No-nonsense general eyes warmer Cuba ties

[Jimmy2]

The cigar-chomping, no-nonsense general who lifted New Orleans from the depths of Hurricane Katrina in late 2005 thinks Cuba has some important lessons to teach the United States in storm-fighting, and he wants warmer relations with the nation's neighbor to the south for that reason.

"They're closer to the hurricane highway," says retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, talking from his Baton Rouge home. "Even though it's a poor country, challenged economically in all directions, they do a good job of hurricane (damage) prevention and preparedness. I say that tongue-in-cheek because it is a socialist, Communist-controlled country. At the same time, people spend an extraordinary amount of time preparing to prevent damage to property and to human beings."

Honoré will take part in the Conference on U.S.-Cuban Cooperation in Defending Against Hurricanes today at the River City Complex in New Orleans' East Bank. The event is sponsored by The Center for International Policy.

With Honoré will be Jose Rubiera of the Cuban Meteorological Center; Lixion Avila of the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami; Dr. Mesa Ridel, the director of the Latin American Center for Disaster Medicine in Havana; retired Lt. Col Jerry Sneed, director of Emergency Preparedness of Orleans Parish; Ivor van Heerden, founder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center; Robert Turner, director of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority; and Dr. Alex Isakov, founding director of the Emory University Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response.

Honoré, who will be in Shreveport in December to help send off the deploying National Guard unit in which his son Michael is a member, recently spent four days in Cuba and came away impressed.

He said people actually spend Hurricane Preparedness Week working on hurricane projects, and even students inspect houses to test what they've learned.

"Cubans have also opened up permissions for hurricane hunter planes to fly over Cuba, and the Cuban hurricane center now openly communicates with the U.S. Hurricane Center in Miami."

That's important, because over the last decade, despite being in the path of most hurricanes entering the Gulf of Mexico, Cuba has lost only 30 lives to the brute storms. In that same time, the United States lost more than 1,500.

He also noted greater Cuban cooperation with the United States in areas of combating drug trade, counterterrorism and even joint operations with U.S. armed forces at Guantanamo Bay.

Just after Hurricane Katrina, Cuba offered to send doctors, medicine and medical equipment to Louisiana to contribute to relief efforts, and since then, it has continued offers to cooperate fully with the United States in various forms of hurricane defense. Today's conference hopes to encourage such cooperation.

"I think there is a warming of relations between Cuba and America. We've got to move forward, not looking through the rear-view mirror, work through this embargo issue and encourage travel. That will advance democracy in that country, I totally believe that. It's better to have Cuba as a friend, 90 miles off our coast, than as an antagonist."

Honoré has no illusions about Cuba in the eyes of many Americans. It is a socialist dictatorship that for decades has exported revolution to many countries in and out of this hemisphere. Honoré, on the other hand, while holding his political thoughts close to his vest, has been described in national media as a conservative, and before a speech to the Shreveport NAACP in September he opened his talk by saying he would not run against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. David Vitter in 2010.

But Honoré did not say who he would run against, if at all.

"I haven't even put Louisiana plates on my vehicles yet," he laughed. "I've gotta get that sorted out. Let me finish my citizenship requirements."

If anything, Honoré thinks there are more important problems facing the nation than labeling people right or left, liberal or conservative.

"I spent 37 years in the Army trying to be apolitical," he said. "I have a hard time deciding on a political party when the first question someone asks you is where you stand on three hot button issues where I don't know what have to do with current world problems.

"'Where do I stand on guns?' Well, I spent a lifetime in the military handing guns. What does that have to do with 12 percent of our people out of work?

"'Where do I stand on abortion?' Is that one of the issues that's driving the direction of the state of Louisiana, where we trail on education, economic, and the environment?

"And the third one: global warming. Well, if it isn't global warming, we have serious environmental issues in the state that need to be addressed. We lead the nation in premature child deaths. That is stuff we need to address.

"But if you don't get past the first two questions, you have no political future. So pondering this idea of a political future is one I have to come to grips with myself."