February 24, 2009

Cuba Libre? Si! Cuba Libre!

BBC: Senator Lugar says U.S. 'must rethink Cuban embargo'
I found this photo of Cuban schoolkids on a Santiago website last updated in 2004. I couldn't locate the owner. They look to be about 5 or 6, don't they? By now, they'd be about ten. When they were born, the American grudge against Cuba was in its' fortieth year. Had probably been in place since before their parents were born. So our original beef was with the grandparents of this group of kids. And those of us, like myself, who are old enough to remember the early days of Castro's Cuba, we are also grandparents. It is time for the old ones to get out of the way, and give the kids some breathing room.

But I am far from ready to join the ghouls at Papa Fidel's deathwatch. I respect the Cuban Revolution and its' leadership, including Fidel. I respect them for taking Cuba back from the United States and returning it to the people of Cuba. I respect them for living up to promises of universal health care and education. I respect them for the international reputation they have achieved for medical education and service delivery.

I do not respect Fidel's police state; how could anyone? As an old time American lefty, with family roots going back to Eugene Debs, I see the betrayal of the principles of Utopian communism by Soviet and Chinese models of totalitarian repression, to be among the great crimes of the twentieth century.

But there is much more to the Cuban people, and much more to the Cuban Revolution, than Fidel Castro. There is a country filled with kids like the ones in the purloined photo above. Kids being taken care of by parents who need jobs. That Cuban future is not someday, that future is today, and today American foreign policy is deciding that these kids will continue to live in poverty. They'll have health care, and they will get an excellent education, but they will be poor all of their days, and their children will be poor. Because an American elite has a beef with Fidel Castro, and they think they can bully him into becoming a democrat, and giving United Fruit back their banana plantations.

Yesterday, Senator Richard Lugar, who enjoys the reputation of a giant of foreign policy in his role on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that our policy toward Cuba was a failure and should be reviewed. It's good news. It doesn't go very far, but then, you wouldn't expect it to. American politics has been dominated by the Cuban right wing in Florida for so long that it has become a third rail issue for anyone running for president. Which does not include Republican Richard Lugar, but does include his good friend Democratic President Barack Obama. So a small first step by a Republican ally, to test the political reaction in the American right wing, is a logical strategy for keeping Cuba from becoming an issue in 2010/2012. I guess there's more than one way to get to bi-partisanship, eh?

But let's get on with it. This policy has been stupid from its' inception. It had no chance whatever to alter Castro's "behavior" and probably wasn't designed to; its' punitive nature is evidenced by the many initiatives taken by Castro, over the five decades of the embargo, for open dialogue, that have been rebuffed by the United States. The American strategy from the beginning has been to up the stakes, increase the pressure and crush the regime with an uprising from within, coupled to a CIA-cooked brilliant scheme for a stealth invasion. Blowback from the last such brilliant scheme probably cost President Kennedy his life.
Unfortunately for the elite princes in the dark towers of American foreign policy, the uprising never came, for the very vexing reason that the people of Cuba (not all of them, of course) love Fidel Castro, and support the Revolution. So do I, despite all the bad habits of police state control he learned from Kruschev.

DHL

President Obama is no fascist, but "no hayt agresion que Cuba" to you as well, sir.