Roger Cohen, writing for the New York Times, describes the last gasp of Fidel’s revolution. Cuba lives in a world where things run backwards. The Day of the Revolution began an irreversible entropy when cars started to run down, buildings began to crumble, homes began to decay and meals began to shrink. Inexorably, year by year. It was as if history ended in 1959 and began counting down to the 19th century. Now the 18th century is in view. The sea, once a highway, has become a prison. It is illegal to own a boat. What naval forces exist are tasked with keeping the population in rather than keeping interlopers out. Even the all-powerful state has become a tatterdemalion: Cubans must navigate “a labyrinth of rations, regulations, two currencies and four markets” to eat, in a kind of Third Man Vienna where the scars of wartime never heal and the occupation never ends.
But it’s a situation which Cohen seems to think is caused, not by socialism, but by an intractable old-fashionedness; by a relationship frozen in the Cold War, in which Cuba’s misery stems from an American refusal to treat with it. He writes, “diplomatic relations have been severed since 1961; a U.S. trade embargo has been in place almost as long; the cold war has been over for almost two decades. To say the U.S.-Cuban relationship is anachronistic would be an understatement.”
Cuba’s director of the North American Department maintains that it is all America’s fault.
“I once saw a slogan on that U.S. billboard saying Cuban women have to prostitute themselves because they do not have the resources to survive,” she told me. “This is totally unacceptable, a violation of the Vienna Convention!” (The Vienna Convention of 1963 regulates consular relations.) “The U.S. wants to punish Cuba with its blockade. It cannot accept us the way we are. It cannot forgive us our independence. It cannot permit us to choose our own model. And now along comes Obama and says he will lift a few restrictions, but that in order to advance further Cuba must show it is making democratic changes. Well, we do not accept that Cuba has to change in order to deserve normal relations with the United States.”
The Cuban bureaucrat’s sentence leads directly to the main question the article seeks to resolve. What should Barack Obama do now that Fidel’s revolution is collapsing — never mind for the moment why — but undeniably collapsing. If Cuba’s misery is caused by old-fashioned Cold War attitudes, then it follows that whether for reasons of sympathy with the ‘ideals of the revolution’ or simply because it is a faster way to be rid of the island’s sclerotic Communism, that engagement must replace the ‘failed’ policy of confrontation with Fidel’s regime.
Obama’s victory is particularly significant because he bucked conventional wisdom on Cuba during the campaign. He lambasted Bush’s “tough talk that never yields results.” He called for “a new strategy” centered on two immediate changes: the lifting of all travel restrictions for family visits (limited by Bush to one every three years) and the freeing up of family remittances (now no more than $300 a quarter for the receiving household). Obama also called for “direct diplomacy,” saying he would be prepared to lead it himself “at a time and place of my choosing,” provided U.S. interests and the “cause of freedom for the Cuban people” were advanced. He said his message to Fidel and Raúl would be: “If you take significant steps toward democracy, beginning with the freeing of all political prisoners, we will take steps to begin normalizing relations.”
While Cohen accepts that the ruinous picture that his eyes convey, he finds himself unable to feel relief at the death-rattle of the Cuban Revolution. Although he listens to the ritual presentation about the large numbers of doctors, increases in literacy, improvements in public health unimpressed, in private moments, he acknowledges that the Cubans have something he wants, something he doesn’t wish to destroy by making them like himself. Speaking of the Cuban medical system, he writes “I did sense something hard to quantify, a kind of socialist conscience, particularly among doctors. When I met Dr. Verena Muzio, the head of the vaccine division at the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology — another official stop — she said her commitment to the revolution’s achievements outweighed the knowledge “that I could go to Chicago and earn $300,000 a year.” Her salary is $40 a month.” It is ironical that the only good thing anyone has left to say about Marxist regimes, founded as they are on the principles dialectical materialism and atheism, is that they produce a kind of spiritual wealth among their impoverished people.
Some of the article’s conclusions may be controversial, particularly the idea that Fidel’s murders should be judged by the abysmally low standards of Communist dictators, and therefore, as dictators go, he was better than most. “But of course Cuba is not totalitarian East Germany. Fidel has been nothing if not a brilliant puppet master. … There have been hundreds of executions, especially in the early years, but he has never been a bloodthirsty dictator, a Caribbean Ceausescu. Nor has he tried, in the style of some despots, to sweep the past away; he has merely let it wither.” Of course the past is not really made of dead books; it is made of living men who were born in it; and if Fidel has merely let it — and therefore them — wither, it may be unpleasant to those who had to undergo the dessication. Cohen’s article ends with an observation which may come nearer to the truth than he intends:
The land before me, and this farther stretch of empty sea, had been carved from Cuba at its independence. And now Guantánamo had become synonymous with some of the most egregious acts of Bush’s war on terror, acts that have tarnished America’s name. There have been other moments of American dishonor over the years in Latin America, from Chile to Argentina, where the U.S. told generals it would look the other way.
Yes, Fidel’s communist revolution, at 50, has carried a terrible price for his people, dividing the Cuban nation, imprisoning part of it and bringing economic catastrophe. But as I gazed from Cuban hills at Guantánamo, and considered Obama’s incoming administration, I thought the wages of guilt might just have found a fine enough balance for good sense at last to prevail.
Cuba’s unnaturally extended ‘Revolution’, Pol Pot’s disastrous campaign to return his country to the Year Zero and even Guantanamo Bay itself are outcomes of a complex policy dance between the Left and Right in Western politics. Cohen is right when he says that US policy toward Cuba makes no sense any more; it is the palimpsest of each side trying to get what it can over decades and splitting the difference. The wages of guilt are there, all right, but they are owed not only to “Bush” but to that considerable class of people who supported Cuba’s murderous and destructive Revolution as a vicarious way of indulging their own fantasies so that they could feel good about someone self-sacrifically earning $40 a year while they made $300,000. Cuba has been taffy pulled in every direction for five decades. F. Scott Fitzgerald described in personal terms what might well have been written of American ideological projection into the Third World: “They were careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Cuba doesn’t need an Obama, or a Fidel. It needs a Lee Kuan Yew and free markets. They’ve never heard of guilt.
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72 Comments
1. exhelodrvr:No pity for CAstro, but I wonder if the end of his regime would have been hastened if we had opened up relations with them after the collapse of the USSR. I suspect that more access to capitalism would have weakened Castro sooner.
Dec 7, 2008 - 6:37 pm 2. Gordon:I have visited three Communist countries: Czechoslovakia in 1988 as a tourist, the USSR in ‘91 on a science project, and Cuba in ‘95 to give a medical lecture. Tho Cuba is a dump, like the others, I enjoyed being there. Unlike the dour Czechs and Russians, the Cubans were fun to be around. I don’t mean the hustlers and hookers selling old American cars, cigars, or themselves. I mean just sitting and watching the people. Despite the life they live, I don’t think Communism has beaten them down. Given the resources of that island and its proximity to the US, I think that when the regime falls they may do much better than their former fellows behind the Iron Curtain.
Dec 7, 2008 - 6:48 pm 3. Gordon:I should add: ‘… but then we’ll see, won’t we?”
Dec 7, 2008 - 6:50 pm 4. whiskey:The direct challenges for Obama wrt Cuba are this:
1. A collapse of the Castro Regime would send tidal waves of destabilizing refugees (certain btw to vote Republican) to South Florida in a time of deep depression. The net result is the certain importation of future Republican voters, and a huge wave of resentment among current Americans, who would face new competition in a recession by new arrivals eager to work for much cheaper.
2. Propping up of Castro’s Regime leads to Republican gains in South Florida. It’s an easy win for Republicans.
3. Propping up of Castro’s Regime encourages more adventurism by Chavez, Fidel’s successor Raul, and Vladimir Putin. Perhaps even stationing of Russian nuclear missiles in Cuba and Venezuela. Ahem. This makes Obama a weak, ineffective, and dangerously naive-weak leader and Republican gains in Senate/House seats.
I submit Obama will once again vote … present. Do nothing, let events shape him and be caught up in the tidal wave of history. It’s likely that falling energy prices put a crimp in Putin and Chavez’s plans and aid to Cuba (mostly from cheap Venezuelan oil that Cuba resells). We are likely to see infighting among Cuba’s military, and a mass wave of refugees arriving in Key West and Miami totally inundating South Florida, and by the way transforming the state forever into a Cuba Norte province. A Mariel Boatlift times ten. With heavy fighting on the Island itself by military factions. Obama will dither and do nothing for as long as possible. Making people long for the decisive action of Bush during Katrina.
EVENTUALLY, events will force the US to intervene in Cuba, install a new regime, and urge (futilely) Cubans to return to Cuba. As a practical matter, Cuba will eventually become a US territory, and eventually a State.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:13 pm 5. Wadeusaf:Putin is no fool, I think no matter the price, Cuba is on its own.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:23 pm 6. NahnCee:It’s always been my impression that the only ones in America who still want us to sit on Cuba and boycott them are the Cubans who boated here and entered illegally and uninvited. Those ex-Cubans are the ones caterwauling the loudest to keep the pressure on Fidel, and I think it’s a personal fight between them and him that really doesn’t have that much to do with American policy.
I don’t understand why a bunch of uninvited interlopers have been determining American policy towards Cuba for all these decades. But I guess it’s not any worse than allowing Mexico to determine our policy towards our border with them, and when we can and cannot shoot their invaders.
I know the gaming industry and casino’s have been salivating for decades now, waiting for Castro to kick off so they can go back into Havana and re-build it. It would be a shame if the ex-Cuban tail were to be allowed to wag the American dog, now or when Fidel finally kicks the coconut.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:25 pm 7. Lincoln B:What Cuba needs is to be left alone to find its own way. No artificial embargoes, no outside restrictions. Let the Cuban government bear all the responsibility for any restriction of free movement. Put the Cuban government in a position where there are no convenient scapegoats for the failures of its economy.
Lift the embargo, practice a studied indifference, let Cuba find its way. Have confidence that the way they find will be the way we find.
The Miami crowd, and the narrow-minded rightwing in America have been the greatest boon to Fidel imaginable. They bear enormous culpability with regard to the trajectory of Cuban evolution.
Has there ever in the history of the West, been a more insane foreign policy – if we accept the colloquial definition of insanity – trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. What nation has ever pursued the same foreign policy for 40 years while that policy fails miserably? Unable, it seems, to find that basic level of intellectual honesty and courage to say – this aint working, lets try something new.
After 40 years,,,,and we can easily predict exactly who on our political stage will scream bloody murder if Obama tries to do something different. How can we rid ourselves of such mindless irrationality?
Oh wait, maybe we finally have….
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:28 pm 8. E. Nigma:There is no trade embargo with Mexico, most of the nations of South America or with the nations of the EU. It still wouldn’t make any difference.
Obama drops trade and travel restrictions, allow remittances to family in Cuba from family in US. Encourages investment from the US. Ask the Canadians how that’s worked out.
No difference. The country remains a tyranny as long as the Castros live run the place. Cohen is writing nothing but propaganda for the useful idiots who believe this bilge. More ugly rationalizations for a failed “revolution”.
Perhaps he should go to Zimbabwe next and find reasons to blame the US for that disaster.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:29 pm 9. MarkJ:Whiskey,
Cuba has repeatedly been “the state that almost was.” For example, in 1848, President James K. Polk authorized the U.S. ambassador to Spain to offer that country up to $100 million to purchase Cuba. $100 million was an astonishing sum for the 1840’s, but the annual sugar and molasses trade from Cuba was nearly $20 million a year by then. Buying Cuba certainly made a lot more economic sense in that context than did our subsequent purchase of Alaska from the Russians, in 1867, for a paltry $7 million.
Alas, Spain spurned American offers to buy Cuba so we can only speculate on how that island’s history would have transpired after an American purchase. I think it’s safe to say that Cuba, as an American state, certainly would today be everything that an independent, socialist Cuba is NOT.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:36 pm 10. 3Case:6.5 Billion people in the World and Cuba’s in the crapper because it cannot trade with 4.6% of them? That seems pretty inept. They have 95.4% of the World, including the fabulous Euros, with whom to succeed. To think that little 4.6% us could put them down a rathole by staying away is idiocy right up there with, say, global warming…excuse me…global climate change. Maybe The One will send Al Gore to open relations and to apologize for us not doing what the rest of the World cannot seem to do.
Dec 7, 2008 - 8:14 pm 11. Lifeofthemind:What Cuba needs is less a Lee Kuan Yew than a Conrad Adenauer and a Ludwig Erhard. Arguably America could use the architects of the Wirtschaftswunder herself. For decades people marveled at America’s ability to extend adolescence while generating prosperity. Now we seem to have grown tired of playing with foreign places carelessly and have sunk to smashing up our own house. The adults do not want to pick up our tab. The good news is that the model of fantasy profligacy is discredited almost everywhere, even in Europe reality is biting, except in America. If Cuba has slipped backwards towards the time of preindustrial Caudillismo then the US is slipping back into the worst fantasies of the 20th century.
Dec 7, 2008 - 8:25 pm 12. Lifeofthemind:@MarkJ,
Dec 7, 2008 - 8:35 pm 13. Lifeofthemind:True, Cuba was certainly far more likely to become a functioning state and a contributing member of the union than Louisiana was. Before the Civil War Southerners wanted Cuba admitted as a slave state. After the Civil War Northerners wanted Cuba admitted for the cheap sugar. In both cases commercial interests, along with racial and religious prejudice, especially in the rival parts of the union served to keep the Cubans out.
In defense of increased contact with Cuba, and everyone knows that I am being a contrarian for argument’s sake here, the Polish model could work. One theory is that what destabilized the Polish regime was that they got greedy and offered elderly Americans a favorable exchange rate to retire there. In no time at all the country was flooded with loudmouthed windbags who could live decently on Social Security in 1980s Poland. Old auto workers were living like princes and telling everybody how a union ought to work. In no time at all they brought the country to its knees. Cuba has a shorter distance to fall but 50,000 old timers who can pretend they made it big in the garment trade could start quite a revolution if Cuba takes the bait.
Dec 7, 2008 - 8:44 pm 14. Tarnsman:Love how it is America’s fault that Cuba is a hell hole. Ummm, all Castro had to do was create a truly democratic society with open borders to investment and ideas and the world would have come knocking. But since his revolution was all about power, control and personal ego, none of that was to happen. He and his cronies got to live large while the Cuban people were left with misery. And when he is gone none will shed a tear. Except, of course, the deluded Left.
Dec 7, 2008 - 9:01 pm 15. vanderleun:Brilliantly stated. With extra points for working in “tatterdemalion.”
Dec 7, 2008 - 9:35 pm 16. Ledger:Robert Cohen is a thinly veiled Castro sympathizer. The NYT has always coddled satellite states of the old USSR. The NYT is Stuck on Stupid with their constant Walter Durante “no Famine” propaganda reporting style.
I will note that 3case makes a good point: ” …6.5 Billion people in the World and Cuba’s in the crapper because it cannot trade with 4.6% of them? That seems pretty inept. They have 95.4% of the World, including the fabulous Euros, with whom to succeed…”
Cuba could have joined the rest of the world and tossed out Castro but they did not. I suspect they enjoy playing the victim – and expect to get something out of it from Obama (possibly, reparations).
Dec 7, 2008 - 10:17 pm 17. Dave:Have read reports of people who have traveled to Cuba, etc. and the different obstructions to normalcy they found there.
One example will suffice: Man tried to get plane ticket out of town on Air Jamica—-not covered by US embargo. Man could NOT use credit card on Jamican airline with Jamaica merchant number.
Reason: Fidel, Raul, et al could not skim
credit card charges to 3rd countries. So they did not allow credit cards to be used.
Cuba is a kleptocracy and NO economic activity is permitted unless their nomenklatura gets greased.
The shortages of food and other basic necessities in Cuba is a population control measure. Somebody does not let foodstuff be produced and it ain’t Uncle Sam.
Dec 7, 2008 - 10:22 pm 18. Utopia Parkway:I guess Obama can be all things to all people. The article is, in part, about how Obama can solve all the injustices of the world. Needless to say, he won’t.
I see Cuba listed among Bush’s foreign policy failures, as if there was something that he could have done, but didn’t, that would have turned Cuba into the 51’st state.
Obama will have many more important issues than Cuba to deal with. While I can’t really predict whether he’ll actually work towards changing things in Cuba I will predict that he won’t make any real progress as long as the Castros remain in charge.
Dec 7, 2008 - 11:37 pm 19. 49erDweet:There are things needing fixin’. There are things – like Cuma – not needing fixin’. Obama would be a fool to do anything more than give the island nation a passing glance. Talk about lose-lose-lose!
Dec 8, 2008 - 12:29 am 20. 49erDweet:Okay CuBa. Its late.
Dec 8, 2008 - 12:30 am 21. Daniel:It seems almost obvious that Cuba will not emerge from its present unhappy state until the Castros are our of power.
To help the Cuban people it therefore seems best to do nothing to prop up the current regime.
I understand that North Korea was near collapse a number of years ago. The South Koreans then decided to help out, whether for political or humanitarian reasons I cannot tell. The net result was to give the absurd North Korean regime a new lease on life.
Should we give aid to the present regime to help ameliorate poverty and hope for gradual improvements as Mr. Cohen advocates?
Alas, the Korean example suggests that the main consequence of such behavior will be to allow the present oppressive regime to hang on to power longer, to the detriment of most of the Cuban population.
It is a prime example of human folly that these governments, whose regimes exhibit a disparity in wealth between their politically favored elites and the common man comparable to that in the wildest oriental despotisms, should arise out of idealistic visions of equality and fairness.
And Mr. Cohen seems to be a prime example of a fool.
Dec 8, 2008 - 3:45 am 22. Micha Elyi:3Case has the most insightful comment. What’s the complaint from the Castro regime and their useful idiots, anyway? That the USA should end the quarantine of capitalism that keeps the Castro revolution pure? Ha ha.
NahnCee, I’m an American who has no Cuban ancestry and I say keep up the embargo good and hard until the commies are swept away. Any American who wants to help Cubans can learn Spanish and prepare to hit the beaches with the Peace Corps when the Sugar Revolution has taken place.
Dec 8, 2008 - 4:18 am 23. Ruby:Whiskey, why would Cuban immigrants vote Republican after the death of Castro? The feud would be over, and Cuba would turn into a plain vanilla Latin American country overnight. You then go on to say that propping up Castro’s regime leads to certain gains for the Republicans. How can that be? Don’t they know that the death of Castro would result in a flood of Cuban immigrants certain to vote Republican? It seems to me that Republicans should beg Castro to empty all his prisons again and send them over. After all, they are Cubans, so they are guaranteed to vote GOP, right?
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:21 am 24. Steve Skubinna:So all of Cuba’s problems are due solely to the US not trading with them? Such a tragedy that there are no other nations on the planet that could do business with them. If only there were one or two other countries, such as Canada or Mexico for instance, that traded with them, their troubles would be over. If only China, or the EU dared risk an American frowny face…
By the way, if the US lifted its embargo, how would that free up travel into and out of the nation? How would it release gays from concentration camps? How would it free political prisoners? How would it allow criticism of the government? How would it end entrenched corruption?
Most of Cuba’s economic problems are due to the collapse of the USSR, which since 1990 has not been buying Cuban sugar at above market prices to prop up the Revolution. Just as the Soviets got a hard economic slap in the face, so are the Cubans. Communism is mass death, and blaming it on lack of US consumer goods is fatuous at best.
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:27 am 25. Island of No Mercy | Constant Conservative:[...] who remember it first-hand, if only imperfectly. Cuba, for whom 1959 was a monumental year, is still struggling to get past it: Roger Cohen, writing for the New York Times, describes the last gasp of Fidel’s revolution. [...]
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:56 am 26. RWE:Among the crimes attributed to newly defeated Rep William Jefferson was the bribes he required in order for him to Okay dealings with countries in Africa covered by the congressional “African Caucus” that he led.
Dealing with 3rd world klepto-dictatorships does not make them more like us. It makes us more like them.
Dec 8, 2008 - 6:30 am 27. Michael Hoskins:It is interesting that the key to Cuban success is trade…and remittances…from the evil north. Why do we give a hoot?
Dec 8, 2008 - 6:34 am 28. Fausta’s Blog » Blog Archive » The low-oil-price Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean:[...] CUBA Saving the Revolution [...]
Dec 8, 2008 - 6:46 am 29. Stones Cry Out - If they keep silent… » Things Heard: e44v1:[...] The Cuban death rattle. [...]
Dec 8, 2008 - 7:13 am 30. Peter Boston:Cuba has nothing to trade.
The leftoid idiots want to loosen trade restrictions so that Cubans working in the USA can send Yankee dollars to their families still trapped in that hell hole. Through government owned banks of course.
Socialism is the light – the One True Path to happiness on earth – if only those damned capitalists would stop messing it up.
Dec 8, 2008 - 8:01 am 31. Mark:Peter Boston writes:
“Cuba has nothing to trade.”
Now that the Democrats have won the White House and Congress, we can expect little off-share oil exploration. Cuba, backed by China, will have few of our compunctions about exploration and drilling. Once oil money flows in, one can expect a Chavez-like continuation of dictatorship. A lot of oppression, funded by enough money, can keep a government going for a long, long time.
Two fine recent books about Cuba:
Carlos Eire, “Waiting for Snow in Havana”
Tom Gjelten, “Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba”
Dec 8, 2008 - 8:31 am 32. ricpic:The Times, as usual, obscenely making allowances for the obscenity that is communism.
Dec 8, 2008 - 8:44 am 33. BRMueller:It is debatable, that even with father Fidel and uncle Raul gone, that there is anyone left in Cuba to lead, or take over and run anything.
Dec 8, 2008 - 8:58 am 34. George Bruce:I’m going under the presumption that anybody with anything to offer got in their innertube and headed norte. many of the Cuban nationals that left right after the revolution were the people any society needs to run smoothly. Namely the middle class.
The fault that Cuba is the way it is rests soley with Cuba. if Cuba wants hope and change, it must originate in Cuba. Anything else is rewarding bad behavior.
Wait a minute. I thought globalization was a bad thing. The Cubans must be better off without being exploited by US multinationals.
I wonder if Reid/Pelosi would block a free trade agreement w/ Cuba.
Dec 8, 2008 - 10:32 am 35. NahnCee:“It is debatable, that even with father Fidel and uncle Raul gone, that there is anyone left in Cuba to lead, or take over and run anything.”
Yeah, if they actually had a democracy and elected someone to run their island, they might end up with an elitist socialist who has no administrative experience, thinks Marx is terrific, has terrorists for buddies, and wants to share the wealth. The horror.
Dec 8, 2008 - 10:39 am 36. Ricardo:Cuba has not been pulled or victimized by anybody. It is repeating the age old Latin American story from the time of Bolivar on.
Dec 8, 2008 - 11:11 am 37. Vinny Vidivici:The “liberator” comes ushering in a new world. Eventually, whatever the ideology that propels him to power devolves into “caciquismo” (cacique=indian chief). It happened in Mexico, Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina, etc. In the end it’s always one guy hanging on to power. You are seeing it now in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.
The cultural patterns in Latin America, I fear, are deep seated, and whatever the local/political/sociological mix is, the result is depressingly familiar.
It is quite a provincial and historically ignorant point of view to assert we had anything to do with Cuba.
They were going down the tubes even with massive infusions of Russian cash.
I simply do not understand how U.S. policy toward Cuba — whether right or wrong — can be dsimissed as a ‘failure’ out of hand. Failure for Cuba, perhaps, which faces collapse. Wasn’t that the idea? So it took a half century. So did the Cold War. A demonstration of patience and soft power, no? As others have commented, Cuba was free to trade with ‘ess judgemental Europeans and Canadians.
Besides, Cuba provides yet another example of statist failure because, let’s face it, as we witness the ‘free market’ blamed for our current economic difficulties the world ssems to have lost lessons learned in Russia, Eastern, Europe, China and southeast Asia.
Not necessarily a contradictory thought, but I think we’ll someday learn that the U.S.-Cuba relationship was more complicated than appears. After all, we’ve meddled for a century and a half throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America (including an invasion of Cuba). While Moscow’s patronage may have provided an excuse for avoiding direct action during the Cold War, it is difficult to believe the U.S. would have allowed such a belligerent carbuncle to sit 90 miles from Key West thumbing its nose.
Who knows, maybe we’ll find out Joe Kennedy funded Casro to chase rival Meyer Lansky off the island and out to Las Vegas, where Kennedy had made significant and, it seems, prescient real estate investments.
/conspiracy hat off
Dec 8, 2008 - 11:11 am 38. RWE:I have to agree with Vinny. When communism collapsed in Eastern Europe and the USSR the Cuban response was summed up by Castro as “If they wish to tear down the statues of Lenin in Europe, then send them here.”
If a drug had been developed to cure a disease and one patient refused to take it on the basis that it was a product of an evil capitalist private company that actually made money off the cure, would the existence of that one remaining lone afflicted person that be considered as proof that the cure did not work?
By all rights when the Cuban Migs shot down those two Brothers to the Rescue Cessna 172’s in the early 90’s we should have declared that enough was friggin’ enough and carpet bombed the whole place into a large scale simulation of the Moon.
Sitting right here next to my computer is a printer that was made in VIET NAM. ‘Nuff said.
Dec 8, 2008 - 11:56 am 39. Ruby:Peter Boston: Socialism is the light – the One True Path to happiness on earth
Apparently that’s what Bush thinks, so long as it’s corporate socialism. He’s in the middle of transfering a trilion dollars in tax revenues from Main Street to Wall Street.
Speaking of crazy belief systems:
Court won’t review Obama’s eligibility to serve
Dec 8, 2008 - 12:48 pm 40. Vinny Vidivici:Sometimes I think when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Empire collapsed there should have been a more formal and forceful repudiation of the 70-year disaster, along with some sort of accounting for history’s most costly and inhumane experiment. That revived big-statism is perceived as any sort of solution to today’s challenges is testiment to our failure to seize victory in the Cold War as the ultimate teachable moment.
I’m not talking about a reprise of Nuremburg, but it seems with rare exception the architects of such unmatched misery got off scot free. Oddly, while Spanish courts found time to issue arrest warrants for Augusto Pinochet they seemed unconcerned with aging commissars puttering around Europe closer to home.
I’m not talking about show trialing political opponents or purging university faculties, either. That way lies madness. But it seems odd that while no unreconstructed Nazi sympathizer would be tolerated on campus (and rightly so) our colleges offer sanctuary to large numbers of apologists for history’s most murderous and destructive ideology. Indeed, they are part of the ideological vanguard of the incoming administration.
Dec 8, 2008 - 1:05 pm 41. whiskey:Ruby — Cubans vote Republican, because Dems support Castro. Settling scores. It’s as simple as that.
Dems are arguing for propping up Castro, don’t think for a moment that has been forgotten. Florida went Dem because of an overwhelming turnout for Obama by White Yuppies, but that’s likely not replicable. Add in a lot more Cubans who uniformly hate Castro and that swings Florida to Reps.
You’ll also get as I note White working class folks ticked off at increased competition for labor during a recession and even more falling wages. Easy pickings for Reps who can have it both ways as Dems did with Bush’s security policies.
Dec 8, 2008 - 2:13 pm 42. Fletcher Christian:Vinny Vidivici #40 – “our colleges offer sanctuary to large numbers of apologists for history’s most murderous and destructive ideology.” Which ideology do you mean? If you mean Communism, then you are just flat-out wrong.
There is an ideology that now has a billion people in servitude, that destroyed the last remnants of the Roman Empire, that destroyed millennium-old, irreplaceable relics of the Buddha, that has helped send most of the West on its way to being a police state, that murders schoolgirls, that mutilates women as a matter of routine, and that has almost exclusive control of probably the most important resource on Earth and has done absolutely nothing with it except enrich various prostitutes, casinos and sellers of expensive cars and fine whisky. And it isn’t Communism.
Dec 8, 2008 - 3:42 pm 43. RWE:Vinny: Did you know that an Anti-Triumphilism Conference of “historians” was held in the 90’s in New York City? The theme was “The West Should Quit Bragging About How It Won The Cold War Because It Did Not.” Check out the book “In Denial”
But yes, I would have like to have seen various assorted commissars and secret police chiefs and the like put in the dock, or perhaps simply shot down in the street, to follow the Do Unto Others philosophy.
And they are putting Blackwater employees on trial but when were all the East German guards who shot people crossing the Wall arrested and charged?
And when were the trials of all of the Bader Meinhoff Gang or Japanese Red Army members? I forget.
At least the Romanians took care of their Meister Beeg properly.
Dec 8, 2008 - 3:49 pm 44. boqueronman:An earlier commenter apparently believes Cuban-Americans are a “bunch of uninvited interlopers.” Do you really mean this? Are you “American?” If so was your immigrant family “invited?” If so, what form did this invitation take? If not, are you then an interloper? If not, what separates you from the Cuban-Americans, other than left vs right politics? By this reasoning then, should the citizenship test be modified to ensure that no immigrants with conservative political leanings are granted citizenship? Casinos? There were three, yes, three, U.S. owned casinos in Havana at the time of the Castro takeover. Too few, too many, or just right? Please let us know the answers.
Oh, and BTW “this” no trade foreign policy resulted from Fidel’s expropriation, without compensation, of U.S. owned assets
in over 5,000 businesses. (No, don’t go there, U.S. investment was only 7% of total invested capital.) Since the USG Export-Import Bank had to cover the losses, amounting to approximately $2 billion, the “embargo” now consists of the fact that no Export-Import Bank guarantees can be obtained for trade with Cuba. Makes sense to me. That, folks, is the “embargo.” Those dastardly right-wing Cuban-Americans! Also, for those asleep at the wheel, Spanish pollsters conducted a clandestine poll in Cuba last year and found that less than a third of Cubans blame the U.S. “blockade” for their economic plight.
Finally, Cuba in 1958 had a flourishing middle class and in fact the industrial wage rates in Cuba ranked 8th in the world. Cuba also had more doctors and dentists per capita than Britain and lower infant mortality than France and Germany, the 13th lowest in the world. Today, Cuba’s infant mortality rate, despite the hemisphere’s highest abortion rate which skews this figure downward, is 34th from the top. So, relative to the rest of the world, Cuba’s health care has worsened under Castro. This data is available from contemporaneous UN reports. There is no doubt that Cuba, under Castro domination, has not found a replacement for pre-1959 conditions, thanks to Castro continuous labeling of the U.S. as his enemy and the misery he and his thugs and thieves have brought to the island’s population. Why the left continues to live in a fantasy world of Castro myth is hard to understand. I suggest you all see Andy Garcia’s hard hitting expose of the “Revolution” in his movie “The Lost City.”
Dec 8, 2008 - 4:17 pm 45. Sticky B:I’ve always had the gut feeling that using the American trade embargo as an excuse for their failed economy was a red herring. Their economy is a junker-clunker for the same reason that all other communists economies were and are. We never prevented them from trading with other nations. They could’ve become the resort destination for western Europeans as easily as Aruba or Jamaica or the Bahamas did. They could’ve been a source for sugar for western Europe as easily in the 20th century as they were in 17th and 18th centuries. Fidel chose his bed and the rest had to live in it. Except for those who fashioned a boat and came here.
I wonder how Elian Gonzalez is doing these days.
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:02 pm 46. Sticky B:Is this Roger Cohen fellow any kin of Walter Duranty?
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:04 pm 47. Vinny Vidivici:RWE:
A conference like that would be typical of the Western elite’s wishy-washy, head-in-the-sand non-judgementalism — no doubt with plenty of guidance from pouting academics. Almost a parody of the Western elite’s reflex apologetics and over-intellectualized cowardice.
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:08 pm 48. pst314:“If you mean Communism, then you are just flat-out wrong.”
That’s an odd assertion, given the fact so many academics are leftists who continue to make excuses whenever possible for the failures of leftist regimes.
Now if you were to write “if you mean only Communism then you are wrong because you forgot Islam” then I would have no argument with you.
Dec 8, 2008 - 5:55 pm 49. Vinny Vidivici:Fletcher:
Point taken on Islam’s millenium-old war against its largely manufactured enemies. The body count over this period of time is likely quite high. And the threat, especially given the West’s indolence and blindness, is severe.
I’ll answer your question shortly.
Dec 8, 2008 - 6:36 pm 50. peterike:Me, I don’t care if Cubans will vote Republican. I don’t want millions more of them any more than I want millions more of Democrat voting Mexicans.
I fear I will get both.
Dec 8, 2008 - 7:25 pm 51. Vinny Vidivici:Fletcher:
To answer your question, I’m referring not only to the lethal 20th century statism which left a stack of corpses 100 million high, but also to the less lethal, yet debilitating incarnations of statism which have enervated and encouraged ruinous social pathologies throughout the West. My critique isn’t limited to moldy holdouts like Eric Hobsbawm.
American campuses are places where Che is a fashion icon but the flag of history’s most generous and benevolent great power is considered ‘hostile’ to foreign students; places where anti-globo Luddism is encouraged while non-stop indictments are issued against the most productive, wealth-creating economic system in human history; places where some of history’s most successful societies, rather than its most odious regimes, are stood in the dock to answer for their shortcomings. In the up-side-down moral equivalency of today’s campuses, many of the perpetrators of statist violence — save one, it seems — are largely ignored when they are not romaticized or excused altogether.
As to the less lethal forms of statism, there is certainly no shortage of representatives in the academy who’ve adopted the language of Marxism, whether out of sincere altruism, or envy and a desire for control, to justify the permanent hobbling and absolution from responsibility of politically-fashionable groups, and the delegitimization of individuality, individual responsibility and self-reliance. I refer here to the class warfare and grievance hustling, the Orwellian, language-warping misrepresentation of concepts like ‘tolerance’ and ‘diversity’, and the elevation of mediocrity and weakness into virtues and victimhood into saintliness.
Indeed, it can be said that the ceaseless deconstruction of Western institutions headquartered on American college campuses is the culmination of all that Munzenberg and Gramsci had hoped to achieve more than a half century ago.
Dec 8, 2008 - 7:48 pm 52. Vinny Vidivici:pst314:
Exhibit A: Cuba.
Dec 8, 2008 - 7:50 pm 53. pst314:Exhibit B: Venezuela.
And so on ad infinitum.
Sigh.
Dec 8, 2008 - 8:06 pm 54. Ed Barbar:I don’t understand the Cuban Director of North America Department:
The U.S. wants to punish Cuba with its blockade. It
cannot accept us the way we are. It cannot forgive
us our independence. It cannot permit us to choose
our own model.
Isn’t democracy precisely letting the people decide what model they want to have?
Perhaps “us” is not “We, the people” in Cuba, but some animals that are more equal than others.
Dec 8, 2008 - 8:23 pm 55. Fletcher Christian:pst314 – I meant “wrong about it being the most destructive ideology in history”. Islam has inflicted more misery, suffering, destruction, slavery and just plain death than Communism could have dreamed of causing. It has affected, and not in a good way, the development of the entire world’s social institutions for nearly fourteen hundred years. Possibly with the exception of those of China and Japan.
China is not an attractive society to those of us in the West, but at least it is civilised. Just maybe, that country will become the last bastion of civilisation in a world turned to savagery; I cannot imagine China allowing the moral poison of Islam to take a foothold; and even if they do, they will do as they have dozens of times before and – eventually absorb and destroy it.
Dec 9, 2008 - 5:21 am 56. Lorenz Gude:Cohen’s article reminds me of the ‘Fidel as social democrat’ image that the NY Times presented throughout his rise to power from Oriente Province in the late 50s. I was in high school at the time and was taken in by the romantic image of the brave reformer fighting against the dictator Batista. When I discovered he as a hard core Communist I became indifferent to his fate by the Bay of Pigs. By the missile crisis I was appalled at what had been allowed to happen. What is amazing to me about Cohen’s article is the way he switches between the squalor of the result of Castro’s revolution and the same social democrat projections that the Times was peddling all those years ago. Maybe it’s a right-left brain thing..or just schizoid.
Dec 9, 2008 - 6:33 am 57. Vinny Vidivici:P.S. I would add that while Islam has remained ‘bloody around its edges’ for more than a millenia, it has yet to ignite a conflagration on par with the last century’s state-sponsored world wars. While its primitive attitudes toward non-believers, women and gays unacceptible, it has not industrialized genocide, an accomplishment unique to European totalitarians. While it has mired 350 million people in backwardness and blame-shifting, it has not engineered famine on the scale of Mao’s unfortunately-named Great Leap Forward or Stalin’s forced collectivization efforts.
Mind you, I’m not diminishing the threat here. As an expressly political religion, Islam is another form of centralized, absolutist authority which may acquire the capacity to organize and inflict the more spectacular sorts of violence which have, thusfar, remained the sole province of the state.
Dec 9, 2008 - 6:55 am 58. buddy larsen:“This year Forbes raised his ranking to the world’s 7th richest head of state, with an estimated fortune of $900 million. “Repugnant slander!” Castro thundered on Cuban television sets (all twelve of them) this week.
Dec 9, 2008 - 8:38 am 59. Vinny Vidivici:Buddy:
All 12 with rabbit-ear antennae.
Dec 9, 2008 - 10:13 am 60. Dave:A world ruled by Wahabis would be like living in Saudi Arabia. Survivable.
A world ruled by communists would be like living in the gulag under the direct control of Pol Pot. Non-survivable.
Islam can be/is a severe threat to civilization. However it does not and can not mass the destructive muscle of the Evil Empire.
Dec 9, 2008 - 10:20 am 61. buddy larsen:vinny, they had a five-year plan to build 15 sets of those rabbit ears, but due to bad weather, the commodity market, and mostly that yanqui embargo, the plan fell 3 units short
Dec 9, 2008 - 1:06 pm 62. Vinny Vidivici:Buddy:
LOL. Don’t forget to blame those ubiquitous ‘reactionary and anti-revolutionary elements, capitalist running dogs and their lackeys’ who are always mucking up those commie five-year plans.
Bad weather. It’s always bad weather, always confined neatly to the borders of whatever basket case — er, socialist paradise — we’re talking about.
Like those nightime satellite maps of the Korean penninsula. The North starves under same sun and moon as the South, which is knocking on the door of the rich boys’ club less than half a century after being one of the poorest nations on earth.
Must be the economic system, or something in the water, or something . . .
Dec 9, 2008 - 3:06 pm 63. buddy larsen:Vinny, it’s all a capitalist conspiracy –aka “living” a “life”. We should be ashamed i’m sure.
Dec 9, 2008 - 3:28 pm 64. Fletcher Christian:Dave #60 – Cheap shot: Try telling that to a Jew.
Slightly longer argument; both social systems are undesirable. However, Communism is unstable as demonstrated by the Soviet Union – and Islamic societies are not, as evidenced by the fact that the Dar-al-Islam is still under mediaeval barbarism after 1350 years.
If you don’t stick your head above the parapet, both societies are survivable, in the short term. However, Communism at least has room for science and technology and Islam has not. And this matters, because in the long run science and technology are the only way that the human race has to survive.
To illustrate; imagine a world under the global Caliphate, suddenly threatened by one of the milder sorts of extinction event. Something like another Chicxulub or the start of another ice age, or perhaps Yellowstone letting rip. What happens then? Answer; we all die. Or at least enough of us that eventually the normal processes of evolution kill what’s left of us off; remember that we have already used up all the resources that are easy to obtain.
For Islam to win means, sooner or later, the extinction of humanity. And it will be our fault – ours, in the civilised West that didn’t believe it could lose. And we can lose, by being outnumbered if in no other way.
“Earth is the cradle of humanity; but one cannot live in the cradle forever”. Islam would have us be chained into the cradle.
Dec 9, 2008 - 3:31 pm 65. Vinny Vidivici:Buddy:
Consider me properly ashamed (hangs head in disgrace for one second, two seconds . . .)
OK, enough of that. Onto more shameless profiteering and conspicuous consumption! I just can’t help myself . . .
Dec 9, 2008 - 4:14 pm 66. pst314:“I meant ‘wrong about it being the most destructive ideology in history’…”
I can’t argue with that.
Dec 9, 2008 - 5:37 pm 67. Vinny Vidivici:Fletcher:
Not to poke fun, because you make solid points in an eloquent fashion, but the shorter version of your last post might be reduced to (paraphrasing somebody quite famous who once said something quite true):
In the end, alternatives to free market capitalism and free societies all suck.
Thus, we should resist them at every turn.
Dec 9, 2008 - 8:15 pm 68. RWE:“…it has not industrialized genocide, an accomplishment unique to European totalitarians.”
That is because it is not good enough at anything to accomplish that.
Don’t mistake competency with intent or malevolence. They would if they could. They ain’t good enough at modern industrialized anything. They could not build the jet airliners and did not even make the box cutter knives.
And I agree with Fletcher relative to the end of humanity. Of course, that observation also applies to Coummunism.
Dec 10, 2008 - 5:41 am 69. Vinny Vidivici:Yes, RWE.
And I concluded that same comment with the following:
“Mind you, I’m not diminishing the threat here. As an expressly political religion, Islam is another form of centralized, absolutist authority which may acquire the capacity to organize and inflict the more spectacular sorts of violence which have, thusfar, remained the sole province of the state.”
Means, intent, and all that.
Dec 10, 2008 - 9:00 am 70. slade:Or as reminded this morning:
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else. Winston Churchill
Dec 10, 2008 - 9:16 am 71. Steynian 295 « Free Canuckistan!:[...] THE SOCIALIST PARADISE: “Roger Cohen, writing for the New York Times, describes the last gasp of Fidel’s [...]
Dec 10, 2008 - 1:46 pm 72. Emphasis:Suppose you know a family that lives in a farm. There is the father, the mother, eight children two of which are married and have each a couple of children of their own, and the grandparents. They have worked this farm for generations, you know who they are, over the years you have met them at town events, and fairs, they work hard for what they have, and you have traded with them in the past.
One day, an auto with 5 individuals, stop at the farm and after asking directions and receiving the gifts of water and food which are customary in your part of the country, they pull weapons and take over the farm. Afterwards, they command the family to work the farm, and when two of the children rebel they are put to death. In the meantime one manages to escape and tells everyone in
town what has happened. The police are called to the scene, and a curious exchange then takes place. The thugs respond to the police presence with the statement that they represent the family’s wishes, and present the police with a document signed by all of the members of the family still in the farm that so states. Furthermore, they will not allow the police to speak to the family
members freely, for the same reason; that is, the police would be violating the family’s right to their privacy, and their property.
Simultaneously, the thugs put the word out that they are open for business, they are willing to give very good prices in farm products. Furthermore, they have a lake in the back of the Farm which is beautiful, and they offer to go in partnership with any investor which is willing to develop the property. The thugs will contribute the labor (the family members), and will bill the partnership in dollars for their work, while paying the family members in “thugs money”, a currency they have invented which has no value outside the farm and very little inside.
Each family member is supplied with a ration card (which can be taken away from them), which lists what food and supplies they will receive. The family is made aware that they can, and will be held responsible for the behavior of each other. The small children in the meantime are taught to tell on their parents
if they say anything against the thugs.
To your surprise you see that some people that are not from your town are interested in what the thugs are selling, and start to buy produce and other farm items from them, some even invest with the thugs to develop the lake. When the development is completed, you see that tourists start visiting-the
farm. The money made in the sale of the farm products etc are used by the thugs to obtain better equipment to keep the family in check.
I know this is far fetch, but it is only so, because I am framing it in the context of a city and a farm. I am sure that in this context, there is no doubt in your mind that you are helping the tugs if you provide them with the funds they need to continue their kidnapping of the family. Well, this
Dec 10, 2008 - 7:32 pmis in reality what has been happening in Cuba for more than 40 years, at the level of a nation, and the world (Canada, England, Italy, Spain and other nations) have been providing the “Beast”, with the money he needs to continue oppressing the people he “claims” to represent.
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