On Thursday night their publisher, independent outfit OR Books, held a party to celebrate the book’s publication at the somewhat unusual venue of the Cuban Mission to the United Nations. Guests passed by a giant portrait of Fidel and a smaller photograph of Che speaking at the United Nations on their way to check their coats. Upstairs in a capacious event space, bartenders served mojitos to a soundtrack of Cuban jazz.

OR Books co-founder Colin Robinson had hand-painted a banner that read “Free the Cuban Five” himself. “This is independent publishing!” he said, proudly surveying his work. He acknowledged that it was now, technically, the Cuban Four (one of the accused spies was recently released from jail). “But he’s still trapped in Florida,” he explained. Mr. Robinson recalled the last time he had a party at the mission, on the occasion of celebrating Fidel Castro’s autobiography, My Life, published while he was still an editor at Scribner.

Michaels Ratner and Smith were jubilant about their reception, which came only one day after a paradigm-changing new law in Cuba that allows the sale of private property. Indeed, even C.I.A. assassinations have changed since the covert days of "plausible deniability" during the Cold War. “Now they brag about them,” lamented Mr. Ratner.

After a short speech by the Cuban ambassador and an amplified phone call from Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the Cuban National Assembly (who also wrote an introduction for the book) the authors took a moment to thank their guests.

“We came here straight from Zuccotti Park,” said Michael Steven Smith. “It’s like going from one free territory in America to another.”

“As we say in Havana,” said Michael Ratner, “Venceremos!”

Untitled (Architeuthis) (2010) by David Zink Yi

A giant squid lies on the polished hardwood floor of Hauser & Wirth gallery’s Upper East Side townhouse. How did it get there?

That is a long story. But first: it is not a squid. “This is not an illustration,” said artist David Zink Yi. “When you look at it, I want you to see an amazing sculpture.”

Indeed, what artist, after Magritte made his famous 1929 painting of a pipe—accompanied by the words “This is not a pipe”—would refer to artworks as anything other than artworks? The problem is that this sculpture is so eerily realistic. Walking into the gallery, you encounter the 16-foot-long, beached creature, its opalescent, slick-looking flesh seeming to putrefy, lying in a puddle of its own ink. You expect its tentacles to quiver in a final death-throe.

In late June, Mr. Zink Yi, a muscularly built man in his mid-30s, wore a tee shirt and shorts as he and an assistant lifted one section of the heavy ceramic squid—it weighs 660 pounds—and slid out from underneath it the lengths of fabric they’d used to move it.

Making the squid required Mr. Zink Yi, who is based in Berlin, to get a coveted four-month residency at a facility in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands, that houses the world’s largest kiln. As he explained how he experimented with arbitrary combinations of colors to create an iridescent effect, he prepared the squid’s ink, a cocktail of corn syrup and Japanese ink that he mixed in a garbage pail, and gingerly dribbled around the sculpture.

The ink may make the sculpture all the more squid-like—Mr. Zink Yi prefers to think of it as a frame—but it also serves a practical purpose as a moat: it discourages people from stepping on the sculpture. And yet, Mr. Zink Yi’s assumption that no one would want to get near the viscous-looking substance is not always right: when he showed a similar squid at the Art Basel fair last month, a visitor left a trail of black footprints leading away from the sculpture.

What led Mr. Zink Yi to make the sculpture is a saga well suited to our globalized times. Born in Peru to a mother who is half Chinese and half Peruvian, and a father who is half Italian and half German, he faced an enviable decision in 1991, when he was 16: he could either move to Kenya with his family or study in Europe. He chose the latter, and initially trained to be a chef. After becoming disillusioned with cooking, he began a course in woodcarving, then switched to art school in Berlin, where he studied under conceptual artist Lothar Baumgarten.

Then he fell in love. Not with a woman—though that happened too—but with music. In 2001, he traveled to Cuba, and began studying conga drums with Jose Luis Quintana, known as Changuito, one of the members of the band Los Van Van. “The best thing that happened in my life,” Mr. Zink Yi said, “was when I began to play congas with him. He was sitting with me and I was playing, and then suddenly he looked at me and he told me, ‘Don’t get excited.’”

What did he mean by that? The Observer asked.

“When you play music,” Mr. Zink Yi said, “you have the feeling like, ‘This is great!’ He wanted me to be more controlled. He was telling me, ‘It’s about the form. Keep the form, not the feeling. If you don’t keep the form, you will never reach the feeling.’”

For five years, he spent as much time as he could in Cuba. He formed a band. He made a long video artwork documenting musicians playing. “So many of these things I was trying desperately to find in art and it was so hard to produce them,” he recalled. “In music it was just there.”

Eventually, he returned to Berlin, and to sculpture. His dealer, Ivan Wirth, asked his band to play a party in Majorca. Like many Cubans who leave the island, they decided not to go back; now the band plays in Berlin.

Mr. Zink Yi’s artworks investigate both the formal qualities of things, and what people refer to as magic, or myth. A few years ago, he followed a biologist friend into the jungles of south Peru, on a search for the harpy eagle. (In his research, the friend recounted to Mr. Zink Yi, he’d only been able to spot the bird after reaching out to the local shaman, and integrating himself into the community.) A video and text artwork upstairs from the squid, at Hauser & Wirth, recounts the trip.

But back to the squid. Why a squid? Reading the philosopher Vilem Flusser, Mr. Zink Yi decided that with anatomical features so different from humans—like bioluminescence, a built-in flashlight for navigating the ocean’s darkest depths—it was the perfect image of what in cultural studies is referred to as “the other.”

But, again, this is not a squid. It is an artwork about the process of making artworks, and the very nature of sculpture itself, its symbolic potency. “What I enjoy,” Mr. Zink Yi said, “is this kind of alchemical situation in converting this garbage of nature, which is a huge metaphor for many things.”

sdouglas@observer.com

The post offers a rare glimpse into the well-being of the aging political icon who — judging by the lack of in-person coverage — seems to not allow such intimate meetings to be used as fodder for feature stories. 

The Atlantic story that inspired Fidel to arrange the visit was "The Point of No Return," Goldberg's piece on nuclear tension between Iran and Israel that provided the cover for this month's issue. "Fidel to Ahmadinejad" — which is the first of a five-part first-person account of the three-day visit — contains extended discourse from Castro on Iran's anti-Israel policy and, as Goldberg puts it, "the consequences of theological anti-Semitism." Fidel makes no bones about his profound dislike of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his Holocaust denial and couples the views of Iran's president with a story of his own introduction to anti-Semitism as a child.

But the most gripping thing about the post may be the sheer amount of access Goldberg gets. Such an opportunity cannot be afforded to most writers, of course, and Goldberg takes full advantage. Judging by some of the quotes, it turns out Fidel's wit has ripened with age.

His body may be frail, but his mind is acute, his energy level is high, and not only that: the late-stage Fidel Castro turns out to possess something of a self-deprecating sense of humor. When I asked him, over lunch, to answer what I've come to think of as the Christopher Hitchens question — has your illness caused you to change your mind about the existence of God? — he answered, "Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist."

Perhaps the biggest revelation comes during a discussion that veered toward the missile crisis, when Fidel admitted to having doubts about telling the Soviets to bomb the U.S. in the event of an American attack on Cuba. Goldberg's asked whether he regretting the advice he gave the Soviets and Castro said, "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all." 

James Fallows has a post at The Atlantic that went up later today about this last nugget from the sit-down. And there are sure to be more accounts of "Fidel being Fidel" to come from Goldberg in the next few days, especially judging by the teaser the closes out today's post. Goldberg plans to use a question Fidel asked him as a jumping-off point: "Would you like to go to the aquarium with me to see the dolphin show?"

Or at least they used to. In a move out of Auntie Bloomberg's playbook, Raul Castro has decided to end the program that allows Cubans over 55 four packs of smokes a month at a government-subsidized price, the BBC reports. A government statement printed in a state-run newspaper justified the repeal by citing the island's declining economy in the face of a worldwide downturn and the longstanding US trade embargo. 

The BBC story reports that citizens who took the cheap packs for granted will have a hard time adjusting to the major cost increase.

"I'm insulted because it's another thing they are taking away from us," said Angela Jimenez, a 64-year-old who receives a monthly pension of about $10 (£6.50).

She said she will now have to quit smoking because she won't be able to afford the normal price of about $0.33 a pack.

Hold on a second. An entire pack of cigarettes for 33 cents? That's beats the price at Indian reservations! Viva la Revolucion. 

Fidel has said virtually nothing about Cuba's domestic problems since his return to public life, even though he spent nearly five decades shaping the island's now-rickety socialist system.

Instead, he sticks to world affairs, and specifically, the ardent belief that a U.S. and Israeli confrontation with Iran is imminent, and it will lead to an atomic exchange. He convened a special session of Cuba's parliament over the weekend to discuss the theory, urging delegates to help convince U.S. President Barack Obama not to push the button.

Cubans, Miroff writes, are not the least bit surprised to see Comrade Fidel back in the spotlight. It is as if "the novelty of seeing [Castro] on television again has worn off." Castro's voice, Cubans say, "already seemed familiar, as if he'd never left."

[GlobalPost]

Along with Washington’s Farewell Address, Adams’ Independence Day oration is often cited as evidence of an American tradition of non-entanglement with a corrupt and corrupting world. But according to Robert Kagan, a former State Department official and influential neoconservative, Americans’ image of themselves as inward-looking and restrained—except in response to attacks—isn’t necessarily shared by others, who see the United States as an ambitious, violent nation, always ready to encroach upon its neighbors. The less flattering version was, in a sense, true, Mr. Kagan asserts in Dangerous Nation, a sweeping, essentially superficial reinterpretation of American foreign policy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Americans did exhibit an appetite for territory as they raced across the continent, trampling on Indians and Mexicans, the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana. But Mr. Kagan claims that the nation’s expansionist behavior was motivated less by acquisitiveness or a lust for power than by a commitment to spread democracy, freedom and prosperity throughout its hemisphere and around the world.

From the outset, Mr. Kagan emphasizes, neither a “restive and energetic American people” nor the politicians who represented them sought isolation. Washington’s Farewell Address was a temporary expedient for a fledgling nation, a pose struck to prevent an alliance with France. Andrew Jackson had routed the Seminoles in 1818 in an attempt to wrest control of Florida. And Americans supported independence movements in Latin America and Greece in the 1820’s. Convinced that a liberal ideology gave American nationalism an international component, Mr. Kagan declares that John Quincy Adams’ audience “barely noticed” his “comparatively brief appeal for American restraint.”

Mr. Kagan contends that slavery had a profound impact on American foreign policy. Convinced that slavery must spread to survive, Southerners pushed for the annexation of Texas, Cuba and Mexico. In response, anti-slavery politicians in the North, including Adams and Daniel Webster, who had been expansionists early in their careers, opposed empire-building. After the Civil War, Southerners, scarred by memories of military occupation and the forced enfranchisement of blacks, made sure that the Democratic Party renounced territorial ambitions. Republicans, however, were even more determined to apply the Civil War model of a “‘selfless’ war on behalf of ‘humanity’ and ‘civilization’” to would-be or could-be “sister republics.” At the end of the century, Mr. Kagan concludes, two earthquakes—economic depression and populism— broke the political logjam and brought these Republicans to power. The “new departure” in foreign policy that ensued was actually a continuation and culmination of historical forces “reaching back to before the founding of the nation.”

Dangerous Nation is provocative; it is not persuasive. Relying on the work of other scholars rather than immersion in original sources, Mr. Kagan seems to cherry-pick the intelligence, omitting information that’s not congenial to his thesis. Although politicians often have two reasons for their actions—a good reason and the real reason—he takes at face value the pronouncements that moral and humanitarian concerns shaped American foreign policy in the late 19th century. And he issues a summary judgment against economic interpretations without giving them a hearing, let alone a trial.

Many of the myths he shreds are made of straw. Serious students of American foreign policy do not hold that the United States was an isolationist nation. They do not deny that the U.S. used force to satisfy its ambitions for territory in North America and to extend its power in Central America, the Caribbean and South America. And they readily agree that Americans desired to spread their political, economic and cultural values.

Americans may have been in accord about some ends, but they had serious and substantive differences about the means. Some of them thought it un-American to acquire colonies or fight wars of occupation. Mr. Kagan acknowledges that Senator John Sherman of Ohio “spoke for many” when he asked, “What becomes of the republican doctrine that all governments must be founded on the consent of the governed?” Over the next half-century, Mr. Kagan adds, Americans would continue to ask whether in the name of democracy, people could be denied the right of self-determination. But these dissenters do not get their innings in Dangerous Nation, which dwells almost exclusively on the expansionist tendencies in America’s founding principles and gives a misleading impression that there was a consensus about how to establish the nation’s place in the world.

The dissenting tradition in American foreign policy—not the Southern center of gravity in the Democratic Party—was responsible for a foreign policy that “proceeded by fits and starts” until the 1890’s, with treaties signed and then abandoned, the annexation of Hawaii sought and then dropped, a war to liberate Cuba threatened in 1873 and not declared until 1898. And it accounts for the anti-colonialist movement that coalesced during the occupation of the Philippines—and reappeared throughout the 20th century.

Dangerous Nation ends with the Spanish-American War. It makes no mention of our current President’s war in Iraq—but a defense of that war seems to be Mr. Kagan’s subtext. (His book is strewn with the terminology of 21st-century foreign policy: Benjamin Franklin lobbied for a “preemptive strike” against the French and Indians; Reconstruction was America’s “first experiment in ‘nation-building.’”) Mr. Kagan apparently believes that George W. Bush is building on rather than breaking with American foreign-policy traditions. And because those policies are driven predominantly by a freedom-loving morality and humanitarianism, Americans can—and should—wear as a badge of honor the appellation “dangerous nation.” Welcome to Fantasy Island.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

But recently, on Sept. 5, one of his allies, a New Jersey business owner and a major fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez, showed up in a curious place: in front of a grand jury in Newark, where he was questioned about the financing of terror bombings in Cuba during the 1990’s. Also appearing in front of the grand jury was the former accountant of a deceased ally and donor for the Senator.

The fund-raiser, Abel Hernandez, and the deceased ally, Arnaldo Monzon, had previously been accused of funding terror attacks in Cuba. Over the years, they have contributed more than $10,000 to Mr. Menendez’s campaigns. And in a separate case from earlier in his career, Mr. Menendez publicly defended and financially supported a man who had been convicted of killing a Cuban official and bombing civilian targets in the United States.

Cuban exile politics haven’t exactly played a large role in this year’s closely fought Senate campaign in New Jersey, which has a tiny 0.9 percent Cuban-American ethnic minority based largely in Mr. Menendez’s home territory, Hudson County. Though the campaign of Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr. has been largely based on attacks on Mr. Menendez over personal ethics, those criticisms have mostly been focused on a specific deal concerning his role in steering federal funds to a group that rents office space in a building that he owns.

It’s not a coincidence that the seemingly remarkable spectacle of close associates of a sitting U.S. Senator being accused of possible involvement in violent terrorist acts has passed almost without notice. It is, in the context of Cuban-American politics, nothing that unusual.

“In American politics, particularly in ethnic politics, there are certain household gods that need to be venerated,” said Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers. “If you represent Cuban-Americans, you find yourself perhaps uncomfortably allied with those who advocate armed attacks against Cuba.”

Mr. Baker said he doubted that Mr. Menendez’s ties would factor in many voters’ decisions, other than possibly prompting a relatively small number of liberal suburban supporters to stay home. (Most recent polls have shown Mr. Menendez holding onto a modest lead.)

Mr. Menendez wasn’t made available for comment for this story. But a statement released by his campaign read: “The facts are that Bob Menendez opposes acts of terrorism, and has a long record of supporting swift and certain justice for those who carry out terrorist attacks, including the death penalty. Abel Hernandez and Arnaldo Monzon have contributed to both Democrats and Republicans, including George H.W. Bush, who came to New Jersey to campaign for Tom Kean Jr.” Matthew Miller, a spokesman, added in an interview that Mr. Menendez “believes in the rule of law.” He added: “But at this point there haven’t been any allegations made by any law-enforcement agencies,” against either man.

Still, to those unfamiliar with the nuances of Cuban exile politics, it might seem surprising that Mr. Menendez—a polished performer on the stump who is equally comfortable mixing with rough-and-tumble party operatives in Hudson County and Washington’s governing elite—has been so deeply involved with this particular cast of characters.

The deceased Union City businessman Arnaldo Monzon Plasencia, for example, was accused in June by a former associate of helping plan attacks on Cuba during the 1990’s. Monzon donated $4,000 to Mr. Menendez’s campaigns and served on a steering committee for a group that tried to get Mr. Menendez elected mayor in the 1980’s.

Another Union City business owner, Abel Hernandez, a prominent donor and fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez—who has contributed $8,200 over the years—has been implicated in a fax from 1997 that requested he raise money for bombings in Cuba. He recently appeared before a grand jury in Newark investigating the matter. Mr. Hernandez has denied any knowledge of the fund-raising for the attacks.

And sometimes Mr. Menendez was the one doing the contributing. In the 1980’s, when he was mayor of Union City, he donated an unknown amount to the legal-defense fund for a man, Eduardo Arocena, who had been convicted of murdering a Cuban diplomat in New York and participating in bombing attacks in the region. Mr. Arocena had been described by U.S. authorities as a terrorist.

At the time, Mr. Menendez was quoted in a local newspaper, The Hudson Dispatch, as saying: “I endorse the fact that there are times when what one looks at as a law at a given time has to be broken.”

Mr. Menendez later denied making the comments, but he didn’t deny helping to raise funds for the man’s legal defense.

In a statement released this week, Mr. Menendez’s campaign continues to say he was misquoted: “Twenty years ago, Bob Menendez went to a community fund-raiser for a legal defense fund. He was misquoted by a local paper, and he immediately said so the day after that story appeared. He made clear then that he opposed acts of terrorism, just as he does now.” The Hudson Dispatch stood by its story, and the author of the article said in an interview this week that the paper did not retract the piece.

Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, has long been a supporter of the hard-line stance against Cuba endorsed by most Republicans. In 1996, he voted for the passage of the Helms-Burton Act, a law that toughened an already-existing trade embargo against Cuba.

Although Mr. Menendez has been cautious in recent years about making open statements of support for violent acts against the Castro regime in Cuba, his supporters with alleged ties to terrorism seem frankly unapologetic about being involved.

Gilberto Garcia, a lawyer representing the suspects who appeared before the grand jury in Newark, said in an interview that the bombings of pro-Castro targets in both Cuba and the U.S. were nothing to apologize for. “Were these acts legitimate?” he asked. “To the Cuban who advocated the demise of Fidel Castro? No doubt.” That said, he claimed his clients had no knowledge of the funding of the attacks in Cuba.

To understand that mind-set, it’s useful to look at the example of Monzon, Mr. Menendez’s old ally from Union City. He was a Cuban exile, a former political prisoner and later the owner of dozens of clothing stores in New Jersey. He was also the co-founder of the Pan American National Bank in Union City. In 1985, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of laundering $100,000 through that bank.

He was an early supporter of Mr. Menendez and was identified in 1982 by The Jersey Journal as a member of a steering committee that was seeking to get Mr. Menendez elected mayor. And as a director of the powerful Cuban-American National Foundation, he wielded control in a group that supports hard-line anti-Castro policies. He died in 2000 following complications from prostate cancer; Mr. Menendez appeared at his funeral.

In 1998, the Cuban government accused Monzon of financing exiles from Central America who later carried out a terror campaign in Havana. Some 13 bombings rocked the capital over several months in the 1990’s, and one Italian tourist was killed. Monzon vehemently denied the charges that he had aided the bombings.

At the time, a Spanish-language newspaper asked Mr. Menendez about his relationship with Monzon, to which Mr. Menendez said that “Monzon contributed to my political campaigns and at that level has been my friend.”

But in the past several months, others have implicated Monzon in a deeper role in extremist activities. In June, Jose Antonio Llamas, another former member of the executive board of the Cuban-American National Foundation, declared that he had been a part of a secret paramilitary wing created in the early 90’s within that organization.

For years, the United States government has looked the other way when it came to Cuban terror cases. Just weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice released from prison two men who had been convicted in the 1976 car-bombing assassination of a Chilean ambassador and an American in Washington, D.C. Pressure from Cuban exile groups helped gain their release.

Cuban-American politicians have never been shy about supporting Cuban extremist groups. In Miami, officials created Orlando Bosch Day, celebrating a man who has been accused of numerous terrorist activities throughout the world. Officials there have written on Congressional letterhead imploring the release of people accused of terrorist acts.

Mr. Menendez, for his part, has had something of a history of flirting with such controversial figures.

In October 1987, when Mr. Menendez was 33 and in his second year as mayor of Union City, he appeared at a legal-defense fund-raiser held for Eduardo Arocena. At the time, Mr. Arocena was sitting in a federal prison, guilty of murder and labeled a terrorist.

In 1984, a federal court convicted Mr. Arocena of murdering a Cuban official, and authorities had identified him as the terrorist leader of a group called Omega 7, a notorious collection of exiles that was headquartered in Union City.

The group had claimed responsibility for a decade-long bombing campaign throughout the United States—their ostensible goal was to attack those whom they saw as providing aid and comfort to Fidel Castro’s Cuba—but their targets included Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the John F. Kennedy International Airport and a pharmacy in Union City, among other locations.

A reporter for the Hudson Dispatch called Mr. Menendez up and asked him about his appearance at the fund-raiser and his apparent support for Mr. Arocena and his activities. In addition to the previously quoted statements—subsequently denied by Mr. Menendez—the article quoted him as saying: “I don’t look at it that I am supporting ‘a murderer.’ I look on it that I am supporting a goal, which is the liberation of Cuba.”

In a later article, the Dispatch printed previously unreported statements of Mr. Menendez from the interview, including the following: “Asked if Cuban communists should be combated in the U.S., Menendez said the fight should be carried out ‘wherever the enemy may be.’”

Those words, jarring as they may sound today in a post–Sept. 11 world, resonated throughout the Cuban exile community living in Union City and Florida. Mr. Menendez wasn’t alone in his support of Mr. Arocena: Xavier Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was quoted at the time as saying that he “preferred to think of Arocena as a freedom fighter, not a terrorist.”

Mr. Miller, the spokesman, said that Mr. Menendez “repudiates all terrorist actions, including Arocena’s.” Regarding Mr. Menendez’s attendance and donation to the legal fund, Mr. Miller said: “He’s been asked about this before, and he said he regrets going.”

Just ethnic politics, according to Lisandro Perez, a professor of sociology at Florida International University. “I don’t think the explanation is any more complicated than: One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” he said.

Along with Washington’s Farewell Address, Adams’ Independence Day oration is often cited as evidence of an American tradition of non-entanglement with a corrupt and corrupting world. But according to Robert Kagan, a former State Department official and influential neoconservative, Americans’ image of themselves as inward-looking and restrained—except in response to attacks—isn’t necessarily shared by others, who see the United States as an ambitious, violent nation, always ready to encroach upon its neighbors. The less flattering version was, in a sense, true, Mr. Kagan asserts in Dangerous Nation, a sweeping, essentially superficial reinterpretation of American foreign policy in the 18th and 19th centuries. Americans did exhibit an appetite for territory as they raced across the continent, trampling on Indians and Mexicans, the Spanish in Florida and the French in Louisiana. But Mr. Kagan claims that the nation’s expansionist behavior was motivated less by acquisitiveness or a lust for power than by a commitment to spread democracy, freedom and prosperity throughout its hemisphere and around the world.

From the outset, Mr. Kagan emphasizes, neither a “restive and energetic American people” nor the politicians who represented them sought isolation. Washington’s Farewell Address was a temporary expedient for a fledgling nation, a pose struck to prevent an alliance with France. Andrew Jackson had routed the Seminoles in 1818 in an attempt to wrest control of Florida. And Americans supported independence movements in Latin America and Greece in the 1820’s. Convinced that a liberal ideology gave American nationalism an international component, Mr. Kagan declares that John Quincy Adams’ audience “barely noticed” his “comparatively brief appeal for American restraint.”

Mr. Kagan contends that slavery had a profound impact on American foreign policy. Convinced that slavery must spread to survive, Southerners pushed for the annexation of Texas, Cuba and Mexico. In response, anti-slavery politicians in the North, including Adams and Daniel Webster, who had been expansionists early in their careers, opposed empire-building. After the Civil War, Southerners, scarred by memories of military occupation and the forced enfranchisement of blacks, made sure that the Democratic Party renounced territorial ambitions. Republicans, however, were even more determined to apply the Civil War model of a “‘selfless’ war on behalf of ‘humanity’ and ‘civilization’” to would-be or could-be “sister republics.” At the end of the century, Mr. Kagan concludes, two earthquakes—economic depression and populism— broke the political logjam and brought these Republicans to power. The “new departure” in foreign policy that ensued was actually a continuation and culmination of historical forces “reaching back to before the founding of the nation.”

Dangerous Nation is provocative; it is not persuasive. Relying on the work of other scholars rather than immersion in original sources, Mr. Kagan seems to cherry-pick the intelligence, omitting information that’s not congenial to his thesis. Although politicians often have two reasons for their actions—a good reason and the real reason—he takes at face value the pronouncements that moral and humanitarian concerns shaped American foreign policy in the late 19th century. And he issues a summary judgment against economic interpretations without giving them a hearing, let alone a trial.

Many of the myths he shreds are made of straw. Serious students of American foreign policy do not hold that the United States was an isolationist nation. They do not deny that the U.S. used force to satisfy its ambitions for territory in North America and to extend its power in Central America, the Caribbean and South America. And they readily agree that Americans desired to spread their political, economic and cultural values.

Americans may have been in accord about some ends, but they had serious and substantive differences about the means. Some of them thought it un-American to acquire colonies or fight wars of occupation. Mr. Kagan acknowledges that Senator John Sherman of Ohio “spoke for many” when he asked, “What becomes of the republican doctrine that all governments must be founded on the consent of the governed?” Over the next half-century, Mr. Kagan adds, Americans would continue to ask whether in the name of democracy, people could be denied the right of self-determination. But these dissenters do not get their innings in Dangerous Nation, which dwells almost exclusively on the expansionist tendencies in America’s founding principles and gives a misleading impression that there was a consensus about how to establish the nation’s place in the world.

The dissenting tradition in American foreign policy—not the Southern center of gravity in the Democratic Party—was responsible for a foreign policy that “proceeded by fits and starts” until the 1890’s, with treaties signed and then abandoned, the annexation of Hawaii sought and then dropped, a war to liberate Cuba threatened in 1873 and not declared until 1898. And it accounts for the anti-colonialist movement that coalesced during the occupation of the Philippines—and reappeared throughout the 20th century.

Dangerous Nation ends with the Spanish-American War. It makes no mention of our current President’s war in Iraq—but a defense of that war seems to be Mr. Kagan’s subtext. (His book is strewn with the terminology of 21st-century foreign policy: Benjamin Franklin lobbied for a “preemptive strike” against the French and Indians; Reconstruction was America’s “first experiment in ‘nation-building.’”) Mr. Kagan apparently believes that George W. Bush is building on rather than breaking with American foreign-policy traditions. And because those policies are driven predominantly by a freedom-loving morality and humanitarianism, Americans can—and should—wear as a badge of honor the appellation “dangerous nation.” Welcome to Fantasy Island.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

But recently, on Sept. 5, one of his allies, a New Jersey business owner and a major fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez, showed up in a curious place: in front of a grand jury in Newark, where he was questioned about the financing of terror bombings in Cuba during the 1990’s. Also appearing in front of the grand jury was the former accountant of a deceased ally and donor for the Senator.

The fund-raiser, Abel Hernandez, and the deceased ally, Arnaldo Monzon, had previously been accused of funding terror attacks in Cuba. Over the years, they have contributed more than $10,000 to Mr. Menendez’s campaigns. And in a separate case from earlier in his career, Mr. Menendez publicly defended and financially supported a man who had been convicted of killing a Cuban official and bombing civilian targets in the United States.

Cuban exile politics haven’t exactly played a large role in this year’s closely fought Senate campaign in New Jersey, which has a tiny 0.9 percent Cuban-American ethnic minority based largely in Mr. Menendez’s home territory, Hudson County. Though the campaign of Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr. has been largely based on attacks on Mr. Menendez over personal ethics, those criticisms have mostly been focused on a specific deal concerning his role in steering federal funds to a group that rents office space in a building that he owns.

It’s not a coincidence that the seemingly remarkable spectacle of close associates of a sitting U.S. Senator being accused of possible involvement in violent terrorist acts has passed almost without notice. It is, in the context of Cuban-American politics, nothing that unusual.

“In American politics, particularly in ethnic politics, there are certain household gods that need to be venerated,” said Ross Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers. “If you represent Cuban-Americans, you find yourself perhaps uncomfortably allied with those who advocate armed attacks against Cuba.”

Mr. Baker said he doubted that Mr. Menendez’s ties would factor in many voters’ decisions, other than possibly prompting a relatively small number of liberal suburban supporters to stay home. (Most recent polls have shown Mr. Menendez holding onto a modest lead.)

Mr. Menendez wasn’t made available for comment for this story. But a statement released by his campaign read: “The facts are that Bob Menendez opposes acts of terrorism, and has a long record of supporting swift and certain justice for those who carry out terrorist attacks, including the death penalty. Abel Hernandez and Arnaldo Monzon have contributed to both Democrats and Republicans, including George H.W. Bush, who came to New Jersey to campaign for Tom Kean Jr.” Matthew Miller, a spokesman, added in an interview that Mr. Menendez “believes in the rule of law.” He added: “But at this point there haven’t been any allegations made by any law-enforcement agencies,” against either man.

Still, to those unfamiliar with the nuances of Cuban exile politics, it might seem surprising that Mr. Menendez—a polished performer on the stump who is equally comfortable mixing with rough-and-tumble party operatives in Hudson County and Washington’s governing elite—has been so deeply involved with this particular cast of characters.

The deceased Union City businessman Arnaldo Monzon Plasencia, for example, was accused in June by a former associate of helping plan attacks on Cuba during the 1990’s. Monzon donated $4,000 to Mr. Menendez’s campaigns and served on a steering committee for a group that tried to get Mr. Menendez elected mayor in the 1980’s.

Another Union City business owner, Abel Hernandez, a prominent donor and fund-raiser for Mr. Menendez—who has contributed $8,200 over the years—has been implicated in a fax from 1997 that requested he raise money for bombings in Cuba. He recently appeared before a grand jury in Newark investigating the matter. Mr. Hernandez has denied any knowledge of the fund-raising for the attacks.

And sometimes Mr. Menendez was the one doing the contributing. In the 1980’s, when he was mayor of Union City, he donated an unknown amount to the legal-defense fund for a man, Eduardo Arocena, who had been convicted of murdering a Cuban diplomat in New York and participating in bombing attacks in the region. Mr. Arocena had been described by U.S. authorities as a terrorist.

At the time, Mr. Menendez was quoted in a local newspaper, The Hudson Dispatch, as saying: “I endorse the fact that there are times when what one looks at as a law at a given time has to be broken.”

Mr. Menendez later denied making the comments, but he didn’t deny helping to raise funds for the man’s legal defense.

In a statement released this week, Mr. Menendez’s campaign continues to say he was misquoted: “Twenty years ago, Bob Menendez went to a community fund-raiser for a legal defense fund. He was misquoted by a local paper, and he immediately said so the day after that story appeared. He made clear then that he opposed acts of terrorism, just as he does now.” The Hudson Dispatch stood by its story, and the author of the article said in an interview this week that the paper did not retract the piece.

Mr. Menendez, a Democrat, has long been a supporter of the hard-line stance against Cuba endorsed by most Republicans. In 1996, he voted for the passage of the Helms-Burton Act, a law that toughened an already-existing trade embargo against Cuba.

Although Mr. Menendez has been cautious in recent years about making open statements of support for violent acts against the Castro regime in Cuba, his supporters with alleged ties to terrorism seem frankly unapologetic about being involved.

Gilberto Garcia, a lawyer representing the suspects who appeared before the grand jury in Newark, said in an interview that the bombings of pro-Castro targets in both Cuba and the U.S. were nothing to apologize for. “Were these acts legitimate?” he asked. “To the Cuban who advocated the demise of Fidel Castro? No doubt.” That said, he claimed his clients had no knowledge of the funding of the attacks in Cuba.

To understand that mind-set, it’s useful to look at the example of Monzon, Mr. Menendez’s old ally from Union City. He was a Cuban exile, a former political prisoner and later the owner of dozens of clothing stores in New Jersey. He was also the co-founder of the Pan American National Bank in Union City. In 1985, he pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of laundering $100,000 through that bank.

He was an early supporter of Mr. Menendez and was identified in 1982 by The Jersey Journal as a member of a steering committee that was seeking to get Mr. Menendez elected mayor. And as a director of the powerful Cuban-American National Foundation, he wielded control in a group that supports hard-line anti-Castro policies. He died in 2000 following complications from prostate cancer; Mr. Menendez appeared at his funeral.

In 1998, the Cuban government accused Monzon of financing exiles from Central America who later carried out a terror campaign in Havana. Some 13 bombings rocked the capital over several months in the 1990’s, and one Italian tourist was killed. Monzon vehemently denied the charges that he had aided the bombings.

At the time, a Spanish-language newspaper asked Mr. Menendez about his relationship with Monzon, to which Mr. Menendez said that “Monzon contributed to my political campaigns and at that level has been my friend.”

But in the past several months, others have implicated Monzon in a deeper role in extremist activities. In June, Jose Antonio Llamas, another former member of the executive board of the Cuban-American National Foundation, declared that he had been a part of a secret paramilitary wing created in the early 90’s within that organization.

For years, the United States government has looked the other way when it came to Cuban terror cases. Just weeks before Sept. 11, 2001, the U.S. Department of Justice released from prison two men who had been convicted in the 1976 car-bombing assassination of a Chilean ambassador and an American in Washington, D.C. Pressure from Cuban exile groups helped gain their release.

Cuban-American politicians have never been shy about supporting Cuban extremist groups. In Miami, officials created Orlando Bosch Day, celebrating a man who has been accused of numerous terrorist activities throughout the world. Officials there have written on Congressional letterhead imploring the release of people accused of terrorist acts.

Mr. Menendez, for his part, has had something of a history of flirting with such controversial figures.

In October 1987, when Mr. Menendez was 33 and in his second year as mayor of Union City, he appeared at a legal-defense fund-raiser held for Eduardo Arocena. At the time, Mr. Arocena was sitting in a federal prison, guilty of murder and labeled a terrorist.

In 1984, a federal court convicted Mr. Arocena of murdering a Cuban official, and authorities had identified him as the terrorist leader of a group called Omega 7, a notorious collection of exiles that was headquartered in Union City.

The group had claimed responsibility for a decade-long bombing campaign throughout the United States—their ostensible goal was to attack those whom they saw as providing aid and comfort to Fidel Castro’s Cuba—but their targets included Avery Fisher Hall in New York, the John F. Kennedy International Airport and a pharmacy in Union City, among other locations.

A reporter for the Hudson Dispatch called Mr. Menendez up and asked him about his appearance at the fund-raiser and his apparent support for Mr. Arocena and his activities. In addition to the previously quoted statements—subsequently denied by Mr. Menendez—the article quoted him as saying: “I don’t look at it that I am supporting ‘a murderer.’ I look on it that I am supporting a goal, which is the liberation of Cuba.”

In a later article, the Dispatch printed previously unreported statements of Mr. Menendez from the interview, including the following: “Asked if Cuban communists should be combated in the U.S., Menendez said the fight should be carried out ‘wherever the enemy may be.’”

Those words, jarring as they may sound today in a post–Sept. 11 world, resonated throughout the Cuban exile community living in Union City and Florida. Mr. Menendez wasn’t alone in his support of Mr. Arocena: Xavier Suarez, the mayor of Miami, was quoted at the time as saying that he “preferred to think of Arocena as a freedom fighter, not a terrorist.”

Mr. Miller, the spokesman, said that Mr. Menendez “repudiates all terrorist actions, including Arocena’s.” Regarding Mr. Menendez’s attendance and donation to the legal fund, Mr. Miller said: “He’s been asked about this before, and he said he regrets going.”

Just ethnic politics, according to Lisandro Perez, a professor of sociology at Florida International University. “I don’t think the explanation is any more complicated than: One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” he said.

The paper was rejected by the Atlantic, as too hot for this country to hear. And while it has been favorably received in Israel and England, it continues to be smeared in this country in the Washington Post and the Boston Globe. The latest attack is from Eliot A. Cohen, a Hopkins professor, in the Post. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/04/AR2006040401282.html

Cohen says the professors are guilty of antisemitism, bigotry and of trading in ideas from the "sewer" in broaching their belief: that the Israel lobby is too powerful.

This is, once again, a fearful response from the rightwing Jewish community, fearful that if the issue is even discussed, Jews in this country will be persecuted. It reminds me of my own relative's comment after 9/11, They're going to blame the Jews. This anxiety has controlled the response to the powerful Harvard paper: If we even discuss it, Jews will be blamed. As for the ideas? Cohen's claim that the lobby is not powerful is based on such weak arguments as, the Cuba lobby is powerful, too, or, People who don't like Israel also supported the war in Iraq. Of course these things are true. They in no way invalidate Walt-Mearsheimer's assertions, that the Israel lobby has had a stranglehold on our policy in the Middle East (which is not to be confused with Cuba) and that it played a central role in the (disastrous) Iraq war planning.

These assertions are important and deserve to be discussed on their merits, without fearful slurring and name-calling.