Will Cuba's Real Enemy Please Stand Up?

The opinion-page essay ``Why Give Castro Another Platform?'' Sept. 1, states: ``The US should take the political offensive. It should argue that it is not an American embargo against Cuba, but Castro's own inept management of an outmoded Marxist system that has brought the Cuban people to their current despair.''

In the next paragraph the author tells us that we shouldn't lift the embargo against Cuba, arguing that this would bring ``badly needed dollars and goods into Cuba.''

Either the embargo is not hurting Cuba economically so there is no reason to maintain it, or it is hurting Cuba, so Fidel Castro Ruz's argument has merit. You can't have it both ways, and any ``political offensive'' would be so transparently flawed as to make us look even sillier than we do now.

The author also tells us that the establishment of a free-market economy in Cuba should be a precondition for normalization of relations. Since when is it the right of a foreign state to dictate the internal economic conditions of a sovereign state?

With this kind of silly logic and disregard for history on the part of successive United States administrations and most of the mainstream American press, it is no wonder that Mr. Castro has been able to ``successfully [outmaneuver] a series of American presidents yet [keep] his people in fear of the American giant.'' Conway B. Leovy, Seattle

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