Castro resigns

Fidel might be stepping down, but Raul is still running the show.

So Castro is that rare breed of dictator, one who actually makes it to retirement. Looks like that 50-year U.S. embargo did a great job.

Shouldn't we seriously debate the idea of continuing this stupid, useless embargo? It's done much more damage to Cubans than Castro. I could see the point of an embargo in the days when communism had a much larger footprint in the world. But today it is virtually extinct outside of North Korea, China (which is really more communism in name only) and a few trendy coffee bistros.

I would be interested in any ideas from the candidates on how they would re-engage with Cuba.

What Matt said. The Embargo made some sense when Cuba was a Soviet client state sending troops to support various insurrections. But for the last 20 years or so there's been no reason at all for it, and our maintaining it has probably guaranteed that we will be shut out of the building of the new Cuba.

Shouldn't we seriously debate the idea of continuing this stupid, useless embargo? It's done much more damage to Cubans than Castro.

I agree the embargo is useless and a strategic mistake by the U.S.

But you honestly fantasize that the unilateral U.S. embargo has "done much more damage to Cubans than Castro"?!? That's either rhetorical hyperbole or outright lunacy.

The thing that made me a conservative to begin with was the rank hypocrisy of the American/European Left when it came to foreign dictators. "Liberals" who fall all over each other denouncing Augusto Pinochet or the 1970s Argentine junta never fail to make the idiotic, hypocritical point that the U.S. "exaggerates" the evil of Castro, that we have an "inordinate fear of communism" etc.

But Pinochet/Franco/Somoza/Latin American militarists have no serious defenders on the American Right. No one argues that any of these guys was inspirational or a "visionary" (as Steven Spielberg said of Fidel Castro). Young conservatives don't wear T-shirts emblazoned with the image of some rightist mass murderer the way young lefties celebrate the murderous Che Guevarra.

And yet Castro's human rights record makes Pinochet/Franco/etc. look like Vacel Havel by comparison. Apologies for this man are frankly disgusting. And, as happened when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, when the Castro regime collapses, Western liberals will be stunned to discover the obvious: The people who have lived their lives under it hate it.

"It shows the folly of allowing the residents of Calle Ocho in Little Havana in Miami to dictate our foreign policy."

Which is precisely why I can't stand living on "Calle Ocho". My Cuban brethren tend to be a bit irrational about this. I have often contended that our policy only props up the Castro regime. It made sense when Cuba was a Soviet sattelite, but we should have dropped the embargo when the Soviet Union was dissolved. Dropping the embargo at that point would have had the salutary effect of making the Castro regime irrelevant. Castro thrives on anti-U.S. rivalry, and we just kept feeding it. Now he retires into confortable retirement.

I, too, hope the old bloke asks for a priest, make his confession and recieve the viaticum before he dies. I just wish that we had had a more rational foreign policy for a post-Soviet Cuba. They were no threat to us after 1991, and so the embargo should have ended there.

My two-cents, for what it's worth!

This is true, Rod. To have regular access to Cuban sandwiches would make up for my own misgivings about the exile community and foreign policy.

So, when can I buy Cuban cigars without having to travel to Europe?

Richard

Simon: "But you honestly fantasize that the unilateral U.S. embargo has "done much more damage to Cubans than Castro"?!? That's either rhetorical hyperbole or outright lunacy."

Simon, take a deep breath. You say "rhetorical hyperbole" or "outright lunacy," I say simple misunderstanding. When I wrote, "It's done much more damage to Cubans than Castro," what I meant was the embargo hurt Cubans, rather than Castro.

...But thanks for asking

Simon, take a deep breath. You say "rhetorical hyperbole" or "outright lunacy," I say simple misunderstanding. When I wrote, "It's done much more damage to Cubans than Castro," what I meant was the embargo hurt Cubans, rather than Castro.

Fair enough, Matt. And sorry for the rant. But as you can see, this issue really pushes my buttons.

Nobody who minimizes the human rights horror that is Fidel Castro's Cuba has any right to criticize Augusto Pinochet, Anastasio Somoza, Francisco Franco or any other "right wing" dictator, all of whom were playful kittens compared with Commandante Fidel and his half century of tyranny.

Daniel, get serious.

Where would you rather live: America during the Reagan Administration or any place at any time run by the likes of Che Guevarra?

Dueling Che vs. Reagan t-shirts aside for a moment, I do sometimes wonder what Reagan would have thought of the near-cultish adoration his image provokes on the right.

It bothers me. There are presidents I admire. There are presidents I would call legendary. But there are none who deserve--or should recieve--the kind of worship Reagan (and JFK) often gets. It smacks too much of royalty and deification.

Reasonably popular two-term presidents are very much confined and defined by their eras, and it is impossible to translate everything about them to a different time. To be certain, there is wisdom to be gleaned from presidents such as Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Reagan, etc., but we need leaders fit to mold and be molded by current challenges, not someone who desires to mimic a leader from another era.

I wish guys like McCain would quit trying to be seen as Reagan incarnate.

"Ah, but surely having Versailles nearby compensates. Mmmm, ropa vieja..."

LOL!!!

There's a Versailles restaurant here in Santa Monica, but since I grew up on the stuff, all I have to do is pay a visit to my mother and I get it for free :-)She makes what I consider to be as close to the Platonic form of ropa vieja one could ever have :-)

I do go for the sandwiches, however.

But for Simon's point-Yes, these are evil regimes, but are we to be in the business of stamping out evil wherever we find it? As I said, the embargo against Cuba made a lot of sense when the Soviet Union was supporting the government and putting Castro on the payroll. It was a pragmatic policy to address a situation that was a real threat to the U.S. When the Soviet Union fell, that threat also ceased.

Even more to the point, what good has the embargo done? We have an evil dictator who is now going into confortable retirement, after 49 years in power! It has not hurt him one bit.

Expecting -- or even desiring -- Castro to repent is like expecting -- or even desiring -- Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Khomeini, etc. to repent. The Washington Nationals will meet the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series before that happens.

Besides, I don't want Castro to repent. I want him to burn in Hell with Che and all the other Marxist bastards who have tortured, oppressed and exploited the people they claim to love.

BLEEP THEM ALL!

The US thing about Cuba is something I frankly just don't get. I don't think that Castro was as bad as many of the Latin American dictators that the US has supported - was Cuba really as bad as Guatemala?? (I've seen arguments about positive Cuban achievements in healthcare and organic farming, although I haven't bothered to evaluate this sort of thing). I can see the hostility to Cuba for realpolitik reasons when it was a Soviet client, but, even supposing, for argument's sake, that Cuba is the worst regime in America, why is the USA so concerned about an unpleasant but puny island state?

On world terms, the worst outcome of the Cold War was the succour it gave to Muslims. I remember watching, with horror, when the Afghans were presented as heroes when fighting the Russians, and, worse, Zia was feted as a Cold War ally. Money was poured in to pay the mujahadin, and a blind eye was turned to the heroin production that has ravaged Europe's cities.

I agree with rombald on this one. Yes, Cuba is repressive and you can end up in jail for being "counterrevolutionary" and all that, but if you adjust for population size, a lot more Latin Americans in all the friendly "banana republics" have ended up extrajudicially dead in a ditch or "disappeared" courtesy of some death squad.

i no other Latin American authoritarian regime has produced anywhere near that level of desperation among the people it ruled and terrorized.

Tell that to the families of political prisoners in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua who had family members executed in football stadiums by soldiers carrying U.S.-financed weapons.

"The King is gone but he's not forgotten".

People, particularly first-worlders, tend to forget the worst part of the Castro regime: 'exportar la revolución'. The hardships Cubans have faced are bad enough, but Fidel actively sough to export those pleasantries to the rest of Latin America like wildfire for 30 years. Does Colombia sound familiar? Central America? Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador... And, of course, leftist darling and "caudillo superstar", newcomer Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. For three decades, any country Castro set his eyes on in Latin America sprouted revolutionary militias and Kalashnikovs like weed. Castro was to Latin America what Stalin was to Eastern Europe. The Latin American right wing dictators were a panicked and poorly executed response to that ever looming threat. Unnecessarily brutal, in many cases, and certainly leaning towards cronyism, but DEFINITELY nothing in the league of Castro & co. The Legend of 'Castro the Great Benefactor' (or its current relative, 'Castro the Lesser Evil') in popular consciousness is one of the most thorough and catastrophic successes leftist intellectuals, both European and American, have accomplished in the second half of the XXth century.

The people in Latin America were mostly all for democratic government and the rule of law. It's funny how food rationing, clandestine revolutionary training camps, soviet weapon shipments, North Korean military instructors, and planned directives for overthrowing the political system from Moscow and La Habana (all of these are thoroughly documented) can change one's mind about right wing dictators.