12-18-05, 9:29 am

The Bush administration’s anti-Cuba policy has reached an absurd new low. The New York Times reported this past week that Major League Baseball officials are planning to fight a Bush administration prohibition on the Cuban national baseball team playing in the first World Baseball Classic in the US next March. Treasury officials that oversee travel restrictions to and from Cuba rejected baseball’s application for the Cuban team.

The move is seen as part of harsh policy of tightening the US blockade of Cuba. Baltimore Orioles owner Peter G. Angelos told the New York Times that he regarded the administration’s policy of 'the continued isolation of the Cuban people' to be 'wrong' and 'stupid.' In 1999, Angelos helped to bring the Cuban team to Baltimore to play the Orioles. The highly talented Cuban team, winners of Olympic gold in 1992, 1996, and 2004, brought out an enormous crowd of enthusiasts expecting a great game.

In addition to that event, the Cuban team came to the US unfettered for the 1996 summer games in Atlanta. Under the Bush administration, the Cuban soccer team played in the Concacaf Gold Cup, a tournament of North and Central American and Caribbean teams, held in the US last summer. This past August, a US team made up of 14-year olds traveled to Cuba for several exhibition games, establishing friendship among baseball-loving youth of both countries. Regardless of the rules governing the US restrictions on travel to and trade with Cuba, they seem to have little application to that country’s participation in the World Baseball Classic. While the US blockade of Cuba serves to hurt ordinary Cubans by putting severe restrictions on trade with the island, extending the politically motivated blockade to baseball is simply arbitrary and in contradiction with earlier treatment of Cuban sports teams.

Opponents of the administration’s policy of tight restrictions on travel and trade regard it as undermining the basic right to free movement and business. (Read more about the US blockade of Cuba here, or here, and here.)

Major League Baseball says it plans to continue negotiations with the administration and to reapply for the travel permit from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The baseball players’ union is also supporting the effort to reverse the administration’s prohibition.

OFAC is the federal agency that restricts travel and trade with the island country. Some sources say that under the Bush administration OFAC spends more money and time investigating and controlling exchanges with Cuba than it does investigating the assets of major terrorist organizations like Al-Qaeda.

Angelos also said that he believed the administration’s prohibition against the Cuban team was politically motivated. 'It’s a continuation of a vendetta,' Angelos reportedly said, 'against one [country] who rightly or wrongly defied our administration over the years.' He added that he did not think Major League Baseball would defy the prohibition if it stands.

It is clear that Cuba’s participation in the tournament, which will bring teams from at least 16 countries, would benefit the tournament because the team is very talented and would draw large audiences.

The administration’s decision to prohibit the Cuban team may have larger long-term repercussions on future US bids to host the Olympics. US Olympic Committee spokesman, Darryl Seibel, told the International Herald Tribune that he expects there may be some fallout in response to the administration’s decision from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which decides where future games will be held.

Seibel said, 'It’s important for any country that’s bidding for the Games to be able to represent with confidence that athletes and coaches from around the world will be able to come to their country'

The Canadian member of the IOC, Dick Pound, added that the administration’s prohibition 'would scupper' future US bids to host the games.

Using the twisted logic it has become famous for, the White House insisted that its policy of keeping Cubans out would allow Cuban American players to represent the island country at the tournament.

Ordinary Cubans reportedly regard the decision to prohibit the participation of their national team as representative of the Bush administration’s continued policy of bullying the tiny country.

According to CNN, Puerto Rico’s Secretary of State Fernando Bonilla is also lobbying hard to reverse the decision as the tournament will begin in Puerto Rico where the Cuban teams is currently scheduled to play its first three games.



--Joel Wendland can be reached at jwendland@pliticalaffairs.net.