They should have asked us, instead of this messy revolution stuff. “Please, USA, could you remove this monstrous dictator, Batista, and, while you’re about it, free us from the tentacles of the American Mafia?” We would have sent the Marines, toot sweet, to bring them the same liberation that we brought to so many, many countries in Central and South America! Uguarte, Trujillo, Arenas, Pinochet…why, the list of freedom loving patriots we supported goes on and on!
So, they picked the other side. Want a list of THEIR ‘freedom loving patriots’? Think it will be much improved?
Even conceding the point to you, Cuba COULD have changed it’s spots at a later date…say, after the Soviets went for the long drop. In the spirit of new understanding and friendship, they could have thrown off their communist trappings and made at least a token effort to re-establish closer relations with the US. All it would have really taken was for anyone with ‘Castro’ in their name to step down, and set up an interim (non-Communist/non-Fucked Up) government appointed to allow the Cuban people the chance to vote in a new government. Assuming that new government wanted to trade and have closer relations with the US I’m pretty confident that even the rabid anti-Castro faction in the US would have been overjoyed by such developments, especially if it let them go home.
I suppose it could work. The Castros are in power so they’d be able to get reform moving. Whether they could survive the process is an open question - most reformers (including Gorbachev) end up getting thrown out of office as part of the reform process.
But I think it’s an unlikely hypothetical. Gorbachev said that past premiers had made mistakes that needed to be fixed. The Castros would be saying that they themselves had made mistakes that needed to be fixed. Self-reform is a lot rarer and more difficult than reform by a “new broom”. Maybe back in 1990 they could have done it as part of the spirit of that time. But at this point, I think it’s just what I said above - a couple of old men trying to hang on to power long enough so they can die in bed.
Better Allende than Pinochet, at any rate. Better pro-Soviet Republican Spain than Franco’s Spain. Better Hugo Chavez than whatever that failed coup would have replaced him with. Etc. Some of these are close calls, but none of them are difficult calls.
Leaving aside the fantasy about Spain, or that Chavez is better than who ever would be there (again, fantasy, since he’s the guy there…I know you like him so let’s just move on), I was thinking about guys like Pol Pot. You know, communist dictators supported by the Soviets with oceans of blood on their hands. Not just that passe suppression of peasants, or the odd murder or two (or even 10’s or 100’s of thousands), but folks like…well, like that Castro guy, for instance.
I’m suggesting that, while the rogues gallery of fuckups the US has supported over time haven’t exactly been nice guys, they pale compared to a similar list supported (or, hell, representative of…let’s not forget Stalin, Lenin or Mao) by the Communists. Which was my original point.
Even better, after being nearly killed by Cuban doctors a team of Spanish doctors, with their own equipment and medicines, were flown in to save the day (and by day I mean Fidel).
Still, by WHO ranking (2000), Cuba’s medical system is the 39th-best in the world (only 2 behind the U.S.), which puts it ahead of all the rest of the Caribbean except Dominica (and Puerto Rico? not sure), and ahead of all Latin America except for Colombia and Costa Rica. (Spain ranks 7, BTW.)
So basically they should have been content to be ass fucked by the pineapple companies, with pineapples, is what you’re saying? Why should the US meddle in another country’s government?
OPEC has us over an oil barrel. If they decided that to sell us oil why had to get rid of that pesky freedom of speech thing, would your words equally apply to us?
Funny thing is, the Soviet power elites found the Cuban revolutionaries kind of an embarrassment. They were all survivors/veterans of the Stalinist experiment in absolute cynicism, if they had a political ideal amongst them, they would have to pass it around so that each of them could see what it looked like. A bit like our own founding fuckups thought Tom Paine was a pain in the butt with all his egalitarian ideals when they were busy setting up a government that favored the white, the wealthy and the landed.
Rumor has it that Kruschev became something of a “born again” Communist, enamored of the idea that maybe they were right all along, that Communism was the wave of the future, as represented by these vigorous young revolutionaries.
But they couldn’t stand Che. Che didn’t bathe, and called them a bunch of wimps who wouldn’t have lasted a week in the Sierra Maestra mountains with the real revolutionaries.
And, of course, Cuba was a poor candidate according to classic Marxist theory, having no industrial base to speak of, hence no industrial bourgeoisie, never mind an industrial proletariat. Especially when you got an apostate like Mao running around claiming that a Marxist revolution could be founded in an entirely agricultural base. It would be like Moses having a ham and cheese sandwhich, with a shmeer and a nice glass milk.
Funny, isn’t it, how nations born of liberating revolutions can become oppressive, in their turn.
I’ve learned that when it comes to communist countries statistics are used as a propaganda tool, and are massaged and made up to be the best little propaganda tools they can be.
I notice in that that list Canada is ranked 30th. I’ve experienced both the Canadian and the Cuban medical systems, and the only way those two are separated by 9 places is if they ranking is exponential.
Then what is the fear? Why do we not want Americans to go there? For many years you could go to jail for visiting Cuba.
Could it be we did not want American tourist dollars helping out the dirty commies? Perhaps we feared it might wok out for them if we did go there?
Nobody suggests a max exodus of Americans to Cuba. Don’t argue with yourself.
A couple of things here. First off, American’s can go to Cuba. I’ve been there myself without any long jail time associated with it (I was unable to sneak back any large quantities of fine Cuban cigars, sadly). Secondly, it’s not ‘fear’ that curtails trips to and from Cuba, but the fact that the country is under embargo by the US. Since the embargo is the law of the land until it’s repealed (something I’m all for, btw), it effects US citizens. It’s really as simple as that…no fear necessary.
Well, leaving aside the snide aspects…yeah. You do know what an embargo is, right?
Um, no. We simply have the country under embargo (I’m beginning to suspect you DON’T know what this means, though you should…even I was alive when it was originally imposed, though, granted I was only a baby at the time). We are blocking a flow of goods and services from the US to Cuba (and vice versa)…that includes tourist dollars.
For the humor impaired, this was a ‘joke’. I was riffing off your own comment. Next time I’ll try and use pictures.
Soviet style Communism is gone, and good riddance, the Movement goes foward. But you just keep on dancing on the grave, it’ll keep you out of our hair for a while.
Dangers of late night posting. Although your post was about as clear as mud, too.
Here’s what I meant to say. If the US was in a similar boat with another country or group that didn’t like it’s form of government. Let’s say a hypothetical OPEC that just hates our freedom of religion and can do just fine not selling us oil would Americans (after not giving up the freedom of religion thing and dealing with the fallout of suddenly losing a good chunk of our energy supply) say “there is the ‘got to hate that factor’. IOW, we should have thought of that BEFORE pissing them off, no?”, or would we probably go to war?
Considering the first Iraqi war where the main interest in getting involved was Kuwait having oil (not Iraq using biological weapons in the 80s, that was okay apparently) and the second Iraqi war most of the mealy mouthed street justifications I heard were about oil supply. Cuba wasn’t as powerful as the US, and didn’t have many options to fight back. You appear to believe because of this Cuba should have bent over and asked the US for another pineapple up the ass.
In short it appears to me all the embargo was was a bully causing misery because the brute didn’t get his way. How much suffering did that embargo cause?
Yeah, but I put a lot of effort into deliberately making them less than clear.
Certainly we should have. It would be a choice…conform to the demands of this theoretical trading partner, or deal with the consequences of such an embargo and find other trading partners to fill in the gaps.
The point is that Cuba chose it’s path…it chose to throw away it’s history with the US (the good and the bad), and ally itself with a nation that was clearly at odds with the US, and tie it’s future economic prosperity (or lack their of) to said other country. It was their choice, and if they made it out of principal then that’s all well and good…but it was their choice. And ours, of course.
Or, they could have sought to reform (or depose and replace with something else that wasn’t hostile to the US) the own government, reform the regulations and restrictions on US companies operating in Cuba, instead of seizing them all and nationalizing the assets (which was the thing that really provoked the bitterness and counter hostility by the US against Cuba…and remains one of the big sticking points to this day). They could have worked with the US for reform, and while we might have kicked and screamed, we probably wouldn’t have embargoed them the same way.
You seem to be operating under the impression that there were only two solutions…either things continued on exactly as they had been under earlier, corrupt Cuban governments (i.e. ‘pineapple up the ass’) or it had to be a complete and radical chance where the Cuban’s seized everything and allied themselves with the Soviets. There were plenty of solutions between those two that would have kept the US and Cuba trading. They CHOSE to do the most radical and deliberately provocative, and ally themselves and tie their economy to the Soviets instead of maintaining their relations with the US.
How did that work out for them?
It appears to me that you have a rather one sided and skewed view of the history and events that lead to the current situation.
(And, the funny thing is, I’ve been a big advocate of getting rid of or at least lightening up on the embargo for years now)