BUSH VS. CASTRO: The AP

BUSH VS. CASTRO: The AP headline Sunday on my “My Yahoo” homepage read “Bush Won’t Ease Hard-Line Vs. Cuba” In National Review Online, Joel Mowbray gives much more detailed reasoning behind Bush’s stance in Cuba. He writes:

Without lifting the travel ban or trade embargo, Bush is attempting to infiltrate Castro’s island prison with humanitarian assistance and democratic values in an approach dubbed by a senior State Department official as a “frontal assault against Castro.”

The basic thrust is that the U.S. will attempt to make an end-run around Castro to both engage the Cuban people and sow the seeds of democracy.

If Bush plays his cards right, he could have the most effective foreign policy since Reagan. The Gipper brought down the Soviet Union. Assuming Dubya gets reelected, by the end of his second term he may very well have not only reshaped the Middle East, but liberated Cuba from its tyrannical dictator.

Not too shabby, if he pulls it off–and if he does, what an astonishing first decade of a new millennium this will be for this nation.

UPDATE: Speaking of geopolitics, the Times of London says “On the eve of his six-day trip to Russia and Western Europe, the White House said that he would use his visit to Berlin, where he is due to make a keynote address to the Reichstag, to urge backing for the removal of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons of mass destruction.”