Cuba’s Fidel Castro has wasted no time taking Barack Obama, US president, to task over his removal this week of limits on travel by Cuban Americans to their homeland and how much money they can send to relatives. If I have any criticism of President Obama on this issue it will be that he hasn't gone far enough, but at least he's facing in the right direction.
The embargo against Cuba was a not-very-good idea whose failures to achieve it's objectives have been made evident for decades.
But even if these objectives were met, does it really make sense for a nation such as ours, a nation that brags about it's freedoms, to restrict the movement of it's own people and goods?
Of course not. All it shows is that we can be hypocrites ourselves when passions overtake our collective logic.
I know, I know...
Most of the reason for this embargo being kept in place long after it's expiration date was the power of Cuban exiles in Florida, and the need to maintain, or at least not lose, Florida's electoral votes every four years.
Because nothing animates a Cuban exile like the concept of 'punishing' Fidel, even if Fidel doesn't feel any pain from it.
It's the thought that counts, I guess.
I suggest, if we really want to bring freedom to the Cuban people, we should act like the free people we claim to be: go to Cuba whenever we want to.
One thing that would threaten the vise-like hold on power exercised by the world's largest plantation master is an influx of visitors from a nearby land telling tales of the better American lifestyle that can be had if only the host's system was a little less dictatorial.
11 comments:
...to which I can only reply "amen".
Besides, I really want to go there.
i think you need to have relatives to visit before they allow that,though.
Yep. No trips to Cuba any time soon for a regular old white guy like me.
Unless I depart from another country (e.g., Mexico or Canada), convince them not to stamp my passport (apparently not very hard to do) and not get busted by any US agents in Cuba (a remote, but non-zero risk).
If my wife's immigration status weren't potentially imperiled by such a trip, I'd be willing to do it, actually.
I've been lamenting the investment opportunity lost to American companies for years, and had to face ridiculous criticism from the knee-jerk nincompoops at the Gulch because of it.
The RINOs currently criticizing Obama for this move would have fallen in line if this was declared by George Bush and everybody knows it... since they've ignored the same argument when it applied to China.
The fact that Canada and other countries have started building their resorts in Cuba ahead of us just really pisses me off. OK that;s the real motivation. Fuck the Castros, we've been missing a golden opportunity here for years.
i thought you'd lament the cigar opportunity.
the politicians only saw Florida.
but the right wing and Cuban folks cant see history: the USSR was opened to us, and within a few years, they werent there anymore.
brian can have Cuba. it's the former east block that i want to see.
I dunno, Gino -- I'd say the main reason for the embargo is that Castro was in the process of putting nuclear warheads within about 100 miles of our coast.
I know that was a long time ago; I wasn't born yet and I'd wager that very few people who read this blog were, either, but it's kinda tough to forget something like that.
And it would help if some of the people who are for ending the embargo would stop talking about Batista, who has been dead for 36 years now. I heard a guy (a Minnesota farmer who wants to sell more stuff to Castro) on the radio while I was driving in to work this morning; the guy was discussing this matter and was still bagging on Batista, who in his estimation "was much more brutal than Castro." Batista was a typical cheap caudillo of the sort that has plagued Latin America since Bolivar chased out the Spaniards. Castro beats Batista just on sheer longevity. The farmer was talking about how smart and engaged Castro is and was proud of the Christmas cards he'd received. Ordinarily farmers put their manure on the fields and not over the airwaves.
I guess I don't care if we end the embargo, but that sort of thing drives me nuts. And I think that the Cuban exiles get a bad rap. But it's probably as good a time as any to change things.
mark:
think of the xtra $ coming to MN.
embargos have never worked against dictators, and this one would have never prevented any other missiles from being shipped to cuba.
the missile crisis was a polical failure for JFK. he needed to do something to make himself look like he wasnt going to take any more crap, so he went the emotional route.
Mark--we have, in the time period covered by the embargo, engaged in full scale war with a country (Vietnam) which left a hell of a lot of dead Americans there, lost, ended the war, resumed diplomatic relations, and become a major trading partner of the same country.
The embargo is completely wrongheaded and irrational for a million reasons, and should have ended no later than the fall of the USSR.
the biggest thing for me is that how can we claim to be free, to come and go as we please, if we cant go 'there', while at the same time criticising them for not letting their people be free to travel.
unless there is some sort of security reason to restrict travel, the whole idea is a national hypocrasy.
@mark- I was 10 when the Cuban Missile Crisis was in full run, with two cousins in the navy and a future brother-in-law about to be inducted into the army.
It was the main reason that an embargo was ramped up, but all a person has to do is look at Israel and the Palestinians to see what happens when political intransigence is the operative paradigm over the course of decades. Static-state international relations - especially those where we're told to forget some aspects of the past but hone in on others for the purposes of an argument - go no place but where you are to begin with.
It's the 21st century for God's sake. Let's move on from 196fuckin3.
And gino, when Castro took over all the best cigar-making families moved to the Dominican Republic and took their Cuban seed with them. Currently Cuban cigars are - imo - weak echoes of the past. The best stuff is coming from the Dominican.
I get all that, folks. And you'll note that I ended my comment with:
"But it's probably as good a time as any to change things."So we don't disagree. I just get tired of the stuff I mentioned in my comment. Anyone who is still talking about Batista in 2009 (and none of you are, to your credit) is full of balloon juice. It's like someone complaining about Sukarno or Allende or Trujillo or Diem.
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