Well, how much do you want for it?
Seriously, as I stated up above, communism did NOT strike countries that were free democratic republics. It gained ground in nations with extremely repressive regimes.
Elucidator: First of all, I am in favor of lifting the embargo, so we’re on the same side.
But I have no illusions about the nature of the Cuban government. I favor a removal of the embargo because I think it’s the best way to get rid of the oppression.
And yes, I stand by my statements. Why do we have so much trouble slapping a label on something when we identify it? If Castro isn’t evil, how do you define evil? This is a man personally responsible for the murder of thousands of people who’s only crime was to want to live in freedom.
Communism tended to gain grounds in economic basketcases with repressive regimes, and not in wealthy countries regardless of the political system. I disagree that you’re making a political basis for communism versus an economic cause. Singapore being a case in point, and when did women gain universal suffrage in Switzerland?
Better brush up on your US history. The communist party in the United States was a significant movement in the 1930’s. Read Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle for a bit of color.
The Federation of American Scientists report on Cuban special weapons programs begins with the following:
Looking over the report, all in all I’d say Cuba doesn’t strike me as a major player in any WMD-developing “Axis of Evil” or anything like that.
This strikes me as a downright offensive sentiment. Cuba is not the absolute epitome of evil, but it is a dictatorship in which one man has ruled for more than 40 years, without allowing the people any choice in who will govern them, without allowing for peaceful political opposition or independent civic organizations, without allowing a free press, and with the use of secret police, political prisons, and torture and execution of political opponents. As others have pointed out, human rights groups–not just professional anti-communists or exile groups with axes to grind against the regime–have documented this. In his speech, Jimmy Carter notes that Cuba has a government “where one political party dominates, and people are not permitted to organize any opposition movements” and the country’s own constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and association are flouted.
Of course, if you want to play the “quote snippets from human rights reports” game, Amnesty International has expressed concern about provisions for “indefinite detention without trial”, “deaths in police custody”, the use of child soldiers, and allegations of “official collusion by both the army and the police” in the muder of a human rights lawyer…in the United Kingdom. Boy, I guess there’s not a whole lot of difference between you guys and Bulgaria under the Communists, huh?
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we all agree totalitarian states are bad
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on the scale of totalitarian states, Cuba ranks as a medium (with countries like Burma, Iraq, maybe Zimbabwe at the top)
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many of our “close” allies have human rights records we wouldn’t want to look too closely at (eg Turkey, India)
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is Cuba any badder than the other repressive, totalitarian states the US deals with? No.
The problem is that by lifting the embargo, America risks being seen to be endorsing the Castro regime. Which it definitely doesn’t want to do.
So America is backed into a corner. It can’t change it’s position until Castro dies and a new government comes in. But Castro will only go if he is overthrown by his people (which seems unlikely). Catch 22.
This is a problem that will go away when Castro meets his maker. Until then, I think we just have to wait it out.
Ehhh…from what I know of it, Burma and certainly Iraq are indeed at the bottom of the scale. I’d probably put North Korea in the same ballpark. China and Cuba and Vietnam are maybe a step up above those countries. I think Zimbabwe, as reprehensible as Mugabe’s government is, is more of a “medium”–my impression is that there is still an internal opposition, even if Mugabe would prefer otherwise. The mention of Turkey and India is kind of odd. Both are in fact democracies, with some serious human rights violations, and some history of being imperfectly constitutional/democratic in their national governments–the last applying to Turkey much more strongly than to India, although India has had its episodes of authoritarian rule. Characterizing them both as “close” allies of the US is odd–Turkey certainly is so, but India was strategically aligned with the USSR during the Cold War, and its relations with the US were often chilly. (Western democracies are not the only democracies to make nice with dictators for strategic reasons.) Even now, our War on Terrorism alliance with military-ruled, semi-theocratic Pakistan is closer than our relations with India.
I agree we’ve had working relationships–at times outwardly quite cordial relations, e.g., Romania’s Ceausescu–with dictators every bit as totalitarian as Castro–and Ceausescu was arguably worse than Castro. (Note that there is a good argument that not all dictatorships can be described as"'totalitarian", which does not mean the merely “authoritarian” ones are "good.) I think our policy towards Cuba has been heavily dictated by national embarrassment (as well as Cuban emigre politics), and this is not a good thing.
This is how it went, MEBuckner:
LonesomePolecat made a bare statement:
“Nevertheless, according to human rights watchdogs such as Amnesty International, Cuba is one of the very worst offenders in the Western Hemisphere. They’ve had and continued to have plenty of plenty of political prisoners who have been both tortured and arbitrarily executed.”
I went to AI, read what I could and took the year Summary’s of the US and Cuba (they call it the 'Headline) for 2001. I then asked him to elaborate on his statement because his characterisation of Cuba today was unfamiliar to me and not consistent with what I’d read on the AI site.
I’m still waiting for LonesomePolecat to respond. To that you respond:
I’m sorry you feel that way but, given the Death sentence, the US seemed the obvious “Western Hemisphere” comparison – and without comparison, LP’s statement is meaningless.
Yep, very unpleasant communist/Dictatorial behaviour.
Torture: - You’ll notice from my three consecutive post above, that I tried to pin down the torture claims – there is nothing (I can see) current. The information on torture relates to 3 ½ - 4 + years ago, information from ex-political prisoners with a vested interest (I can hardly blame them for that) in casting the regime in a bad light. The specific torture those ex-prisoners cite is this:
Cuba’s imposition of prolonged periods of incommunicado pretrial and post-conviction detention, beatings, and prosecutions of previously-tried political prisoners—where those practices result in severe physical or psychological pain or suffering—constitute torture under the convention.
- yeah, that’s very, very ugly but I, and I imagine others, tend to think of ‘torture’ comprising a wide range of possible actions. It was very bad, assuming the allegations are accurate, but Castro wasn’t (as far as anyone knows), 3 ½ + years ago, engaged in unconventional dentistry or similar.
How do those allegations, from, now, released men, compare with years on Death Row, I don’t know, but, making a personal value judgement, to my mind there’s not a lot between them.
Execution: - Castro has executed people who oppose him. The US has executed children (under 18 when they committed the crime), retarded people and people later found to be innocent.
I can’t even make a value judgement on that.
No, I don’t and nor did I. To repeat, I quoted the year Summary’s for 2000 and asked him to elaborate.
Then you get into this:
In the interests of fighting ignorance, this is my interpretation of your links:
“Infinite detention without trial” – new anti-terrorism legislation. Unpleasant. Will be interesting to see how this fits with the Convention on Human Rights which, I presume, is the primary UK legislation covering this particular area.
“Death in police custody” – I, and the majority according to opinion polls, agree with AI that the methods of investigation (by the Police, internally and without transparency) needs reform.
“Child soldiers” – 17 year old volunteers on active military service. Not good, IMHO.
“Official collusion by Army and Police” – Refusal to permit a Public Inquiry into the killing of a man 13 years ago by Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland. There are allegations of collusion and cover-up surrounding this death.
Should have included this passage somewhere up front:
And I also said I wanted him to elaborate because there didn’t, on face value (meaning the AI year reports for 2000, stuff on which he was relying), to be a whole lot of difference between Cuba today and the US – meaning, in terms of torture and execution (see above post).
London_Calling: You can’t compare executions and imprisonments in the U.S. against torture and imprisonment for political crimes. That’s simply an outrageous comparison.
And I’d like a cite for the people that have been executed and subsequently found to be innocent, because as far as I know there are no documented cases of that. There ARE documented cases of people being on death row and then being acquitted, but I don’t know of any who were mistakenly executed.
But even if there were, that’s a MISTAKE. Big difference between that, and imprisoning and torturing people for the sole purpose of keeping them from criticising the government.
The closest comparison to the U.S. prison system and the Cuban system would be laws against ‘hate’ speech and drug possession laws, and that truly is an outrage. But it’s not even on the map in comparison to what goes on in Cuba.
And one of the reasons why it’s so hard to get specific information from Cuba is because it is one of the most closed societies around - up there with Iraq. It’s simply very, very difficult to find out what’s going on in Cuba’s prisons. But everything we know about them indicates that they are horrible, horrible places.
As for Cuba and torture, I just did a google search for “Cuba Torture”, and here are some of the top results:
http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/2000/july/cuba_torture.htm
http://www.cubanet.org/CNews/y01/nov01/29e7.htm
From that link (which I can’t vouch for, not knowing the organization):
Is there anything in the U.S. you’d like to compare to that?
MEBuckner
You are correct that there is an opposition movement in Zimbabwe but I placed them high on my list of “bad” states because of the ruthlessness with which the opposition is put down.
It would be difficult for Mugabe to eliminate entirely all opposition in Zimbabwe. This is because of various factors including Zimbabwe’s unique history. Many people (and part of the army) are still loyal to Joshua Nkomo. Other people (and part of the army) are still loyal to the white-rule “Rhodesia” era. There are essentially 3 factions in Zimbabwe - Mugabe fans, Nkomo fans and Rhodesia fans. Other factors include the sheer size of the country and the poverty (running an efficient dictatorship isn’t cheap).
So Mugabe doesn’t run a totalitarian state as such but he’d like to, and he’s still pretty bad anyway.
As regards Pakistan/India. I would say that the current alliance with Pakistan is a short-term “friendship of necessity”. India is the more natural ally of America because it is a secular democracy. India wasn’t allied to the USSR, it was a non-aligned state like Yugoslavia under Tito.
In any case, I was trying to bring the debate back to the main point. No one can dispute that Cuba has a less than glowing record on human rights. I wouldn’t want to defend Cuba on this issue but, as totalitarian states go, Cuba isn’t the worst.
If Cuba were situated in Asia somewhere instead of 50 miles off the Florida coast, I doubt that the US embargo would still be in place. Cuba is a victim of unfortunate geography and an obstinate leader.
The idea that Cuba is developing biological weapons is laughable.
Regarding the (somewhat silly) Cuba vs America argument. I have no doubt that Cuba’s prisons are horrible places but then I wouldn’t fancy a spell in many prisons around the world. I doubt Cuba’s prisons are any worse than those to be found in South or Central America, or in the middle east, or in Asia, or in Africa, or in Turkey, or India, or Pakistan, or etc etc.
The point is: Cuba isn’t so bad that it needs to be embargoed. But America HAS to continue embargoing it because they’ve been doing it for years and to stop now would seem like advocating communism.
America has backed itself into a political corner. In order to resolve this situation, either America or Cuba or both need to eat some political humble pie.
This is one of those occasions when we need to jettison political dogma and ideology and start talking to each other like adults.
I really don’t even know how to respond to this particular remark. Has there been some major change of government in Cuba in the last three or four years that I missed out on? Even if Castro has in fact loosened up somewhat, three to four years doesn’t even get you to the statute of limitations for ordinary crimes in civilized countries. And, given that Cuba is a closed society, one has to expect a certain amount of lag in getting information out. If you’ll look at those human rights reports, you’ll note a common theme is that Cuba needs to allow international inspectors to examine its prison system.
Jojo:
I actually agree with what I take to be your main point as regards to the actual subject of this thread:
Castro’s government is a bad regime, a repressive dictatorship, but it’s not uniquely horrible, and I don’t think the special treatment we’ve singled it out for is reflective of any unique horribleness on Castro’s part regarding the treatment of his own people. (However, downplaying the unfortunately not unique nastiness of the Castro regime doesn’t strike me as any way to improve things.)
However,
Unless you are arguing about the way things ought to be (in which case I tend to agree with you), this is simply historically inaccurate. The United States had an important Cold War alliance with Pakistan going back to the 1950’s. Conversely, India, while not a Soviet satellite state or anything like that, “tilted towards” the USSR, for its own strategic reasons. (The US eventually wound up, by the 1970’s, in a de facto alliance with Maoist China and military-ruled Pakistan, not out of any ideological affinity, but because all three nations had a common interest in opposing the Soviet Union. India, on the other hand, was a natural enemy of Pakistan and China, with armed border disputes with China and several major wars with Pakistan.) India’s tilt towards the Soviet Union meant that India bought weapons from the Soviet bloc (and not just AK-47’s, but fighter planes and submarines), India and the Soviet Union supported each other diplomatically, and India received economic aid from the Soviet bloc (although India did in fact receive economic aid from both sides in the Cold War). None of this means that India was a Soviet “puppet state”, or that India was “evil”–the United States is hardly in a position to unequivocally criticize a fellow democracy for choosing to align itself with a dictatorship for strategic reasons.