Our Hapless Man in Havana

For the last month, the Cuban government has detained an American contractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing him of secretly distributing laptops and other communications devices in Cuba and calling it espioniage. Unfortunately, the incident has occasioned the usual, tired debate about what the United States is doing in Cuba and why. What this incident really should spark is a close look at Cuba's retrograde political repression and the United States' policy paralysis when it comes to its island neighbor.

The very fact that Cuba arrested the USAID contractor for doing nothing more than handing out laptops says more about Cuban paranoia than U.S. policy. In what other country in the hemisphere would it be considered a crime for a foreigner to give out a cell phone, laptop, or any other modern tool of communication? Brazil? Argentina? Mexico? Venezuela? Of course not. In fact, Americans passing out free cell phones and computers in those countries are called, appropriately, humanitarians. Let's be clear: The Castro regime is isolating its citizens from not just news and information, but from modernity. It is one of a handful of governments on Earth still attempting such a comprehensive level of repression. Sadly, though journalists do report this simple fact, the surreal level of Cuban repression often takes a back seat to criticism of U.S. policy.

In these cases, U.S. articles often insinuate that Washington must be up to something sinister in Cuba when describing such events. Just last week, the hoary commentator on all things Cuba, Wayne Smith, lobbed a predictable partisan criticism. He argued that President Barack Obama's administration is continuing the policies of his predecessor, fomenting rebellion in the communist country while severely restricting trade with the island. (Never mind that the policy of providing assistance to independent civil society groups in Cuba started under Bill Clinton.)

But what's so sinister about a citizen receiving or having a laptop or a cell phone? Nothing -- unless the government is maintaining a chokehold on power by holding its citizens frozen in the past. Now, full disclosure here: I used to be the director for Latin America at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), where I proudly helped distribute basic communications tools to independent-minded citizens and groups inside Cuba. We provided simple things like pencils, paper, and reading materials -- and we're not talking about anti-Castro screeds. We supported the distribution of documents about internationally recognized human and labor rights...

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