Or to put it another way: If Fidel Castro had died of natural causes five years ago, and Cuba was exactly the same nation it is today only someone else was ruling it, would we still have our current policy towards it?
Um, it was my understanding that the only reason Cuba is the way it is today is because that’s the way Fidel wants it, so the point is moot. If someone else was running it, it wouldn’t be run the same way.
I predict Havana’s first McDonalds franchise will be opened within 6 weeks after Fidel moves to a higher plane of existence.
Three months, tops.
Or, Mickey Dee’s could open before Castro died if the U.S. would stop letting a tiny group of well-financed exiles dictate our foreign policy.
A little more complex than that. First, there is a huge expatriot Cuban community that has a lot of money, and a ton of political clout. They want Castro punished. Presidential candidates that advocate easing sanctions against Cuba find it very hard to win Florida, for example.
Second, until the fall of the Soviet Union there was a very good reason to isolate Cuba, and U.S. policy was based around that. And a lot of entrenched interests came to rely on that.
Fidel doesn’t help. Whenever the U.S. does make overtures towards Cuba he usually screws it up. I think it’s a point of pride with him and his cronies to keep thumbing their noses at the U.S. In the latest episode, the U.S. offered a bunch of aid to Cuba after the hurricane damage, but Fidel attached so many strings to it that the U.S. couldn’t agree.
But yeah, in my opinion the sanctions are outdated, and should be eased.
I think part of it has to do with fidel’s “Nationalizing” (A polite way of saying he stole it) all the casinos and resorts and banks that were owned by the rest of the world. We’re talking some serious money here, from 40 years ago.
And those thirteen days in October, when we almost went head to head with the Soviets with Nuclear Weapons. I’m sure the cuban people are, well, people, just like anywhere else. But their government sure as hell ain’t.
The “vendetta” argument is assisted by the Helms-Burton Act (the so-called “Bacardi Act”). Our good friend Jesse, under pressure from the rum industry but also from his own natural aversion to communists, decided that US companies would not be allowed to trade with non-Cuban foreigners who deal with Cuba. Nice extension of sovereign power.
The Helms-Burton Act also allows U.S. citizens with claims to nationalized propety to sue people or corporate entities that “traffic” with Cuba. This is one canuck that resents American lobby groups trying (however ineffectively) to keep me from enjoying a decent cigar. Pfui.
Yep.
I think the whole Elian Gonzalez fiasco demonstrated just how ridiculous our policy with Cuba is.
http://www.delphi.com/pathtofreedom
It originally was an Elian board (the owner stating Elian should be allowed to go home), and it’s evolved into sort of a debate. Come and see just how wacked these people are-some insist that Castro is behind the anthrax scare and September 11.
There was a piece done on 60 Minutes this past weekend. It told of all the money sent to Cuba by the expatriotes, which in effect hurts the embargo against Cuba. The younger generation is not as anti-Castro as the older generation. This could work to solve the problem, but of course by that time Castro could have died and again made everything else obsolete.
Did anybody notice the resolution General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday? The UN decided, with a margin of 167 to 3 (the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands), to comdemn the blockade against Cuba. For the tenth consecutive year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1679000/1679796.stm
Now let’s all have a nice cigar and solve this dispute like grown-ups.
There are other powerful interests that oppose improved relations with Cuba. For instance, many American tobacco growers don’t want Cuban products on the American market. Cuba grows, by most peoples standards, finer tobacco than the United States…and this helps explain why certain senators from the Carolinas so strongly support the embargo.
…I am not rabidly anti-Castro, but I have always wondered why the US government doesn’t try a “kill with kindness” approach. Basically, at this point, the Cuban regime’'s ideology is not based on much other than a consistent opposition to the US government’s embargo and policy of isolation against Cuba.
For instance, Castro’s defenders, when questioned about the presence of “political” prisoners or strict censorship point out that the US harassment of Cuba essentially forces the regime to take extraordinary “wartime” or “siege” measures. The poor state of the Cuban economy is also largely blamed on the embargo and other economic measures by the USA, such as the Helms-Burton legislation.
If the USA lifted the embargo, and recognized the government as legitimate, what excuse would Castro have for his country’s political condition?
Most of your real hardliners, anti-Castro Cubans are members of the oligarchy-the upper class who flourished under Batista’s rule.
The simple answer is yes, it is a petty vendetta.
Anyone in favour of it? I’d be interested to hear an opposing view.
I think that you have to be a Cuban exile to support the embargo. I’ve never heard so much as a single non-Cuban-exile person who thinks that the embargo is anything but a pathetic failure. Kinda like the Iraqi embargo.