Lee and others heaped praise on Castro, calling him warm and receptive during their discussion. But the lawmakers disputed Castro's later statement that members of the congressional delegation said American society is still racist.Right. I get that the embargo hasn't worked. I get that it's bad policy. But dude, he's a dictator. And no amount of subject-changing can get around that fact.
"It was quite a moment to behold," Lee said, recalling her moments with Castro.
"It was almost like listening to an old friend," said Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Il.), adding that he found Castro's home to be modest and Castro's wife to be particularly hospitable.
"In my household I told Castro he is known as the ultimate survivor," Rush said.
UPDATE: I just want to emphasize the point is to reject dichotomy. You don't have to endorse American Cuban policy, to understand that no one can makes you become a despot. No one makes you lock up artists and intellectuals. No one makes you spend 50 years as the head of a totalitarian state. America didn't make Castro a dictator, anymore than Castro made America embark on a failed embargo policy. Two people arguing can both be wrong.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
This whole Castro-thing, it's different. For many of us Boomers, the Movement began before VietNam. It began with Rosa Parks in Montgomery -- and Castro marching into Havana. Yes, we were wrong about a lot and we know that and -- but there are these, well, feelings...
I once met a non-Cuban Carribean diplomat who said that the 2 greatest small-powers 20thC leaders were Trudeau & Castro. Of course, "greatness" is not a moral category....
Canadians, of course, have been touristing Cuba all along (now, one hears them complaining that The Yankees will soon be arriving on the beaches), and familiarity breeds a kind of comfort...
Plus the knowing of who owned Cuba Before, the fear that they will re-inherit, etc...
It's not hard for us left-of-centres to agree on most of the facts....it's just not likely that we'll all feel the same about them or react to them the same.
Notwithstanding, "member of the family" etc does sound like bonehead politics. Sadly.
Bobby Rush just comes off sounding like a big dummy. Of course the embargo is stupid, and idiotic policy. But jeez-- is the CBC's view of history that skewed that they see meeting with this dictator as celebratory? Get a life, you big dummies.
I don't know. I remember when I was in college there was a sect of pseudo militant black folks who always thought Castro was great. I only ever paid minimal attention to them so I didn't get the whole story on why, beyond silly anecdotal stuff like "You never see any Afro Cubans floating over here on a dingy do you?" So while I can't offer an explanation to the mentality I can offer that these are the same types of people who would think that Bobby Rush was a great congressman...
Yes, Castro is a dictator, and that's bad. But, I have to wonder about the role the United States of America played in forming Cuba's leadership. What if we hadn't been so goddamn Commie-paranoid? What if we were more about democracy than mafia money? I can't help but think of Chris Rock's routine on OJ Simpson. Our government had a hand in this, and we shouldn't forget our shared history. We are chained.
Of course, just because we understand, well, that doesn't mean we should condone crappy behavior.
Let's please not forget that the world was brought to the brink of nuclear war over this little island and its hostile actions.
Let's also not forget MLKjr's belief that people should be judged on the content of their character, not their appearance. A person's character is demonstrated by his/her actions. Castro's actions throughout history have shown him to be of questionable character. The visit by the CBC and the comments made during and after that visit demonstrate that they are supporting a person of questionable character.
Birds of a feather flock together, so it's not an unreasonable leap to believe that the CBC's character is questionable as well, especially considering Castro's claim regarding the comment about America being racist.
I was under the impression that if the USA hadn't rejected Castro, he wouldn't have been driven to embrace Russia so ardently, and thus, a certain missile crisis would have been avoided completely.
US foreign policy has been of questionable character since 'Manifest Destiny', no?
So Castro was "driven" to embrace Russia because of the U.S.? It had nothing to do with his political views and aspirations? He really didn't want to be part of threatening the safety of the world in order to test a young American president, but he had no choice because the U.S. had rejected him and hurt his feelings? Give me a break.
U.S. foreign policy, like all government policy, has had successes and failures. A balanced analysis of our foreign policy throughout history demonstrates that, although not perfect, it has succeeded in fulfilling its purpose: protecting U.S. citizens and our national interests.
One last thought. If we stop trying so hard to explain away why people do bad things and we just hold them accountable for their actions, we'll all be better off.
Do you understand why Castro invited Russia in? Do you understand the Cuban missle crisis at all? Here is a hint, part of the negotiation to have it resolved was that the US sign a no invasion treaty with Cuba. Hmmm wonder why we had to do that...
If you are so cynical about the motives and methods of the United States, please feel free to walk your talk and experience the joy of Cuban citizenship yourself. Otherwise, grow up and recognize that in a wicked, imperfect world we(meaning US citizens)sometimes must act forcefully to protect ourselves.
Did you just admit that you don't know what the hell you are talking about when it comes to the Cuban missle crisis? Yeah I think you did.
...he had no choice because the U.S. had rejected him and hurt his feelings?
I think you're being willfully obtuse. But, that's your call.
If we stop trying so hard to explain away why people do bad things and we just hold them accountable for their actions, we'll all be better off.
Agreed, emphatically.
(From below)
If you are so cynical about the motives and methods of the United States, please feel free to walk your talk and experience the joy of Cuban citizenship yourself. Otherwise, grow up and recognize that in a wicked, imperfect world we (meaning US citizens) sometimes must act forcefully to protect ourselves.
If you're so cynical about freedom and self-determination, please feel welcome to walk your talk and experience the joy of China.
Just reading the comments made by the CBC members, I was reminded of the few guys I went to school with who were enamored with the concept Che Guevara (well essentially, the t-shirt).
I went to a college with the unofficial motto "Atheism, Communism, Free Love". One of my dorms mates was quite perceptive in remarking that the students would make terrible communists given that they couldn't even clean up their own dishes in the common room sink. People with a poor understanding of how communism actually works are frustratingly hilarious.
Umm, according to my friends who lived in Poland during communism, that is _always_ the main problem with communism.
Christ, thank you. It's like the Che worship, just ignorant. End the embargo and stop giving this guy (wily and charismatic and shrewd though he has been to have survived in power for fifty years) better pre-written propaganda than anyone could come up with on their own. Yeah, let's show the people of Cuba that capitalist democracy is better than communist dictatorship by... completely denying them any chance at actual commerce. Because it's been working so well, because there's no way that artificially keeping poor people poor could play right into the false and manipulative narrative that has kept Castro in power. When I think of how we could have had this guy as an ally right after the revolution, how it could have been our sphere of influence and how much that would have served the cause of Cuban freedom, and how we threw it away for the ire of corrupt corporations and meddling wannabe James Bonds who got burned by the revolution.. it just pisses me off so much. Just one more example of completely fucked up policy from the world's greatest superpower.
That's my rant.
The cult of personality that follows communist dictatorships and their "heroic" figures, just as any form of idolatry, disregards the truth of humanity, that few are saints, more, but not even close to a majority, are devils, and fewer have no redemptive virtues. From my understanding of the many who travel to Cuba, life there is not, for example, North Korea.
The Castro revolution arose because of the colonialist exploitation of workers, and after giving him support, the US abandoned Castro only after he demanded that American fruit companies get out of Cuba and let them run things for themselves. One of the most famous and well beloved songs in Cuba is "Al Vaiven de mi Carretta" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A12ktvy76_M--Guillermo Portabales" version, there are literally hundreds, my favorite being that of one of Castro's favorite bands, Sierra Maestrs) a song written in the 30s about a canefield worker returning home in his little cart--a long, slow journey--after a day's work. He works from January to January, sun to sun, and has so little money to show for it from the hand of the "white man" running things, only the song going on in his head to the rhythm of the wheels of his cart on his way to his little shack.
There is much to lament and even despise about Castro's rule, but for many on the island, the revolution was understood as part of an anticolonialist reaction that was worldwide in which our nation, to its shame and the world's ill, abandoned our own best principles for political hegemony. Our nation and the Soviets played ping pong with the world for decades, and we have not seen the end of its effects yet.
That said, either/or fallacies, like all fallacies, disrupt any dialogue interested in the truth, the critical thinking that leads to problem solving, and it does little to serve the cause of the Cuban populace to fawn. Better to really have a clear eyed view of the benefits wrought by the Cuban revolution and the flaws therein as well.
yes, castro is a dictator
closer to home, what would you call a man who appoints himself as vice-president, redefines the office and declares the rule of law only applies to himself and his administration when he says so, bamboozles the american public into a military attack on a foreign state, reintroduces torture as a legitimate tool of executive power and has his own private death squad he can send around the world to assassinate whoever he deems should be killed without informing congress, the cia , us ambassadors or the local sovereign governments ?
i'm honestly interested in how the hell this could happen without those famed "checks & balances", the mighty fourth estate or organized popular will of the citizenry seeming to have had the slightest effect in reigning this one man on a rampage in.
I'd cll him Dick Cheney. With an emphasis on the Dick.
This reminds me of when somebody (Harry Belafonte, maybe?) was down in Venezuela glad-handing with Hugo Chavez, talking about the (alleged) millions of US citizens that supported Chavez's supposedly noble revolution. Incidentally, this moment was also when Cindy Sheehan, who was along for the ride, lost my support.
I am critical of many aspects of US policy (I think the embargo is stupid and small-minded), but I'm not so foolish as to think that means people like Chavez or Castro are automatically 'good guys' because they also criticize US Policy. They are both totalitarian despots, and from where I'm sitting, I'll happily take our imperfect democracy over their dictatorships.
Thanks, again TNC, this time as a Cuban. One of the things I like so much about you it is your power of empathy.
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 them, it is Michael Moore, and Stone, and a big long etc.
F_ck them
"No one makes you lock up artists and intellectuals. No one makes you spend 50 years as the head of a totalitarian state. America didn't make Castro a dictator..."
Maybe so, but the Cold War and our sense of the Monroe Doctrine fertilized the ground to enable the possibility and reinforce the need for a powerful central government. Dichotomies have dichotomies; history is a tighter knit--we will never know what might have happened if we had been willing to work out some sort of compromise with Castro on United Fruit Company rather than driving him into the hands of the Soviet Union.
Mobutu of the Congo is often used at this site as the epitome of a thug, but Mobutu does not exist if the west including the US had not driven Lumumba, who was a democrat in principle and a Catholic (that is atheistic communism would have been a complete anethema to him) to the Soviets (who of course were only too willing to use Lumumba, especially given the vast mineral wealth of the Congo) for support, providing the rationale for undercutting his election and leading to his assassination.
So Castro had to:
- kill thousands
- jailed thousands
- suppress all opposition
- forbid all, and I mean, all opposition or even neutral press
- do away with freedom of speech
- confiscate without indemnification all private property except small amount of land. I'm talking here a little corner bodega, a guy that used to fix shoes all by himself, etc.
- subject Cubans to a brutal isolation from the rest of the world; cultural and physically, since getting a permit to visit foreign countries is an odyssey
- impoverish the country, that went from one of the richest in Latin America to one of the poorest.
- and a long, long etc
to save us from the United Fruit Company.
Wow, I'd love you to spend a year in the shoes of a regular Cuban. You would not be so philosophical, and would not be justifying the need for what you call a "powerful central government" and I call tyranny.
I have no quarrel with your depiction of Castro. I'll go one step farther, when MacNamars asked Castro years after the Cuban missile crisis if he would have bombed the US even if it meant annhilation of the Cuban people. Castro responded that he would have. The guy is clearly a scoundrel.
My point was that what happened in Cuba was subject to forces beyond Fidel Castro, that America in its role in the Cold War participated in that and that the United States supported Castro until he threatened to nationalize the United Fruit Company. He could just as easily been our guy if he played ball the way we wanted. Insofar as isolating Cuba, it is the US who has isolated Cuba as much as Castro.
What's more I don't believe that every Cuban thinks the same way you do. The North Vietnamese after we left did a lot of terrible things to those in the south that stuck around, I have friends who can testify to that. That does not mean to me we as a nation had the right to go in there and do what we did, or that what we did was not complicit in the reaction. There are examples from all over the world of this. The US and the Soviets did not really have all these little nations and their peoples' well being in mind in making policy. And part of the great wash of political dysfunction, to use a mild word, has occurred as a result. I am not a Cuban; I am an American and so I try to see things from the light of what our principles are.
To put it another way, as an American Jew I am always sympathetic to Israelis when they bring up the day in and day out seige they face. At the same time, I do not believe it's useful to go blind to the other side of the story.
I think folks are underestimating the sheer boneheadedness of Rush and the CBC and the wiliness of the Castros.
Basically, Bobby Rush just made it harder for Congress or the Prez to do anything useful about relations with Cuba. Would have been fine if they went down there and said "yeah, Castro's a problem and we don't agree with him, but to help the Cuban people, the US should consider ending the embargo, and meeting with Castro is part of that." And stress the basic fact that freer trade can help create a more open society, as it did in Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe or China.
By praising Castro and becoming just another US congressional delegation to buddy up with a vicious dictator, whether right or left, these guys just helped discredit the cause of better relations with Cuba.
Which the Castros no doubt perfectly understood, since the embargo keeps them in power.
You got it, baby, you got it. It is in Castros' interest to keep the embargo running.
Carter, Clinton started the path to normalization and Castro answered by creating artificial crises that made all but impossible to normalize the relationship -I am in favor of normalization for the record.
I am sure Obama is smarter than that and will be very cautious on how he approaches the issue. So far he is doing great.
You are correct re: Castro's interest in keeping the embargo going, but if "doing great" means denying our closest ally (UK) the usual formal treatment (press conference, state dinner, etc.) and giving them a gift of Hollywood DVDs in return for a priceless, museum quality pen holder that represents the depth and strength of our alliance and then sending a delegation down to cozy up to Castro and praise him, we're in trouble.
You, comporomiser, are talking like a great big dummy here as well. Why in heaven's name should Obama have run around like a chicken with his head cut off when Gordon Brown invited himself here in the middle of some major US crises, in the first month of the Obama presidency, just to get good press in the UK papers? Especially when the Obamas' trip to the UK was already in the planning stages?
That trip of Brown's was a desperate attempt to get some of the Obama pixie dust sprinkled on his jacket.
By the way, the "priceless, museum quality pen holder"? A pen holder? Who cares? Why don't you just let the whole thing go, ok? You sound like Sean Hannity.
I apologize for my use of the word dummy in the above comment. i hate the line you are using in your comment and i have little sympathy for your position.
I can't stand the way Castro gets fawned over by certain folks on the left - one reason I'm less than enthusastic about my Congresswoman Barbara Lee, whose office is full of people who lean toward that kind of stupidity. I am of the generation that saw Castro as a hopeful figure in the early '60s, but my disillusionment dates to his craven support of the Soviet invasion of Chechoslovakia over 40 years ago and nine years in to his seizing power. The greatest failure of the Cuban revolution was that, while I don't discount achievements in health care and education, it provided no functional alternative model of economic development for Latin America and it made almost plausible the reactionary arguments that somehow an agenda of accessible health care and universal education for the poor was consonant with eradication of political freedoms. Castro's ace in the hole is that, according to all reports, he's charismatic and engaging in person, which is part of his cunning and has clearly helped sustain his political longevity. It's not terribly surprising that certain politicans, actors and movie directors who, despite their democratic pretensions, suffer from at least a degree of megalomania as an element of success in their chosen careers, are tolerant of characters like Castro.
Commentor above in reference to Castro and Hugo Chavez: "They are both totalitarian despots..."
This, of course, is the other extreme and what feeds a lot of rationalizations about Castro and Chavez. Hugo Chavez is far from my idea of a progressive leader, but he is - indisputably - an elected leader of an essentially democratic country - certainly by Latin American standards (which isn't such a backhanded compliment, since Latin American electoral politics have been significantly improving in recent decades.) He may periodically abuse his powers, he may have gotten rid of term limits so that he can stay in office as long as Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond, he may be breeding paranoia as a political calculation and he may be a bully, but it's completely nuts to call him a "totalitarian despot." It robs the words of any meaning.
As for Cuba and "totalitarianism" - it fits the category to an unfortunate extent, but compared to the archtypal modern totalitarian states it's a rather "soft" version. And given that we reached out to Maoist China, which was one of the worst, and have watched an evolution take place that would have seemed unthinkable in 1970, my prediction is that the closer we draw Cuba to the United States, - Raul or no Raul in the interim - the more we'll see a transition to a far more open society. The worst features of Cuba's repressive apparatus won't survive open engagement and the effects of trade and intensive social/cultural interaction with the United States. It may not fit the mold that many Americans would like to see, but that's not really our call. What we can do is open doors, which tends to be destructive of the totalitarian impulse.
I think the demonization of Hugo Chavez in the US is just part of the right wing message. And what does the right wing hate most about him? He nationalized Venezuela's oil. Most of our disputes with Latin America seem to be resource related.
Chavez is also not a fan of trade agreements with the US.
People in the US seem to know very little about Chavez except for what the right wing disseminates in mainstream media.
You so capture why the Cuba issue seems to bring out the worst in the right AND the left in the US. US Left: OK, Cubans lost any right to free speech, the fruits of their labor, and political power, but look, free healthcare! US Right: obviously, if you have universal healthcare, you have a dictatorship.
The Republicans *should* want to end the Cuba embargo so that good old capitalism leads to a freer society. The Dems should be the last people arguing that it's OK to destroy civil rights so long as you offer a few social services.
a few thoughts for the uninformed.
An embargo of the kind that has been in place against Cuba is effectively an act of war (low intesity warfare). Its sole purpose is to cause great suffering to the Cuban people in the hopes, that they might rise up and overthrow the gov't. It is an attempt by the US ruling class, to destabilize Cuba simple and plain. Millions of people have been sick, died, or subjected to a life of poverty that otherwise would not have, because of the embargo. Everything about Cuba's political/social/economic development, or lack thereof, is heavily shaped by the reality that the most powerful nation in the world has had hard on for them for 50 years. Viagra aint got shit on anti-communism.
Simply put, if Cuba wasn't forced to exist under such a strangle hold, for half a century, things would definitely be different. In the same way, if America hadn't been so brutally racist for so many years, the black community would exist differently than it does today. Its called cause and effect, or more specifically historical perspective. Or in a word, context. Things don't exist in a vacuum.
But I guess it's much simpler to have a less nuanced conversation about how horrible Castro is, and how stupid Bobby Rush is for liking him. And these are the same people falling over themselves to love Obama for handing over billions to the richest people in the world, and calling at a bailout for the American economy.