Viva Cuba Librium

I thought Eli was exaggerating for dramatic effect, as we bloggers do, when he said that the United States government now has a post of “Cuba Transition Coordinator.” He wasn’t. It really is as blatant as that. The new Cuba Transition Coordinator is one Caleb McCarry (!) and his mission is to “accelerate the demise of Castro’s tyranny.” Condi Rice says we are “working to deny resources to the Castro regime... and to broadcast the truth about its deplorable treatment of the Cuban people.” Which I take to mean we’ll be telling the Cuban people how badly treated they are, because otherwise they might not understand how badly treated they are. A quick googling indicates that Mr. McCarry has already brought democracy to Haiti, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.

As ever, I’m impressed by the sophisticated grasp of other cultures and languages displayed by the State Department website, which quotes McCarry thus:

We are committed to seeing the day when Cubans around the world in the fullness of liberty can in every corner of Marti’s homeland speak the words that were born on the lips of Cuba’s first patriots. (Speaking in Spanish.) (Applause.)

Those words that so baffled the monolingual Staties, according to the AFP, were: “Viva Cuba libre.”