STEVE CLEMONS, Director, American Strategy Program, New America Foundation and Publisher, The Washington Note

I would like to just start with what David Rothkopf said about the Cuban embargo, "the beginning of the end" and ask Ambassador Davidow if you would agree with David's perspective on that, or perhaps his assertion.

It's very odd right now when one looks at Senator Richard Lugar and his statements on Cuba that seem to be running politically left of the President. Brent Scowcroft has said recently that Cuba makes no sense at all as a foreign policy problem. Russia's lack of patronage of Cuba has shown that we can't starve Cuba.

So, part of the question is if Barack Obama is the change agent he said, is Cuba more than Cuba? Is it a place where the steps you take there are so symbolic that they can have echo effects geostrategically on other parts of the world? Or are we leaving this in the same arena where Senator Martinez and others would like to have it which is we are going to create opportunities for a class of ethnic Americans but not look at the broader geostrategic equation?

JEFFREY DAVIDOW, White House Adviser for the Summit of the Americas

. . . Look it's obviously a highly contentious issue. From my perspective, a few points to make.

From my perspective, I think it would be unfortunate to lose the opportunity for this hemisphere, at the beginning of the Obama administration, to set down some guidelines and make some progress jointly by getting distracted by the Cuban issue. Cuba is not an issue for discussion at the Summit if one reads the Summit declaration and the documents on all the past year of negotiation. However, having said that, and given what we are reading in the press, it is probable that it will come up in some way.

The one point that I would respond to in Steve's question specifically is, "Is Cuba something larger than itself?" and the answer is 'yes, it is'. And I think that whatever the reasons have been in the 1960s for initiation of elements of our Cuban policy, the fact is in today's Hemisphere, Cuba is the odd man out.

Keep in mind that this meeting in Trinidad is a meeting of 34 democratic states. If we had been talking about a meeting of the hemisphere as little as twenty years ago, it would have been cast in a different light. There has been a remarkable historical transformation in this hemisphere, and a laudable one, toward democratically elected governments.

We may have difficulty with some of the governments that have been democratically elected, of course, but this Summit is a reunion of countries and presidents, every one of which has been elected by their populations. There is not one government represented at this Summit whose population would willingly accept the kind of restrictions on their civil, political and human rights that are commonplace in Cuba - and that remain commonplace.

So, I think as we talk about Cuba and talk about how we as a government deal with it and so forth, let's keep in mind that it is something larger than itself, it is in a way a memory of that which existed in the past and a caution of what may exist in the future unless we are totally committed to the question of democracy, human rights and representation of people. And lest you think, and I'm sure some of you do, that I am some sort of ideologue on this, take a look at the lead editorial in today's Washington Post. Maybe you think they are a bunch of ideologues as well, but I think they say it much better than I do.

So, we have been struggling with Cuba as a nation for close to half a century and there is a real focus on what we should be doing, but to answer the question, it is an important place beyond a small island 90 miles off our shore

Steve did not like this answer:

Barack Obama has given few indications thus far that he is willing to move a five decade failed relationship forward in a meaningful sense -- with the single exception that he may ironically codify "relaxation" for a class of ethnic Americans in a way that crudely discriminates against all other Americans.

We did not open Vietnam by relaxing travel and remittances for Vietnamese-Americans. And Obama's team -- for all of the ballyhoo about democracy promotion -- is promoting a policy of the United States government that restricts the American right of free travel anywhere. . . . President Obama is a busy man, but he better take a look at the brief that his team is preparing for him -- otherwise he'll learn too late that he's driving "an Edsel" to the Summit of the Americas.

As I explained to Steve in an e-mail exchange, I think he has completely misunderstood two important points about Davidow's response. First, Cuba is, in real practical terms, not really that important an issue. for people like me and Steve it is. For the country as a whole, not really. It is more of a mini- Israel/Palestine question, without the oil. That is there are groups deeply invested in the issue emotionally but the issue itself is just not that important to the United States. Unlike the Israel/Palestine question, the Cuba issue does not spill over into petro-politics and national security/terrorism issues.

I think the more important point however is that if you really want to persuade and change minds and the political climate on Cuba, you simply can not ignore the basic issue for embargo supporters - Cuba is an autocratic regime. You want the pro-embargo forces to listen? you want to undermine their arguments? Let them know you understand and appreciate their concern for Cuban democracy. Davidow was doing that. Unfortunately (and I say this as an adherent of lifting the embargo and all travel restrictions) Steve does not do that and instead endorses the crude ad hominem attacks on Cuban Americans who support the embargo by David Rothkopf:

DAVID J. ROTHKOPF, President and CEO, Garten Rothkopf

. . . The position of the Florida contingent on this is Paleolithic. The policy is indefensible on any grounds[.]

The reality is that Cuba may be special, but you have to ask yourself why it's therefore easier to travel to or do business with the Stalinist, nuclear weapon-toting North Koreans, or whether it's more comfortable for us to be totally economically integrated with the Saudi royal family and their depredations, or if we are concerned about human rights, why are we so integrated with and why are we the sole supporter of a government in Afghanistan that has just made rape in marriage legal and denies women the right to go outside without the approval of their husbands? So this notion that some how democracy alone is the only criteria that we should use in defining the nature of relationship doesn't stand up to any scrutiny whatsoever, and the reality is that only one country that has successfully been isolated by this fifty year embargo, and that is the United States of America.

Set aside the rather silly idea that Cuba is not isolated and the crude attacks on Cuban Americans, do you think this is an effective way to try and change US Cuba policy? I assure you it is a terrible way. At some point, those who rightly question the failed embargo must take stock of whether their own brand of activism, now also decades old, is effective. I say it is not.

Speaking for me only