Michael Totten on Cuba.
It was bound to happen eventually: The United States and Cuba have decided to restore diplomatic relations after treating each other as enemy states since the 1960s.
Some are elated and some are despondent. Both sides can make a strong case.
I visited Cuba near the end of last year and returned home with mixed feelings about the US embargo. Cuba is in no way a strategic or military threat to the United States. If diplomatic relations hadn’t already been severed a long time ago, Washington would have no reason to suddenly sever them now. In that sense, the embargo is an anachronism, a leftover from a now-distant past and a different era of history.
On the other hand, Cuba has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere. Allowing the regime in from the cold gives it a patina of legitimacy it has done nothing whatsoever to earn, and it exhausts whatever scraps of leverage the United States had to convince the island’s overlords to free their people and share power like most other governments in the region.
So is restoring diplomatic ties the right call? I have no idea. I thought I’d return home from Cuba and take a firm stand one way or another, but some things in politics and in life are ambiguous.
What follows are my thoughts as originally published in World Affairs in March, 2014, before this decision was made.
I just think it’s ironic that in the 50 years that have passed under embargo, America has moved closer to communism than Cuba has to liberty.
Reaction at Babalu Blog.
I am suspecting that the Obutthole family is jockeying for a good deal on a summer home with some ocean front property…
“…in the 50 years that have passed, America has moved closer to communism than Cuba has to freedom.”
An absolute Beauty!
Whereas there is a vent-your-spleen satisfaction among some elements particularly exiles in the U.S. to maintain the embargo, it’s difficult to imagine at this stage that it serves any practical purpose. As Totten points out, if anything, should the U.S. embargo end Cuba will have to either completely reform its economy as per the Chinese and Vietnamese and embrace elements of a market economy or maintain the iron fisted grip of a command economy with ongoing economic stagnation but now without even the fig leaf of pretense that their state of economic destitution has anything to do with the absence of the Yanqui capitalist exploitation they claim to so desperately need.
This will create a flood of Cubans entering legally (or not) the USA, and this is why Obama is doing it.
He is not doing it for Cubans, Obama is doing it to Americans.
Obama always does things that seem like they are nice, but they are never nice or beneficial for the average American or beneficial for the USA, they are things that are nice or beneficial to Muslims, Illegals from South-America, to Cubans etc etc…
he even sided with criminals/thugs such as Trayvon Martin ( could have been his son…), Michael Brown and the rioters, looters, he never sides with what is good for the average American.
Obama has a long history ( the part he did not manage to get sealed ) of befriending anti-USA radicals such as terrorist Bill Ayers
People in Obama’s past all hate the USA and want to cause it damage
granting amnesty to 5 million illegal and opening the flood gates for people from Cuba are more anti-USA acts.
this is not a gift to Cubans it is an act against the USA.
Obama will do all he can to replace the population, replace the language, replace the culture because he hates the USA and whites.
Hell ! one of the first he did at the white house is he returned Churchill’s bust to England!!!
He hates the USA and white man’s success.
Totten, good liberal that he is, is so nuanced and balanced. He ignores communism’s Black Book.
Media Party = communism’s fellow-travellers = useful idiots.
“On the other hand, Cuba has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere.”
…-
https://archive.org/details/TheBlackBookofCommunism10
Dog bites man story. The only thing Obama loves more than collectivist socialism is Islam. This was inevatable
Remember Elian Gozalas and how Emporer Clinton sent his Imperial Storm Troopers to kidnap him from reletives and return him to Cuba as a favor to his buddy Busy Whiskers Castro This is another dark day in history and under a dictator
Obama joined the Communist bloc, quelle surprise.
Really though, the US needs to get over the Bay of Pigs and stop sulking. Move on, Yanks!
“I just think it’s ironic that in the 50 years that have passed under embargo, America has moved closer to communism than Cuba has to liberty.” This comment perfectly sums up Obama’s presidency.
From the Balabu blog, “Because bowing to communists and terrorists is what Obama and his cohorts do best.” Exactly, this is all a part of Obama’s “fundamental change”. He has been somewhat stopped in the amount of moving the country toward Marxism so he is doing whatever else he can to destroy the US. This embracing of communism, along with making Democrats of millions of illegals, and attempting to destroy the CIA is all part of his destructive work. Saul Alinsky would be proud.
Always amazed at all the people who said the US embargo was so debilitating to Cuba. Well over the past 20 years at least every other country in the world could trade with Cuba. Problem is, Cuba has nothing to offer. Like the USSR didn’t, North Korea doesn’t and China in a sense as all it does is make junk items and steal ideas to make such items cheaper with slave, prison and child labour.
A couple of years ago I could buy socks make in India or Pakistan and even Canada. Not anymore, virtually all socks are now made in China. Interesting how the CBC made it their goal to damage clothing manufacturers in southeast Asian countries but they never do an expose on China’s slave, prison and child labour. I guess that’s because they can’t do such a story in a murderous dictatorship and they actually support communism.
Cool. Bill Clinton will be relived to know he can now get his cigars legally!
If B. Hussien came out of his closet and told us he actually hated the USA, what would he have done different?
When Americans are treated like the other tourists from Canada & Europe, thrown in jail for offences like… driving a car involved in a car accident, who will he trade?
When Americans are owed more money in easy credit offered to state owned cuban companies, will they do as the Japanese did a couple of years ago, simply write it off as being bad debt?
How many more years will this additional tourism aid to hold the cubans afloat in their island prison?
How many more Cubans will spend a tenner or a quarter (10 or 25 years) for things that are considered a human right in most countries?
Which will be the first American company to join with Cubans in a joint venture to mine nickel and let the poisonous effluent flow directly into the rivers and surrounding sea?
Will Oscar Biscet be treated as a citizen is expected to be treated?
Will Cuba now give back the property it stole after the communists seized power? That’s the real reason the USA broke off relations, has this changed? It isn’t a result of “getting over” the Bay of Pigs event, after all, Jack Kennedy danced that night away didn’t he? … while the Cubans fighting for a free country were being shot on the beach.
Iran next?
or is it North Korea?
If you look at the comments of those Congressmen representing areas in the US with large exile communities, it just may be that it is the victims of Communism, and its repellent regime in Cuba, that have moved generations of US Congressmen to maintain the embargo. After all, the US long ago normalized relations with Vietnam, which was a greater enemy than Cuba. And the missile crisis provided a lesson, if one was needed, of the strategic peril of an enemy nation on the US’ doorstep.
bingo!
Anybody want to start a pool on how long it takes for the first McDonald’s to open in Havana?
Agree with Obama and Michael Moore? No, thanks.
http://weaselzippers.us/208412-obese-troll-michael-moore-congratulates-cuba-for-winning-against-the-us/
And I don’t know if the Harper quote was bowdlerized but I doubt it will be the first step to the rule of law, multiparty democracy etc.
Actually, Fidel is still alive.
Really? How do you know?
Obama to open diplimatic relations with Pottsylvania confermed seen talking with Fraeless Leader and Borid and Natasha someone send message to Frostbite Falls in Minnasota notify moose and squrrel
This move does not surprise me in the least, considering Ohbummer’s handshake with Raul Castro at the Mandela funeral a year ago.
There is much to be said for the principle of ostracizing dictatorships, but there is also much to be said for the principle of consistency. Western nations do business with most of the bad guys, so there is little reason to maintain the embargo against Cuba, despite its being the worst dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere (with Venezuela presumably trying hard to upset it). There’s also the argument that dealing with these nations may prompt positive and democratic change within them.
Nevertheless, the Americans should have taken care of the Castros long ago. In 1994, with the USSR out of the picture, rather than invading Haiti which was in the throes of a dictatorship for a whole two years, they should have invaded Cuba, which even then had suffered no less than 35 years, and (unless something unexpected is brewing) still is.
Raoul: “I get your tourist dollars?”
Obama: “Yep.”
Raoul: “I still control our borders?”
Obama: “Yep.”
Raoul: “I still control the government?”
Obama: “Yep.”
Raoul: “I still control access to the telephone; internet; all social media; radio; and television?
Obama: “Yep.”
Raoul: “Do I have to give my proletariat the right to property and democratic elections?”
Obama: “Nope! No change!”
Raoul: “Nope, no change, great joke there Barak. Seriously what’s the catch? What does Cuba have to give the USA for all the benefits I, er I mean we get?”
Obama: “There is no catch, you keep your “basic dictatorship” as my friend Justin would say. I get to have a paragraph added to the history books for my great leap forward in US Cuba relations. And Vlad and I have a place to meet on the beach together without the usual honeymooners in Hawaii bugging us. And then once I get Sony to knuckle under, we’ll have Kim Jong-un on board for our bridge foursome.”
It wasn’t just the conviscation of US property that triggered the embargo. The dead bodies of people opposed to Castro and his thugs started to litter the streets of Havana.
I watched the Canadian business channel and Baskin from Baskin wealth management and the spokesman for Sherritt whose company built their holdings in Cuba on American property stolen by Castro were on the TV. They were all for Obama’s move so what can you do.
Remember when our Dads would say ‘just because everybody else is doing it, does that mean you should do it too?’
The US once had that independant way of looking at things that was kind of admirable. No more.
Obama is being who he is, a radical American hating Leftist. I totally disagree with the move. But, sadly we have millions of idiots in the U.S. that don;t know Fidel Castro or Commuinism from Kim Kardashian.
The Last Tradition
THE GATE OF HELL WILL BE OPEN WIDE,ON THAT DAY WHEN FIDEL CASTRO DIES,BUT ON EARTH,THEY,LL BE WEEPING AND MOURNIN,AND VARIOUS WORLD LEADER TO CUBA THEY’LL BE SWARMIN,TO MOURN A TYRANT WHO TREATED HIS PEOPLE LIKE TRASH,AND BURNED THEIR HOMES DOWN TO ASH,SO WEEP AND CRY YOU WORDLY FOOLS,CASTRO WASA EVIL GHOUL
A lot of Canadians also Quebecers are now lamenting the passing of the cheap winter vacation. With Yankee bucks and Yankee tourists now moving back to Havana the era of cheap holidays is over.
Well now Svend and his little Cubanette can spend their holidays there and not have to explain why he would support a country that imprisoned and restricted its gay caballeros! Or will the Castros continue to restrict gay-friendly jaunts to the island?
That sound you hear is JFK spinning in his grave
Raul wont allow that. He stated in his speech that they will not give up any of their principles since they Cuban Revolution. In which one of them is that all businesses belong to the government.
Cubans can not afford to eat at McDonald’s, they are so poor they can not afford aspirin.
Hollyweed wank Micheal Moore should consiter a new career being a total jerk instead of a idiot like he is today