I understand that some may disagree with the above contention and I look forward to hearing their point of view.
Among those who disagree are those who allocate manpower in the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) at the US Treasury. This office is one of 4 groups in Big Guvment in charge of tracking terrorist finances.
At the OFAC, four full time workers hunt for Bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s riches. I trust they are busy.
21 employees investigate Cuba embargo violations. I’m sure that they are busy as well.
I remember thinking on September 11th that I wanted Al Qaeda dismantled and the best way to do so would be to, “Follow the money”. This is pretty standard wisdom among law enforcement circles and one might think that a Republican administration would grasp this.
There is a silver lining. Although the Bush admin has dragged its feet on the financial front, there is evidence that they are not entirely brain dead:
Yikes, double the funding of 1991? Hey, maybe we’ll get 8 people to work on the Bin Laden case. Geez guys, don’t knock yourselves out.
Oh, here’s a Great Debate, assuming it exists. Maybe the OFAC actually can do very little to curb Al Qaeda. Maybe other departments are more skilled at tracking illicit funds. Oooookay, but what were those 4 employees doing then?
Yeah, that makes little sense. Hell, maybe they think Castro will provide a safe haven to terrorists if he’s allowed to bust our embargo. Maybe they think the al Qaeda organization isn’t as financially-based as Cuba, and that forensic accounting wouldn’t work as well. Maybe there are very few OFAC people cleared to work on War On Terror-level missions.
Hell, it could be any number of things we don’t know yet. I’m betting on bureaucratic inertia and powerful people’s pet projects.
And, naturally, you have a link to some study that proves that a bureaucracy of 25 is necessarily more inept than one of 21? Or was that simply a hand-waving exercise almost completely irrelevant to the thread at hand? Like “the US has the largest bureacracy in the entire universe, and consequently is more inept that even pond-slime at achieving anything at all”?
I’m not American but I really don’t understand the “Cuba is till a threat” bit. Could someone please explain it to the daft?
And while you are at it, could someone please explain how America got to have (and retain) a military base in Cuba. I never understood how that happened.
Aeons ago, the United States helped the virtuous Cuban rebels defeat their evil tyrannical overlords (in this case, the Spanish in 1898). The US then helped them write a constitution, which enshrined their gratitude in law forever. Being shrewd negotiators, the US was able to obtain from the ever-so-grateful and pliant Cuban government lease terms for the Guantanamo Bay base in perpetuity at a very competitive rate.
Time went by and new, evil Cuban rebels defeated their virtuous tyrannical overlords (Batista). These new rebels were COMMUNISTS and took various measures of land reform and appropriating or nationalizing existing industries and companies, many of which were substanitally or entirely US owned. At the same time many Cubans, especially those who did not expect to thrive in a socialist paradise, fled to the US. However the new Cuban government wasn’t foolish enough to think it could eject the US from its base.
Cuba is not seriously considered a threat (Feith’s apocalyptic warnings notwithstanding). However, there are a whole pace of interest groups who oppose any normalization of relations, and very few tangible benefits for the politician who takes a stand in support thereof. Anti-normalization groups include:
Cuban Emigres, concentrated in several key states make flirting with changing Cuba policy an electoral risk
Former property owners and corporations, like Bacardi Rum IIRC, who are not happy with having lost substantial property in the last revolution, and are not particularly interested in having additional competition
Anti-communists of all stripes - given that Castro has been tweaking us for over 40 years there is little chance of US policy changing until he is gone
Desmo, could you nip on my left ankle? I’m going to turn it toward you to make it convenient for you. You can nip on my left ankle all you want. You can gnaw it with your incisors or you can crush it with your molars. But if I have to endure one more nip on my right ankle from this man whom I so admire, I’m just going to lose it.
Thank you for the pocket history version :). I honestly couldn’t understand how Cuban cigars were verbooten yet bases in Cuba were all good. It is good to know G’ Bay was well earned.
He must be not far off dead now surely.
Be interesting to see who or what happens when he does cark it.
Several years ago, some wag (in the Clinton State Dept., IIRC) said something like, “The US doesn’t have a Cuba policy, but every four years we have a South Florida policy.”
GE and Exxon-Mobil are both large bureaucracies. And, as far as Fortune 500 companies are concerned, they are fairly efficient, judging from the mostly favorable business press they get.
It’s only wacked out liberals who believe otherwise. (There, I bit your left ankle Lib. )
Seriously folks, it wasn’t the Cuban angle that got my blood boiling. It’s the evidence that the Bush admin. (and the Terror Czar Tom Ridge) have pursued the terror finance angle with such sloth.
Granted, Al Qaeda reportedly makes heavy use of informal financial networks (Hawala). Still I find it difficult to believe that the Bad Guys could possibly use that system exclusively. Furthermore, I see no fundamental reason why the Hawalas could not be brought under some sort of regulatory framework.
I think the only way someone could justify Cuba still being a threat is by fairly convulted reasoning. The reason Cuba got classified as a threat was becuase they housed Soviet nukes in close proximity to the United States.
There’s also the argument that Castro is a very bad man, and we shouldn’t validate his tyranny in the slightest. He’s not a threat to the US, but he shouldn’t be cozying up to the likes of him anyway.
True enough, but it’s not like he’s going anywhere without us, or that Cuba will instantly revert to a capitalist, pro-US paradise after his eventual demise. Also, is he really all that worse than, say, China? I say open relations and push for reform. Carrot and stick.
As for the OP, I am shocked that we aren’t paying more attention to AQ’s funds.
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