SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 11A

LENGTH: 784 words

HEADLINE: After years of U.S. blunders, it's time to accept Cuba

BYLINE: SAUL LANDAU

BODY:
It's the 40th anniversary of the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion by a brigade of anti-Castro Cuban exiles. This is an appropriate occasion to end U. S. hostilities against Cuba.

At a conference on the Bay of Pigs debacle held in Havana last month, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the historian who served as adviser to President Kennedy, said he had no apologies for having written an official and obfuscating white paper to justify an invasion of Cuba shortly before it started on April 17, 1961.

The conference offered historical actors and scholars an opportunity to reflect on a historical event that they helped create. Unfortunately, Schlesinger, who (despite his white paper) opposed the invasion plan at the time, didn't engage in much reflection on the meaning of distinguished scholars like himself and Kennedy adviser Richard Goodwin participating in plans to overthrow another government in violation of U.S. laws and treaties. Some U.S. historians have labeled the Bay of Pigs invasion "a perfect failure." However, some of the Cubans present at the conference said that if the invasion had succeeded, it could have led to an even greater disaster for the United States. In April 1961, most Cubans supported Castro and his revolutionary agenda, so Kennedy would have had to call in U.S. air power and then, presumably, the Marines to support the CIA's Cubans. We might well have witnessed a Vietnam-style war 90 miles from U.S. shores.

Kennedy publicly accepted the blame. Victory has a thousand fathers, he said, and defeat is an orphan. But in private, instead of attempting to live with the Cuban Revolution, Kennedy appointed his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to lead the effort to avenge the fiasco by directing the CIA to launch a campaign of state terrorism.

Operation Mongoose was born, a plan to assassinate Castro and other Cuban leaders and to sabotage the Cuban economy. Sam Halpern and Robert Reynolds, CIA officials who helped direct these operations, attended the recent conference. They confirmed that the Kennedys pushed the agency to carry out more sabotage and assassination attempts against Castro, even though the CIA officers described these operations as stupid and ineffective. But the Cuban government found the constant bombing, artillery raids, arson against sugar cane fields and sabotage against strategic installations devastating.

In August 1961, Castro sent his most trusted diplomat to talk to the Kennedy team. Che Guevara met Goodwin in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Goodwin said that he listened attentively as Guevara offered concessions: to pull back from the Soviet Union, to repay expropriated U.S. companies for the property the Cuban government had confiscated and, finally, to moderate Cuba's hyperactive support for revolution in Latin America. In return, Guevara asked that the Kennedys cease and desist from their assassination and terror campaign against Cuban officials and property.

The Kennedys rejected the offer and instead turned up the heat. As we now know, the White House terrorist campaign against Cuba through 1961 and into 1962 became an important factor in Castro's decision to accept Soviet ballistic missiles. This led to the terrifying Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962.

In the last four decades, the U.S. has continued to treat Castro as a pariah and a continuously disobedient upstart who has eluded our just punishment. Since 1962, Washington has placed an embargo and travel ban on Cuba to castigate Castro. But the Cuban leader is still in office after four decades, as vigorous as ever. The embargo has, however, punished the Cuban people, whom we claim to support.

The Bush administration needs to lift the economic embargo on Cuba. It has never worked to our advantage. Instead, U.S. businesses suffer a market loss to European and Canadian competitors. Indeed, the American public should know about Cuba, and the travel ban keeps many curious tourists away from the island. It is humiliating for the U.S. to be at the receiving end of a yearly U.N. General Assembly resolution demanding that we repeal the sanctions. How ironic for Washington, the leader of the free-trade movement, to maintain an embargo.

At the Havana conference, five former members of the invading Cuban exile brigade extended their hands to their former enemies. It only took a few seconds, but it held profound meaning. The Bush administration should take a similarly sensible step toward the Cuban government.

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Saul Landau is the Hugh O. La Bounty Chair of Interdisciplinary Applied Knowledge at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

LOAD-DATE: April 17, 2001