I get the politics of the 60s and the 70s. I understand that the Vietnam-era was a different dynamic. But today, in the 21st century, in the era of Barack Obama, I have no idea how any lefty can say of Castro, "It was like listening to an old friend." Here is Human Rights Watch on Castro's Cuba:I have been working so much and I am very tired. I am equally tired of those people who claim themselves to be for the little guy, democracy and all that, and then cannot understand that if a country --a Western country at that-- is ruled by 50 years by one guy and his brother without elections or opposition or freedom of press etc that is a cruel, brutal tyranny. These people are simply stupid or lack empathy.
Sometimes people ask me why Cubans vote so overwhelmingly Republican despite that anybody who knows us a little bit knows we are neither social conservatives and probably are to the left on economic issues. Well, here is your answer. And it is not just them, it is Michael Moore, and Stone, and a big long etc.
Over the past forty years, Cuba has developed a highly effective machinery of repression. The denial of basic civil and political rights is written into Cuban law. In the name of legality, armed security forces, aided by state-controlled mass organizations, silence dissent with heavy prison terms, threats of prosecution, harassment, or exile. Cuba uses these tools to restrict severely the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression, association, and assembly. The conditions in Cuba's prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. In recent years, Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform and placating visiting dignitaries with occasional releases of political prisoners.=Check out the report, the best part is that it ends by calling out the insanity of the embargo. But my point is that it's weak to act like Castro is consistent with best of the progressive tradition. It's weak to call out Dick Cheney here, and cheer on Castro over there. It's weak to shout apartheid at Israel, and then turn around and applaud Castro. It's weak to say, "Yeah, I hear you but..." Either repressively ruling a country for half a century and then conspiring to pass power to your brother, is wrong or it isn't. We have to choose. Or we have to be jesters.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I agree completely. The deification of tyrannical communist regimes is one thing that drives me completely nuts about the "old" left. If you genuinely think socialist policies are helpful, why not hold up social democracies as model governments? I never understood this mentality. It seems like a puerile contrarianism.
There's nothing contradictory about believing that Castro is the scum of the earth and also believing that the embargo is a stupid way of addressing the situation.
Definitely. Even though I don't consider myself "on the left" I think it makes your arguments more persuasive when you can reject the embarrassing of those who nominally consider themselves on your side. (Extend this to other political groups as well.)
Plus, there are lots of people (myself included) who think that ending the embargo is one of the best ways to help make Cuba less tyrannical. It's sometimes hard for Americans to remember that for lots of places, even the tacky consumer goods we produce and export are subversive and radical, and help empower people to move their country along that path. See: East Germans covertly listening to cheezy 80's music pre-fall of the Berlin Wall. Or the movie posters smuggled to the little girl in Persepolis.
The cult of personality, the naive celebration of political leaders who are tyrannical is bullshit. However, how one responds to that, what one thinks is a good response certainly can differ. I have no doubt that when the Iranian woman who won the Nobel Peace prize declared that Bush calling Iran a part of the axis of evil, even though there is little doubt about their tyrannical nature, he did harm to democratic impulses in that country that she was telling us the truth.
I'd like to see Americans get our own house in order, before pontificating to the world. Actions speaking so much louder than words.
My issue with our policy toward Cuba is that it is hypocritical. China has an abhorrent record regarding public dissent but we don't have an embargo there.
Bingo!! Personally, I don't know any lefty that is cheering on Castro. Just the opposite actually.
"like listening to an old friend." egads. It's why I can't take Alice Walker seriously. She rides for Castro something strong. Some of these old heads need to come up off that.
This discussion is sort of missing the main point, even though its been addressed slightly. The main question on Cuba for the US is to embargo or not to embargo. As others have noted, including TNC have noted, we probably shouldn't embargo.
Everything said in the pull quote of Castro could pretty much be said of China as well. So we've passively made a judgment, as a country, that human rights have a price tag on them. We know China is good for our economy, and we know Cuba would have no where near the same impact. We also to some extent fear China's military capabilities, and we don't fear Cuba's. We know China's government, over the last 50 years has had as poor a record as Cuba's on human rights, if not worse.
Obviously, the CBC's reaction was out of line. However, my major problem with it is that it takes us further away from making a fair judgment on what we do with Cuba; it's not about the fact they got cozy with a dictator. So even if the CBC was truly impressed with Castro, their response was completely inappropriate--instead of coming back with a judgment on how to proceed with Cuba, they came back with a warm and fuzzy depiction of someone we know is a despot. Their statements are going to make the right, especially in the Glenn Beck/Michelle Bachmann era, go completely insane, and it will cloud any possible discussion of a change in policy.
"They came back with a warm and fuzzy depiction of someone we know is a despot."
Apparently, Fidel got some mad whip appeal. Too many of our esteemed literati, glitterati, and politerati get wined, dined and charmed by the hermanos Castro and come back here waxing poetic about how misunderstood these despots are.
I've lost quite a few idols that way.
Forgive me. I know it's a serious subject discussed, but "mad whip appeal" still has me laughing. I think it's New Jack Swing iPod day here at my desk.
Yeah, Castro is actually and extremely intelligent and charming m*fer. People get myopic and can't distance his personality from his actions.
The embargo is a bad strategy, but the Castro brothers' regime is still awful. We can reconcile those two points.
the problem is the US has no credibility lecturing others on democracy and freedom, especially in latin america. null, nada, nunca
how many citizens even have an idea of the decades long bipartisan open policy of being on the side of the death squads, military dictatorships and corrupt oligarchies all across latin america.
just in the tiny country of el salvador alone 70'000 dead in the civil war, the large majority massacred by the side we called the "good guys" and substantially helped fund
yes, how shameful to be on the side of the well known totalitarian and red menace bishop oscar romero
fuck squishy minded, oh so good hearted liberal imperialists and their republican allies
There were some nasty civil wars in Latin America, with atrocities on both sides, but, overall, the countries where we intervened seem better off today than they were before, or would have been had the folks Castro and the Soviets supported had won. Compare, for example, Freedom House's most recent reports on Cuba and El Salvador.
No, I'm pretty sure these countries aren't better off because of us though, its more in spite of us.
Guatemala was not helped by us overthrowing Arbenz in 1952, Allende in 1973, our support of Argentine under the military junta (though Argentina didn't need our help, Kissinger telling the leaders he hoped they dealt with their "problem")
there's also an assumption that the FMLN or the Sandinistas would have turned into Castro, which is not at all clear would have happened or even likely.
Allende was in Chile, and for all the abuses of Pinochet, the economic reforms instituted while he was in power have helped Chile remain one of the most prosperous and well-run Latin American countries since. As in Brazil, subsequent democratically elected governments maintained some good economic policies instituted by the previous rightist autocracies. It's also worth remembering that the rightist autocracies in Chile and Brazil eventually allowed free elections and respected their outcomes, leading to a mostly peaceful transition to democracy. This was also the case with rightist autocracies we backed in other parts of the world as well, e.g., Taiwan, and South Korea.
As for your claim that the communist revolutionaries in Central America likely wouldn't have followed the path of Castro (or other communists who gained power), the history elsewhere suggests otherwise. Most communist autocracies (unless they have been imposed and maintained by an outside power, as was the case in Eastern Europe) have hung on by their finger nails, and haven't been as open to transitioning to democracy as most rightist autocracies have been.
so those countries we militarily intervened in, trained their death squads right here at home in the infamous "school of the americas", stomped out their democratically elected governments (guatemala) and in whose civil wars hundreds of thousands of people were killed
they should actually be grateful to the US?
because otherwise "the red menace" would have spread like wildfire and we can all know how that would have turned out much, much worse?
when the US took over from the former colonial powers in Vietnam (France & Japan) and decided to take a shot at crushing their peoples effort to shake of foreign rule and gain independence..
to them we should also say: "we don't demand much, but showing a little appreciation for our effort to help in the 50's 60's and 70's sure would be nice"?
"just think where you'd be today without the american war, we always had your best interests at heart"
I wouldn't expect the South Vietnamese to be grateful to us, since we bailed on them, but I do think that had we defended South Vietnam with air power against the North's invasion in '74-'75 (as we successfully did in '72), South Vietnam might be still be independent today -- and if it were, it would probably be prosperous and democratic by now, like South Korea is. Then again, despite their great fortune, I don't think the South Koreans are too grateful to us now either. That's not surprising though. There's an old saying: if you want someone to be your friend, don't do him a favor, ask him to do one for you. A lot of times people resent those who help them, because that help reminds them of their own weakness.
Good post.
It's worth remembering, too, that there were old school folks on the left (or at least, in the Democratic Party) who consistently called out communist regimes for their oppression. Men like Scoop Jackson, Lane Kirkland, etc.
And the Kennedys, RFK and JFK, were both passionate in their hatred for Communism and Castro in particular. RFK supposedly oversay some bizarre assissination plots against Castro.
I do agree with the main points of both Cuba threads, it seems clear at least to me, that 50 years of Castro has been a failure and 50 years of embargo has been a failure. There is a steady group of posters on Democratic Underground who constantly talk about how great Cubans have it, dismissing their low income levels by saying that Papa Castro takes care of there every possible need. For those who still support the embargo, I see the point, but we got over Vietnam a lot quicker than we got over the Bay of Pigs and the loss of Batista.
I do think some nuance on the discussion of the embargo might make sense though. E.g., what if we dropped the embargo but put a 10% tariff on trade with Cuba, and used that money to support Cuban dissidents, compensate victims of Castro's appropriation (which would include a lot of Cuban Americans), etc.?
Decent idea, but what do we really need from Cuba that's worth paying a 10% tariff on?
Any White Sox fans around here - would Jose Contreras be worth it? ::rimshot::
I think there's also an FBI/CIA hatred on the part of those who remember people like Fred Hampton. The fact that Castro has been an assassination target for as long as he has, and still survived, makes him admirable to folks like Rush. It reminds me of the hip-hop respect for movie gangsters, which is not direct endorsement so much as it is "I want to amass power and respect in the face of hostile law like that person did." Ultimately, though, it's 2009-- you have to come stronger than that.
Nicely put, Gram. I think that is essentially how a lot of left wing dictators get into power when they are essentially gangsters: they are charismatic guys who portray an image of strength against whatever The Man happens to be in a particular society. Then they get power and become much worse.
Bob Marley idolized Haile Sellaise--a thug and creep of the first order. And I agree with Dan W that the problem of political fallacy is substituted for hard thinking is doomed.
I'll grant that this all is in response to Lee and Rush returning from Cuba having said things that are foolish at best, quite likely disingenous, and especially given Lee's virtuous stand in the days and months following 9/11, disappointingly unprincipled at worst. In that sense, taking those statements on is the righteous thing to do.
It's just for me that Castro is such an easy almost cliched, default target that it does not take much to swat down such feckless pandering. Nor does it take into consideration how we got to this point in time in a meaningful way.
On the other hand, I'd really like to see people on this site take on Obama's response to the financial and banking crisis, Geithner, Summers et al, because I for one am not willing to cut him slack on this. And what's more I feel if he fails here (and in Afghanistan) everything else, all his virtues and virtuous action will not matter. We are talking about what could become an exponential addition to a theft of wealth unprecedented in human history (ok perhaps the looting of the Americas during the Renaissance was even greater) with the incumbent misery that might follow. I know this is a side track, but I do feel agency as an American citizen about the US; I don't see our national foreign policy as having been so very positive. This isn't simply about the Viet Nam war era--also a convenient pigeonhole, but the last five hundred years of human history--colonialism and post colonialism are complex threads, and to treat them as such is to take them seriously.
"Bob Marley idolized Haile Sellaise--a thug and creep of the first order."
Speaking of African dictators, and naive foreigners who idolize them, reminds me of a great recent movie about this, The Last King of Scotland. Worth catching if you haven't seen it.
Awesome film. Forest Whitaker totally nailed the crazy. The bit where he's hosting an enormous dinner and announces "There won't be any people on the menu! Tonight." (or something to that effect) is perfect.
Definitely a great film, and Forest Whitaker nailed the role. The kid who played the doctor was good too, showing the arc from young anti-establishment type infatuated with Amin as an anti-imperialist liberator to horrified realization of what the man really is.
They vote Republican because of Michael Moore? What the hell? Every single Democratic president has kept up the stupid embargo.
Yeah, I let that one slide. Florida Cubans vote Republican for the same reasons the Jethro 'nem in Appalachia vote Republican.
It's not about the embargo; it's that you're more likely to find apologists for Castro in the Democratic Party than the Republican.
Nice post, Ta-Nehisi. May I add: what's with all the effing hipster Castro hats?
That is all.
Confusing Castro for his rhetoric is hard to understand. But for someone important on the left, talking to Castro probably is like talking to an old friend. One big diffence between Communism and Nazism is that while the latter is an abhorent system based on an abhornet ideology, the former is an abhorent system based on a nice sounding ideology that doesn't translate well into reality.
On top of that Castro has had 50 years to learn to speak the way traditional leftists and liberals want to be talked to. It would actually be surprising if Castro did not talk a good game after all of these years. The real problem is taking what he said at face value.
It's only nice sounding to the extent that it is described by communists trying to get power to fools that can't think about the consequences of the ideology. Otherwise, it's pretty abhorrent sounding ideology as well as an abhorrent systm.
Florida Cubans try my patience like few others. Yes, Castro is a dictator, and deserves condemnation. But the Castro love is a sideshow. Our Cuba policy, as has been said, bears no relationship with the way we deal with any other country. The way we have conspired to keep that island in poverty is unconscionable, and the reason that we have is because some Miami Cubans lost their property and can't let go of the grudge.
Yes, this is reductive. But it pisses me off.
Castro should be long gone at this point, and the unreasoning obsession of Cuban Americans is the biggest part of the reason he's not.
The embargo is a stupid policy, but it's not what makes Cuba poor, and lifting it won't make Cuba prosperous.
What goods and services does the embargo deprive Cubans of that they couldn't buy from the other First World countries that Cuba trades with?
And what goods and services does Cuba produce that couldn't be sold to other countries?
All lifting the embargo means is that American firms can join the competitions to both sell Cuba stuff, and to buy stuff from the Cubans.
Which improves the lot of Cubans, but let's not kid ourselves about how much worse off the embargo makes the Cubans, or how much lifting it will improve Cuban lives.
DinH: "what if we dropped the embargo but put a 10% tariff on trade with Cuba, and used that money to support Cuban dissidents..."
To put a 10% tax on trade with a poor country we're trying to engage and draw closer over the long run, not to mention a tariff hindering the primary goal of raising living standards and fostering economic development, is totally counterproductive. And the last thing that Cuban dissidents need is to be funded directly by the U.S. government from such a tax- that's just asking that it be used against them.
As long as Castro maintains the current economic system in Cuba, Cuba will remain poor. It's not as if it hasn't had trade with the rest of the world. I get your point about the funding of Cuban dissidents -- and it may not even be practically possible to fund them -- but using some of that money to advance the cause of democracy in Cuba in some way, and to compensate Castro's victims might change some minds in the Cuban American community. I could be wrong though. Maybe Eduardo will weigh in on this.
Yeah, let's tax the poor inhabitants of Cuba in order to compensate the relatively wealthy Miami Cubans. Seems like the notion of "victim" here is more tied to levels of self-righteousness and one's ability to turn up the volume in DC, than present day reality-based suffering or exploitation. The best analogy I can think of would be if we taxed WalMart sales of Chinese goods in order to compensate Chinese-Americans who fled Mao in 1949. I'm not sure exactly what kind of economic system the Chinese have currently, but one significant key to whatever success they are enjoying in raising living standards and GDP has been opening of trade with the US. I've thought that a smart and mutually beneficial move regarding Cuba might be for US companies to invest in sugar ethanol development throughout the Carribean, including Cuba - link their main agricultural product to an alternative energy industry. Just a thought - don't know enough to guage the practicality or economic impact, but we need to start thinking about economic linkage as a foundation for a whole range of changes in their economic and political system.
"Yeah, let's tax the poor inhabitants of Cuba in order to compensate the relatively wealthy Miami Cubans."
You do realize, I hope, that the Cuban elite use trade with first world countries to exploit the hell out of poor Cubans. For example, the Cuban government bills foreign companies for labor and gives pennies of that money to the actual workers. That's another objection some people have to trade with Cuba, that it just enriches a few elites at the expense of everyone else.
"I'm not sure exactly what kind of economic system the Chinese have currently"
A capitalist one, for the most part, but without the same level of rule of law that first world countries have. Of the few remaining communist countries, Vietnam has been moving in a similar direction (although it's a decade or two behind China). Both China and Vietnam have attempted to liberalize their economies while keeping an autocratic political system. Cuba has largely resisted this trend toward economic liberalization, which is the main reason it's so poor.
"I've thought that a smart and mutually beneficial move regarding Cuba might be for US companies to invest in sugar ethanol development throughout the Carribean, including Cuba - link their main agricultural product to an alternative energy industry."
We import a small amount of sugar ethanol from some Caribbean or Central American countries, I think, but Brazil is light years ahead of everyone on this. They've genetically engineered sugar cane for their industry, worked out all sorts of efficiencies, etc. If we dropped our tariff on Brazilian sugar ethanol (which I think we should do) they'd put our corn ethanol producers out of business and no one in the Caribbean would be able to compete with them.
Cuba may well remain poor regardless of whatever economic system the Castro brothers insist upon or relent to. A powerful argument that Cuban loyalists to La Revolucion have made for years is this:
"Why should we play ball with Uncle Sam? So that maybe one day we can mimic the fortunes of such economic island dynamos like Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic?"
Lets not fool ourselves here, thats a tough point to counter.
I think it would depend upon what the tariff is place upon. A 10% tax on Cuban cigars would hardly deter economic development and I would imagine that Cuba and just about any Latin country would welcome a 10% tariff on cane sugar since the US as well as Europe have enacted many extremely protectionist measure with respect to sugar.
I don't really have anything against some selective tariffs, for example tobacco products, with the money targeted to certain social offsets, but starting out with a general tariff that has a political purpose which the Cuban government would, with some justification, interpret as a direct affront isn't a good idea. The sugar thing is interesting - we could actually retain a protective tariff on sugar imports (not saying that's a good thing, but conceding it as a hypothetical) and drop it on imported sugar ethanol. If there's any rationale for protecting our raw sugar industry, it would remain in place, but it would encourage "good"ethanol imports (as opposed to the idiocy of corn ethanol) as well as the development of an industrial capacity in the country of origin, which helps move them forward from the traditional cheap raw ag export model.
The tariff on sugar ethanol unjustifiably high and Obama was always for the corn subsidy and ethanol tariff as a Senator, so I doubt it will change now.
I look at a tariff on Cuban cigars as something similar to a tax on reefer if it were legalized. It would have little effect on demand because the price has been so artificially high due to its illegality for years. So I think a tariff on cigars wouldn't even be noticed.
They just raised federal tax on cigars to finance SCHIP, and it's noticed among those who smoke them. I happen to be an occasional cigar smoker who doesn't care and thinks it's a false sense of victimization. I don't doubt at all that Obama will shift his stance on corn ethanol and sugar ethanol imports now that he's no longer dealing with an ag state electorate. This has had nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with regional politics. He'll probably let a bit of time pass, in order to ratioinalize it. As I said, I don't see why we couldn't keep raw sugar tariffs, if that's another political can of worms, but not tax ethanol imports - seems like a reasonable compromise that would benefit the poorer countries that source the sugar, because they'd be exporting a value-added product. Subsidiziing corn ethanol is just dumb, for a whole bunch of reasons.
There is a difference in raising taxes on an existing product and placing a tariff on a product that was up to this point, illegal. If you normalize trade with Cuba and then at a later date, jack up the tariff, I would imagine it would have more effect than just starting out with a tariff on day one of trade.
Hope you are right on the sugar imports, Obama has already changed on farm policy since the election. I agree that it is more political geography than ideology, which is why I hate that Iowa has such pull in the politcal process.
I think there's a certain tendency to ascribe virtue to countries which America has mistreated in the past.
I remember a (balding radical) professor of mine insisting to a Vietnamese girl--whose father had actually been imprisoned by the communists--that the Americans were to blame for all such developments, because without their interference the Communists would never have been repressive.
As T-N noted:
And you know what? Either an embargo is cutting a country off, or it isn't.
If some poor soul got his ass out of North Korea to the USA, he'd experience democracy and freedom. What he WOULDN'T be able to do is:
1) Phone home
2) Go home
3) Bring/send hard currency home
We never embargoed the Communist bloc, and they never let family left behind have any contact with those who escaped. With Cuba, we're playing both sides against the middle. Not only are we stupidly embargoing them, we're going along with Castro's wily plan of giving juuuust enough family contact to put a damper on outright rebellion.
I ask you T-N:
Could you live without democracy? Could you live without a secret ballot?
Could you live without Kenyatta and your son?
Yeah.
This is what I'm not getting--Where did I defend the embargo? How is saying Castro is a despot, necessarily, a defense of the embargo? This conversation is incredible to me, in that it defies logic.
It's like I say, "Hey, it's raining in New York." And someone else says, "Yeah but it's sunny in L.A., so it can't possibly be raining in New York."
DinH - China didn't get to where it is today because it was excluded from trade with the US. I am aware that Brazil is a leader in sugar ethanol, but that doesn't mean that Caribbean countries could never compete if they had access to more investment in technology - Cuba is very likely capable of the technological developments necessary, given their biotch industry. And the corn ethanol industry should die. You're arguing from a static worldview - economically and politically. And pretty much missing the point of opening this door...
Actually, judged by the same standards as other states, Cuba is far more democratic. Just look at all the power that George W. Bush assumed after 9/11 with the connivance of the Democrats. For that matter, FDR who is worshipped by all the liberals in the U.S., put Japanese-Americans in concentration camps in the U.S. All this was prompted by external threats, either real or imagined, that is dwarfed by what the U.S. represents to Cuba. Just a year or two ago, a Cuban-American who had blown up a Cuban civilian airliner was released from an American jail. What kind of statement does this make, especially in light of all the talk about Cuba being a rogue state? The one thing that Mr. Coates does not realize is that a multi-party democracy in Cuba would not last. It did not last in Allende's Chile or in Sandinista Nicaragua. The U.S. pours money into the counter-revolutionary parties that collude with the CIA--the end result being bloodbaths and economic ruin. Anyhow, I can understand why Mr. Coates would go on record as being to the right of Bobby Rush. His hero Barack Obama did the same thing when he ran against Rush in Chicago. Black people had enough common sense to vote for Rush.
I'm not going to buy your argument either way, but if you make statements like "Cuba is far more democratic," could you at least back it up with some sort of evidence on the democratic bona fides of Cuba? There is plenty to criticize in the U.S., but I'm not aware of any amount of democracy in Cuba greater than zero.
Could you at least back it up with some sort of evidence on the democratic bona fides of Cuba?
---
Of course not. But I didn't say it was a democracy. Cuba can only become a democracy when the U.S. renounces interfering in the internal affairs of other countries. I just read a fascinating biography of George Soros, subtitled accurately "messianic billionaire". Soros has the balls to brag about the hundreds of millions of dollars he poured into Eastern Europe to topple governments he did not approve of. Doesn't it dawn on people that the U.S. is the only country in the world that functions this way? Could you imagine what would happen if Cuba began funding and organizing SDS'ers? They wouldn't be put in prison. They'd be put under the prison.
Well, you said it was "far more democratic." And then you admit that there's nothing democratic about it at all.
If you ask me, we can start arguing over the merits of Cuba's economic, healthcare, educational, and political systems when they start allowing their people some sort of way of expressing a preference on the matter ---- by letting their people leave if they don't like it, by allowing a free press, by allowing dissent, or even (Fidel would hate this) allowing them to vote. If the Cuban people really thought the system was so fantastic, then what would the Castros have to be afraid of?
This extract from Wiki,sums up to me the double standards involved.
>The 1963 U.S. embargo was reinforced in October 1992 by the Cuban Democracy Act (the "Torricelli Law") and in 1996 by the Cuban Liberty and Democracy Solidarity Act (known as the Helms-Burton Act) which penalizes foreign companies that do business in Cuba by preventing them from doing business in the US. The justification provided for these restrictions was that these companies were trafficking in stolen U.S. properties, and should, thus, be excluded from the United States...
I dont think the embargo is really about democracy, but about the outrage over confiscated businesses, both exiled Cubans and American companies- otherwise there would be a similar embargo on a number of countries that have no democracy and abuse human rights that the US happily does business with such as Saudi Arabia and China.
As a black female, I'd prefer to take my chances living in Cuba rather than Saudi Arabia.
A good way forward would be to keep the direct US-Cuba trade embargo but repeal any legislation that seeks to prevent non US companies from trading with Cuba by preventing them from also being able to trade with the US.
I agree that it is highly undesirable to have the office of head of state rotate amongst family members unless the country is officially operating a consitutional monarchy. For example,someone who was head of one of the security services, becoming head of state, and later that office being filled by a close relative smacks of...oh sorry, I forgot. G Bush senior, former head of the CIA became President, then eight years later, his ill equipped son became one via a rigged election...
Didn't mean to imply you were. Using your statement to match my grammatical style to it, is all. And the question about you and Kenyatta was rhetorical.
ITA that the embargo is useless and doesn't help in getting rid of Castro. My point was that our acquiescence to his policy of regular contact between Cuban-Americans and their families in Cuba is just as ineffective in fomenting change there.
In short, our policy is totally fucked two-fold: We are using both the wrong carrot and the wrong stick.
That should have been up under my original post above. Hope you can find it anyway, T-N. And happy Easter!