Jim Taylor’s Weblog

• “The long rule of a cruel dictator is nearing its end."
• "The people are ready for their freedom."
• “As the nation enters a period of transition, [it] must insist on free speech, free assembly and, ultimately, free and competitive elections.”

        You probably recall these or similar words uttered about Iraq, as Bush assured the American people that Iraqis would welcome an invading force to overthrow Saddam Hussein and restore safety, stability, and a dependable flow of oil revenues.
     Since then, some 3500 American soldiers have been killed by the people who were supposed to welcome them with open arms.
        Before the invasion, foreign correspondents broadcast reports from a bustling Baghdad; today, they\’re only safe within the heavily fortified Green Zone.
        Iraq\’s electric, water, and sewer systems are in worse shape than before the invasion.
        And some international agencies estimate that as many Iraqis have died since the invasion as in Saddam Hussein\’s purges.
        You may also recall similar words about Afghanistan.

Sweeping generalizations
        But those opening quotations were not about Iraq or Afghanistan — or about Somalia, Kosovo, Serbia, or Haiti, for that matter. They were about Cuba.
        Perhaps George Bush has finally mastered the Search-and-Replace command in Microsoft Word. He takes a speech that seemed to work last time, and replaces all references to one country with another.
        Bush made his comments Tuesday in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly — the same venue, by no coincidence, where Colin Powell forever destroyed his credibility by insisting the U.S. had proof that Iraq possessed a world-threatening stockpile of “weapons of mass destruction.”
        To be fair to Bush, only a few sentences of his speech were about Cuba. The rest of his speech said all the right things about international responsibility.
        "This great institution must work for great purposes: to free people from tyranny and violence; to combat disease, illiteracy, and ignorance and poverty and despair," Bush told the representatives of 192 nations.
        And then he shot down his own credibility by lumping Cuba together with Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma.
        Cuba has no nuclear weapons program like Iran and North Korea. Only 0.1 per cent of Cuba\’s population has AIDS — the U.S. has six times more, and Zimbabwe roughly 300 times more.
        Indeed, Castro\’s Cuba compares favorably with Bush\’s U.S. by almost any measure except per capita income.
        The two countries\’ literacy rates are both over 99 per cent. Cuba\’s infant mortality rate is lower than the U.S. — 6.04 per thousand instead of 6.37. That\’s balanced by a fractionally lower life expectancy — 77 years, instead of 78.
        Its unemployment rate is less than half that of the U.S. — 1.9 per cent compared to 4.8 per cent. External indebtedness is much lower: each U.S. resident bears about $33,360 debt owed to other countries; each Cuban, $1,620.
        And Cuba\’s real growth rate in GDP is about three times better the U.S. — 11.1 per cent, versus 2.9 per cent. Not bad for having spent 46 years on the wrong end of the world\’s longest lasting trade embargo!