Havana, Cuba/The State Department--As we all should know--especially those silly-ass anti-Castro Cubans who just want to go back to the ways of Battista--it isn't going to change on the island nation anytime soon. Was Castro a saint or a sinner? He was neither, but if you take his record on the world stage and in his country and place it alongside that of the United States--he wins every time, as we're the bad-guys of the Western Hemisphere, ever since the Monroe Doctrine. Fidel Castro is 81, he's had major surgery...he is an old man who isn't hiding this fact as so many high-powered American elites attempt so unsuccessfully to do.Are there political prisoners in Cuba? Yes, though the number has likely doubled thanks to Guantanamo Bay's concentration camp. Is there torture in Cuba? We don't know whether Castro's regime does this systematically with any absolute certainty anymore than we know if this is the case at Guantanamo Bay: President Bush admitted that water-boarding techniques are used by agents of the American State the lat two-weeks. When we look at the crimes of Castro, we're only looking at what we hate in ourselves. He has hardly been the greatest human rights offender during the 50-years of his rule, but the United States and the numerous regimes she has supported have.
Will things change in Cuba? Have they changed since Fidel Castro had his surgery? They have not in any substantial sense, and aren't going to during the administration of George W. Bush, or even the next president. There will be no end to the trade embargo, and hence, no changes in Cuba. There's your answer. Countries like Spain, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Brazil, Canada--OK, the rest of the world besides the United States--will continue to conduct trade and feed the Cuban economy with their tourist dollars.
Unlike the rest of the citizens of the planet earth, Americans are legally prevented from going to Cuba (though many do anyway through other countries) and are subject to fines of several hundred dollars if caught there. If Cuba's so bad, why not let Americans see it and decide for themselves? There will be no invasion of Cuba. America is now more diplomatically isolated than the regime in Havana, a regime that isn't going away anytime soon. We are the New Cuba.
Castro is a slickster. He has groomed his brother already for his leadership role should he stepped. Castro will be an adviser to his brother as long as he is alive and able. If the Gerbil President tries to invade Cuba, he is in deep trouble. Castro and Chavez are great friend. You mess with Cuba, you mess with Venezuela. And Chavez is great friends with the Iranian Prez. If Bush dares to hint an invasion in Cuba, look for Chavez to cut the U.S. from oil.
ReplyDeleteYes, he's no angel, that's for sure. Prediction: no American president in our lifetimes will invade Cuba, it would cause the rest of the world to turn on the United States. Military planners around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis discovered that if you invade Cuba, you would basically have to destroy the place, it would be an endless guerilla war.
ReplyDeleteA full-on invasion of Colombia, however, could be in all of our futures. We already have lots of advisers there, and we've sent billions in military aid poorly disguised as "drug interdiction aid." It won't work, FARC is to Colombia as the NLF (Viet Cong) were to Vietnam. The result will always be a defeat for American imperial ambition. Empires are too expensive.
"Prediction: no American president in our lifetimes will invade Cuba, it would cause the rest of the world to turn on the United States."
ReplyDeleteTrue, but if McInsane gets in as Prez, he will keep the trooops in Iraq forever, bomb Iran, then on to Cuba, and the 6 other countries that Wesley Clark said in his interview on Democracynow.org some time ago. Clark got that info from Rummy.
I just don't see it with McCain either, even as much as he reminds me of James K. Polk! ;0) The military is broken already. Fine, keeps the troops in Iraq--the economy will finally crash entirely.
ReplyDeleteThen come the riots and the general strikes, and general insurrection throughout most of the continental US. Where will the National Guard, the Reserves, and most of the military be at that time? In the Middle East, of course. They may be in the Balkans soon too.
Cuba is on the short-list, and the cost would be too high. The militias there are very tightly-ordered and trained, as well as well-equipped (an AK-47 being one of the most efficient and deadly of weapons for any insurrection)and armed.
Any invasion of Cuba could possibly be more catastrophic to the invader and the domestic populations than Vietnam. But all that aside, two-front wars are notoriously unwinnable.
The thing that everyone seems to miss about Vietnam, or even our little military adventures in Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and even what's happening in the Middle East now,is that our military weaknesses have been demonstrated. But no imperial power can win against a determined domestic population, the only alternative is genocide after that. That was the Nazi-approach in the Soviet Union, and we tried our hand at it in Vietnam and the rest of South East Asia. We are doing the same in Iraq. Clinton bombing infrastructure there during the 1990s killed an entire generation of Iraqi children. That's an act of attempted genocide.