7-14-08, 9:58 am

Original source: CubaNews translation There's no waste in the inaugural speech Barack Obama would supposedly deliver in January 2009, should he stick to the text prepared by the experienced British journalist and historian Richard Gott published in The Guardian last July 9. Gott explains in his 'project' that although Iraq and the US economy have dominated the US presidential race, Latin America presents important challenges for the next president to solve, and to that effect, assuming Barack Obama wins the election in November, he recommends a text that amounts to a whole new continental agenda.

Obama would say: 'In some parts of the world, in recent years, we have tried to do too much. In Latin America, we have done too little. With our attention focused elsewhere, anti-American forces have moved in to fill the vacuum. Today we have little to build on, and few friends in the continent. Yet I have promised change, US citizens have voted for change, and change is what I intend to bring about.'

Then he would go on to recall some positive features of fellow past presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy. About the latter he would say that the 'Alliance for Progress' was an approach to Latin America seen as an 'alternative to the revolutionary rhetoric of Castro'.

Obama would recognize that 'the continent has changed dramatically since that time, notably in the 20 years since the end of the cold war. Latin America has begun to stand up, to march forward without assistance. It has thrown off the military dictatorships that successive American governments so misguidedly supported. Democracy is no longer the exception, but the rule. We cannot ignore these developments: neither the banner of Simón Bolívar that now flies again over much of the continent, nor the sudden explosion of the indigenous peoples that has spread out from the countries of the Andes.'

What follows would be: 'The most significant change will concern the island of Cuba, where the policies of my 10 immediate predecessors have failed to advance the interests of the United States. We meet today in the month of the 50th anniversary of the original Cuban revolution, in January 1959, and we have to recognize that the Castro brothers are still alive and in power.

'Cuba is not a democracy in the way that we understand the term, yet the island's government is recognized and accepted by all our southern neighbours. We need to accept this fact and take a new and different approach. Cuba is not a prison island. It is not a failed state. Unlike the United States, it is a country where its black citizens, half the population, enjoy equal status with whites. Yet, like the United States, it is a country that will welcome change on its own terms. We should recognize and respect that possibility'. Obama would then level some criticism at the hopes for annexation that several US presidents have held since the 19th century, which paved the way for conflicts between both countries. He would compare mistakes such as the 1898 military intervention in Cuba with the US occupation of Iraq, 'neither well-planned nor well-executed'. In the case of Cuba, those mistakes 'would fuel Castro's revolutionary struggle half century later'. Then he would announce two important appointments: 'Former President Jimmy Carter will become my personal representative for Cuban affairs. He will now immediately fly to Cuba to communicate in the name of my government the decision to lift the travel ban on US citizens and end the economic embargo, and to prepare the ground for my own presidential visit. He will work toward an eventual agreement on the outstanding issues between our two countries. We shall also put on the table the future of our naval base on the island at Guantánamo Bay, whose infamous prison we propose to close'.

'At the same time, I have asked Wayne Smith, our oldest former US state department official, to come out from academic retirement to become the chief of our embassy in Havana and work toward the normalization of our diplomatic relations with Cuba.

In his speech, Obama would announce his plan to fly from Havana to Caracas to greet President Hugo Chávez, welcome his contribution to the peace process in Colombia, and offer US support to him and to President Uribe of Colombia, to advance that process by 'calling a halt to our own Plan Colombia, which is a drain on our resources that should be diverted to more socially useful ends'. He would also say: 'From Caracas I shall fly to Brasilia to talk to President Lula, and then to Bolivia to greet Evo Morales and express the support of America for the indigenous resistance against white settler rule that is now changing the face of the Americas. According to the speech suggested by Gott, Barack Obama would make those visits to make the North Americans identify with the peoples of Latin America in their capacity to embrace change and reinvent their history, to make sure that the voice of the United States is heard in this great new chorus of liberation. The ultimate inaugural speech to be delivered by the new US president next January is likely to bear no resemblance to the text written by Gott as an exercise in interpreting reality on the basis of the Union's true interests about its security. Coming out of the White House, a statement like this would bring the head of state face-to-face with unscrupulous reprisals by the less clever corporations and the industrial-military complex. --CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.