Via this article, I learned today that the White House will “impose tighter restrictions on so-called “educational travel” to Cuba by American groups, which have increased in recent years and are widely considered de facto tourism.” Bush said in a meeting today that the new restrictions were part of “a strategy that says we’re not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom. We are working for the day of freedom in Cuba.”

Regulating remittances I can see as a way of further hurting Cuba’s economy (and Fidel’s popularity) but disallowing study abroad programs, it seems to me, is nothing more than White House paranoia that American students travelling to Cuba could organize bi-national, liberal coalitions.

If the United States government is so sure that Cuba is the last example of failed communist totalitarianism, then what fear does it have of American students traveling there to see for themselves? Wouldn’t that foster patriotism in the hearts of those students returning to the freedom to shop wherever they please?

The paragraph that should stick out is:

Some of the funds would support planning for a political transition in Cuba after Mr. Castro’s departure and be aimed specifically at preventing a hand over of power from the Cuban leader to his younger brother, Raul, the country’s longtime defense minister.

For that is what all the commotion is about, getting ready to smoothly lasso Cuba back in our domain when Castro passes on.

On a side note, the St. Petersburg Times just published an interesting – and very one-sided – account of pre-revolutionary Cuba through the eyes of a local St. Petersburg Deli Owner who belonged to a prosperous family during the Batista period, was a high school classmate of Castro’s, an American POW during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and a Vietnam vet. Worth a read, though I hope you can see through the lies in both articles.