Bad as the situation in Cuba was before the embargo, people at least could live a normal life, but without water and electricity that’s no longer possible. The US isn’t responsible for all of Cuba’s problems, but cutting off their oil supply caused things to go from bad to much worse. I believe that more people will now die than would have died without the embargo. How can the US justify causing that. Why do we care who is running Cuba anyway? They are no threat to the US, and haven’t been one since 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis.
Let’s break it down.
Has the humanitarian situation in Cuba gotten significantly worse over the last 2 months?
I think this is an undeniable “yes”
Did the United States contribute to this worsening humanitarian situation?
Yes – by arresting Maduro, which effectively ended the supply of Venezuelan oil; by seizing shadow fleet tankers with the US Navy; by patrolling the skies around Cuba to monitor for additional oil shipments
Was the worsening humanitarian situation a predictable result of the United States’ actions?
Yes
Could the United States ease the humanitarian situation in any way?
Yes, simply by allowing Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba again
Given the above, I don’t see how the US doesn’t have blood on its hands if anyone dies as a result of its actions. At best it’s depraved indifference to human suffering.
The only counter-argument would be that the situation in Cuba before the US made it worse was so bad that it justifies sacrificing some number of Cuban civilians, which I personally think is a tough case to make. A shoddy electrical grid ain’t gonna cut it as justification.
A communist government functions fine as long as it allows a capitalist economy.
That’s not my logic, or not supposed to be. Stealing is stealing, the intent is already presumed. The reason doesn’t matter. I think we are going round and round now. However, I do think the facts re Cuba is much less clear than our hypos and intent obviously must be assumed or guessed at from the stated reasons.
You can definitely get there, though. Fair odds Trump has already posted about it clear as day laying out his depraved intent.
Cuba- very often- didnt have electricity before the Embargo.
The lack or dearth of real communism has long been a joke in the Soviet Union on down. Calling yourself “communist” (or not) is just a buzzword and by no means excuses any incompetence or corruption.
I listened to a NY times “The Daily” podcast episode today (from July 10). It was a 45min interview with what it presented as an everyday Cuban. Pretty enlightening. It’s not directly on point to what I quoted from you, but it circles it. It’s definitely a shit show and it’s definitely made worse by the oil embargo. Sky high prices, blackouts, lack of food/water, much more homelessness/beggars, etc.
This Cuban said the current situation was the Cuban Gov’t fault made worse by the Americans. The Cuban sentiment generally, as expressed by this one person, was that some Cubans wanted a regime change/become democratic; some were too hungry to care either way if a dictator or democratically elected politician was in charge as long as they could just eat/not worry about getting food. Etc. Across the board reactions.
This Cuban said Cuba used to be a much nicer place to live not that long ago. Now it’s not. It’s not as collapsed as Haiti is, but it’s trending that way.
Late: Debated on whether to add politics or not, but this Cuban hates Trump and thought Cuba was just about to become a good country when Obama was President. Cuba was opening up and getting much better. Now it’s all gone to shit.
That is my point, so I agree.
This is immaterial as to whether the US embargo is ethical, appropriate, or even effective; it’s none of those.
Agreed.
From a legal perspective, it touches on causation. You have to have actually caused the result. This is nothing I’ve been discussing (just intent), but it looks like DrDeath has been debating this causal requirement. Who or what is actually causing this crisis (and death if we want to keep this tied to a crime/OP)? The interviewed Cuban thought it was caused by both the Cuban Gov’t and the American oil embargo.
As a thought experiment to isolate causation requirement, you can intend for something to happen, implement a mechanism that could cause it to happen, it can happen, but that doesn’t mean you caused it to happen. For example, I can intend to shoot someone with my rifle, shoot, a bullet is a mechanism that can kill someone, the person dies, but I did not kill them. They were hit by a car just before I shot, I missed, and the car wreck impact caused their neck to break and killed them. My bullet fired from my gun, my intent to kill them, their death, was absolutely not caused by me.
The Cuba situation is more complicated but also realistic. The mechanism, an oil embargo, does not immediately cause death like a bullet or vehicle impact. It causes other things that, that cause other things, that cause other things, that later result in death. Probably predictable to a point, maybe, but very messy. Also, was the death caused by the oil embargo (and resulting chain of events) or was it a coincidence, or was it caused by Cuban Gov’t malpractice, was it a contributing caused, partial cause, all of that, a little bit. It’s messy. For a crime, you have to prove it caused the result. Very generally speaking, for say murder, the oil embargo has to be the significant factor causing their death. Not something else.
However, as I’ll keep saying, you can definitely get there and time passing/situation devolving helps to make the effects of the oil embargo more clear.
I’m just trying to follow the logic here. You pointed to the regime change in 1959 as evidence of sanctions working. So what are your thoughts on the 65+ years that have followed?
Right – it doesn’t matter. If you knowingly do X to achieve Y, then you have knowingly done X.
In this case, the through line between the embargo and regime change is humanitarian crisis.
That’s the thing america is doing and it doesn’t get erased by saying it’s a means to an end.
Otherwise you can commit just about any crime you like just by having a desire to get rich or have fun.
I did? That is not what I meant.
Agreed. I did days ago in post 27. Agree to agree I guess.
Seriously though, the issue is the subtly. Motive, the reason, can be used to inform intent when intent is not known. Here, the act is the oil embargo policy the motive is regime change the (real) intent unknown. We can infer the intent to be to actually deprive Cuba of oil. That’s all I’m saying. If I later changed the motive and replaced it with “known” intent, one we don’t have to infer, that might have caused confusion. I could have made that subtly clearer as I switched back n forth. Hope that provides clarity in my logic.
I now get your point. If I intend to commit a crime, the reason doesn’t matter. Agreed.
We disagree, I think, on whether intending to deprive Cuba of oil is enough for criminal intent or not.