interests eager to exploit new markets in Cuba?
Why do you also fail to also recognize that the embargo's ineffectiveness has not been because it is unjust but because it goes against worldwide capitalistic interests, despite its altruistic justification. Unfortunately those often self-serving individual and corporate interests have always had their own very loud voices. So, I would thank you to please let the Estafan's eat their dinner with President Obams in peace.
Obama said he would allow the Cuban-Americans to send unlimited money so that the Cuban people would be less "dependent on the regime", which means they would not seek employment in Cuba's public sector. In other words, Obama wanted and wants to undermine the Cuban economy. Obama is that unusual politician in that he has kept these promises.
Obama's administration continues to harshly punish foreign and US firms who do business with the island. No other country on earth: Not China, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, North Korea nor Iran receives the same harsh treatment which Washington imposes on Cuba.
Obama is only marginally different from previous US administrations when it comes to Cuba. It's no wonder Obama feels at home with the Estefan's and in an event costing $30,000.00 per couple. You get what you pay for. It's the best democracy money can by.