You would think a major policy shift was imminent, given the way the White House touted President Bush's Oct. 24 speech on Cuban-American relations. Yet, backed on a State Department stage by the emotional relatives of jailed Cuban dissidents, Bush simply gussied up some of the same old bromides--"The socialist paradise is a tropical gulag"--that have marked U.S.-Cuban relations for decades. Bush reiterated his hard stance against lifting the 45-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, and Fidel Castro was predictable as well, writing beforehand that Bush's speech reflected the U.S.'s desire to "reconquer" Cuba.
Who benefits most from this war of...