Castro: one of great revolutionaries
Bush: “The socialist paradise is a tropical gulag.” (Cuba has national health insurance, the United States does not.)
Bush: “Once revealed (all the horrors of Cuba), will shock the conscience of the world.” (The conscience of the world is already shocked by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.)
Bush: “We will know there is a new Cuba when a free and independent press has the power to operate without censors.” (Self-censorship reigns in America today. Example: the New York Times sat on a story about National Security Agency spying for one year at the behest of the White House, costing John Kerry the presidential election in 2004.)
Bush calls for democratic reforms in Cuba. (The kind that gave Bush the presidency in 2000, gift of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court?)
It is true that Cuba under Castro is a totalitarian society where dissenters are jailed. But it is also true that the United States has demonized and isolated Cuba under 10 presidents since the Cuban social revolution triumphed in 1959.
As The Nation wrote earlier this year: “Cuba has consistently faced both threatened and real assassination attempts, sabotage efforts, armed attacks and bombings, infamous among them the midair destruction of a Cubana passenger plane in 1976.”
These nefarious efforts have often been engineered by the CIA, past masters of coups. They show the unremitting American hostility to Cuba.
For 16 straight years the United Nations General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo of Cuba. The vote is usually 182-4 with the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands dissenting.
Politics is everything to Bush even in the twilight of his presidency. Domestic politics pleasing to Cuban Americans in Miami trumps foreign policy.
Bush urges Latin American governments to end their opposition to the embargo. Why should they? Venezuela-led Hugo Chávez and Bolivia-led Evo Morales are also leftists who are friends of Castro.
U.S. sanctions bar American tourists from visiting Cuba. Sanctions prevent the importation of goods. Isn’t that economic war?
The sanctions extend to the arts and academics. Dancers from the New York City Ballet were denied the right to attend an international festival in Cuba. The State Department denied visas in 2004 to 65 Cuban scholars wanting to attend an international conference.
So much for America’s boast about the free exchange of ideas, academic inquiry and freedom to travel.
A year ago Z magazine ran an article that has more than the sting of truth. Namely, Cuba will soon be brought back into “the family of U.S. colonies.” In that glorious post-Castro era, America will privatize “Cuban communication, electric power, transport, mining, industry, agriculture, medical and other productive enterprise.” A capitalist Utopia!
It was ever thus. The United States has intervened in Cuba for more than 100 years with its plundering, repression and imperialism. You don’t have to be a leftist to find that sordid history despicable.
Then there is the outrage of Guantánamo Bay. It is a legacy of America’s trampling on the sovereignity of other nations. Congress passed the Platt Amendment in 1901 compelling Cuba to “sell or lease to the United States lands necessary for coaling or naval stations.” Unfortunately, the Cuban Constitutional Convention foolishly ratified the land grab.
America invaded Cuba in 1961 with counter-revolutionary forces financed, armed, trained and guided by private and official American leaders. It was a blatant violation of U.S. neutrality laws and illegal entry into sovereign territory.
Other Cuban plusses abound. It has no malnutrition. Its doctor-patient ratio is better than the U.S average. The World Health Organization commends Cuba for its literacy levels. Cuba’s rates of infant mortality are lower and life expectancy higher than in America. Cuba operates humanitarian missions in 68 nations.
In 2005 it had 1,800 doctors from 47 developing nations graduate after receiving scholarships. In 2006, 100 U.S. medical students received a free education in Cuba. Cuba is a world leader in cancer research and treatment.
History has already absolved Fidel Castro. He is one of the world’s great revolutionaries joining Lenin, Trotsky and Mao with their visions of worldwide socialism. As for Bush, his obsessing about Cuba is one of his many crimes against humanity.
Let us hope that some enlightened administration decades hence will end the economic boycott of Cuba and open diplomatic relations.
posted by Jake Highton | 7:33 AM
1 Comments:
You are to insist that the embargo against Cuba should be brought to end. First and foremost this should be done for humanitarian reasons. Second but also important it that t he embargo achieves nothing but generating sympathy for a dictator. This is a very reasonable request.
Unfortunately your crazy ramblings supporting a dictator undermine the points which you raise. I have noticed that those of the far-left tend to all too easily discard democracy and basic human freedoms if it means brining about socialism. Their eagerness to toss away democracy for delusional ideological goals is a trait which they share with the far-right. If Bush attempted to become president for forty or fifty years you would brand him a dictator. Castro on the other hand is a "revolutionary."
In the past I have often found it difficult to understand how people who would otherwise seem intelligent can hold such ridiculous beliefs. Perhaps the near religious like hold that socialism holds over its worshipers
is similar to how other major religions can cause rational people to believe delusional things.
Fortunately the great majority of the left's history has actually been one of supporting democracy and human freedoms and rights. Reali social democrats are interested in improving the lives of ordinary people and addressing social inequalities, not in praising blood soaked dictators.
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