Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Isn't It Time To Change Our Cuban Policy?
Travelocity has been fined $182,750 due to their software allowing trips to Cuba that might have benefited Cuban companies. Travelocity claims that it was a software glitch. What if it wasn't? This policy has been in place for forty-five years now and has accomplished nothing other than generating votes from Cuban-Americans in the exile community in Florida.
We fought a hot war with communist Vietnam, now we have normalized relationships. We bankrupted the Soviet Union in an arms race. We have outsourced much of our manufacturing to China.
Yet powerless Cuba, who no longer have a Soviet sponsor, must suffer for domestic politics. It's not about being a fan of Fidel Castro. It's about thinking that the policies of Dwight Eisenhower, JFK, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush have done nothing to end the regime of Castro. It Castro does make it to January 2009, he will be watching the 11th President of the US during his reign.
Can one person make a coherent argument why opening up China is a good thing, but this embargo on Cuba is bound to work any day now? Cubans who fled the island around 1960 now have children and grand children who were born in the US. Are they going to all run back to Cuba when Castro's regime falls?
These cronies of the right wing dictator who Castro replaced would sit around Miami forever plotting how they would come back and run things when Castro was killed. Do Cubans who have stuck around all this time really want Americans to run their government no matter what their opinions on Castro?
Give Cubans access to goods, services, technology, information and let them decide if they want to stick with communism. The embargo is a joke that makes Cuban people suffer and our government hypocrites.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
The ailing Cuban President, Fidel Castro, has spoken publicly for the first time since falling ill last July.
"Hello there, illustrious and dear friend, how are you?" Fidel Castro asked President Chavez at the start of an extended conversation on the Venezuelan leader's "Hello President" show.
"I feel good and I'm happy," Mr Castro went on.
First things first. "Hello, President" is really a lame name for a show. I wonder if Hugo Sanchez came up with that one himself. Secondly, will Castro ever kick the bucket? So far he has outlasted Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and has made it through six years of the Cuckoo Bananas presidency. That is some intestinal fortitude (pun intended). The good die young they say. So it may just be that Castro will be celebrating his 50th year as President in 2009, as George Bush retires to pursue video games as a hobby.
I just hope that when Castro goes, democracy flourishes so those Batista loving nutcases in Florida can be soundly rejected by people who stuck around for the last half century in the country's first true popular vote. Perhaps Jose Canseco can run on a steroids and handguns platform in 10 years when Castro finally decides to retire.
