Tag Archives: Cuba

International news

Vietnam, yes; Cuba, no?

Those on the right and the far right who keep yammering against efforts to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba — citing Havana’s horrible human rights — ignore the conduct of another actual enemy with whom the United States actually fought a bloody war.

Vietnam’s human rights record is just as atrocious as Cuba’s. Yet we’ve had diplomatic relations with Vietnam for two decades. Moreover, the relationship has grown closer.

http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21656714-vietnams-new-friendship-america-reflects-political-drama-home-power-plays?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/ed/powerplays

This is part of the argument against Cuba that doesn’t make any sense to me.

The Cubans once were part of the Soviet Union’s “evil empire.” So was Vietnam, for that matter.

Then the Soviet Union disappeared. Cuba continues to languish in poverty. Yes, it’s human rights record is abysmal. However, does Cuba pose a threat to the United States of America, the behemoth nation that sits less than 100 miles off the island’s coast? Uh, no.

Vietnam and the United States went to war in the 1960s. We sent millions of fighting men to that country to stop North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam. The communists killed more than 50,000 Americans; we killed far more of them in the process.

The shooting stopped on April 30, 1975 when the communists rolled into Saigon, renamed the city after Ho Chi Minh and began sending South Vietnamese who were loyal to the Americans to what they called “re-education camps.”

Did that get in the way of the two former enemies becoming friends, establishing full relations? No.

Nor should it stop the United States from doing the same with Cuba.

The embassies are about to open in Washington and Havana.

Let’s stop the whining about the so-called “threat” that Cuba poses to the world’s greatest military and economic power. If we can make nice with Vietnam, then surely our extending a hand to Cuba is the right thing to do.

 

International news

The Cold War is over! We won!

President Barack Obama has declared victory, finally, in the on-going Cold War with Marxism.

On Wednesday, he is going to announce the reopening of embassies in Washington and Havana, the capital city of Cuba.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/us-and-cuba-to-re-open-embassies-119609.html?hp=l1_3

Let the healing continue.

A 50-plus year estrangement with a dirt-poor island nation that has been governed by communists is about to end. Good thing, too. Because Cuba no longer poses a threat to the United States of America, the world’s remaining superpower.

Why? Cuba’s major benefactor, the Soviet Union, vaporized into history more than two decades ago. Russia has re-emerged and while the Russians are strong, they do not pose a worldwide threat to take over the world the way the Soviet Union declared publicly it intended to do.

The Soviets once used Cuban territory as a potential launching pad for offensive missiles. But a steely U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, clamped a quarantine on Cuba, intercepting Soviet ships taking missile parts to the island. The Soviets blinked, took down the missile installations and the threat of nuclear war was averted.

Cuba has languished in poverty during entire regime of the communists.

And yet some Republicans in Congress continue to harp on the idea that Cuba’s human rights record doesn’t entitle it to enjoy full diplomatic relations with the United States. Fine. Then let’s bring our ambassadors home from, say, China, Zimbabwe and Sudan.

At least two leading GOP lawmakers, Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, have Cuban ancestry. They also are running for president. They say Cuba must remain estranged from the United States until it cleans up its human-rights act.

Come on, fellas.

Let’s get real.

The time has come to end the Cold War. We’re not going to give the Cubans a pass on whatever human rights abuses they still commit against their citizens.

We are, though, going to restore relations with a neighbor. Perhaps some added exposure to what we enjoy here will rub off on the Cubans.

 

national news, political news

Rubio looks forward … except for Cuba

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign launch Monday contained a lot of soaring rhetoric about the need to look forward.

The Florida Republican sounded the right notes, spoke the right words and paid tribute to his own life story, which is an interesting and compelling one.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/marco-rubio-2016-presidential-bid-116914.html?hp=t1_r

“While our people and economy are pushing the boundaries of the 21st century, too many of our leaders and their ideas are stuck in the 20th century,” Rubio said. “We must change the decisions we are making by changing the people who are making them.”

Agreed, Sen. Rubio.

However, why are you locked into a 20th-century view of our nation’s relationship with Cuba?

President Obama is trying to breathe life into a bilateral relationship with the island nation that sits just a few miles off the Florida coast. For decades, dating back to the late 1950s, U.S. politicians have trembled in fear — or so it seems — at the prospect that Cuba would become a launching pad for Soviet missiles. Then the Soviet Union vaporized into thin air in 1991. Cuba’s Marxist regime continued on, repressing its people.

The United States maintained its economic embargo against Cuba.

Now the 44th president of the United States is taking a 21st-century view of U.S.-Cuba relations — but Sen. Rubio will have none of it. Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba, said it doesn’t make sense. He calls Cuba an agent of terror.

I’m all ears as it regards Sen. Rubio’s desire to look forward. I am anxious to hear the rest of his message as the 2016 White House campaign gets ramped up.

Let’s start, though, with refining the senator’s view of Cuba.

 

International news, national news

Cuba thaw makes perfect sense, Sen. Rubio

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is a Cuban-American cut from the cloth that prevented the United States from establishing a relationship with Cuba.

He’s among a shrinking core of Cuban-Americans — living mainly in Florida — who think of Cuba as a pariah state that poses an imminent danger to the United States of America.

They are wrong. So is the young junior senator from Florida.

Rubio: Obama’s Cuba thaw ‘ridiculous’

Of course, perhaps it is helpful to note that Rubio is likely to run for the Republican Party presidential nomination next year, so he’s got to find as much to criticize the current Democratic administration as he can locate.

I guess Cuba fits the bill.

Well, the overtures that both President Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro are making perfect sense in this changing world.

Cuba’s got a horrible human rights record. So do many of the other countries with which we have diplomatic relations. Cuba once was known to have designs on becoming a dominant player in the Western Hemisphere. Those designs were washed away with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Is Cuba a terrorist haven? Does it sponsor international terrorist organizations?

Come on, Marco. Let’s engage this former enemy and persuade the government in Havana to join us in making life more comfortable for the millions of Cubans who’ve been deprived of economic wellness partly because of a pointless U.S. economic embargo.

 

International news

Take Cuba off terrorist-sponsor list

I’m trying to remember the last time I read anything in the media about terrorists tied to Cuba.

Am I missing something? Has there been an instance involving a terror group caught plotting something evil ever being linked to the Cuban communists?

It’s the apparent absence of any such linkage that gives President Obama reason to remove Cuba from the list of nations involved in sponsoring international terror.

Let’s get real.

Cuba is a third-rate country that is just now starting to get its legs under it as the United States moves toward normal relations with the Marxist dictatorship. The county doesn’t pose the kind of threat this president and all his predecessors — Democrat and Republican — said existed going back to Fidel Castro’s takeover of the Cuban government in 1959. That was when Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States.

Obama and Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, met today at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama. They shook hands and chatted a bit in private. Perhaps the topic of this terror watch list came up.

The world is full of nations that pose an intense threat to the United States with regard to sponsoring terrorist acts.

Cuba isn’t one of them. Remove the nation from the watch list, Mr. President.

 

International news, Uncategorized

Closer to home … how about Cuba?

Shifting our attention closer to home for a moment or two …

A new poll shows that most Cuban-Americans agree with the U.S. policy shift toward that fearsome foe of freedom, Cuba.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/poll-cuba-obama-cuban-americans-florida-116570.html?hp=l3_4

President Obama this past year announced plans to restore full diplomatic relations with the Marxist government in Havana. The United States has lifted many travel restrictions already. Our governments are now talking directly to each other. Before too terribly long there likely will be an exchange of ambassadors and the nations will have embassies in each other’s capital cities.

This policy change should have occurred decades ago. That it’s occurring now is a sign of the changing times.

The U.S.-led embargo against Cuba has needed to be lifted. Indeed, any possible threat Cuba posed to this country evaporated in 1991 when the Soviet Union disappeared. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis provided a scary two-week standoff that well could have brought about nuclear annihilation, but it ended well when President Kennedy forced the Big Bad Bear to “blink,” and remove those offensive missiles from the island nation.

Yes, the nation has human rights issues it needs to resolve. Then again, so do many other nations with which the United States already has full diplomatic relations.

Cuban-Americans, who hold considerable political sway in this country, now appear to be climbing aboard the U.S.-Cuba relationship restoration vehicle.

Let us proceed to make that restoration a reality.

 

International news

Why oppose relationship with Cuba?

The continuing argument over whether the United States should normalize relations with a Third World communist country 90 miles off the Florida coast continues to baffle me.

The Cuban-American community is split on this issue. Republican politicians — and even a couple of Democrats — by and large oppose it; Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is a notable Republican exception to that opposition.

The opponents of President Obama’s decision to begin that process keep citing Cuban’s horrible human rights record. Yes, it’s horrible, but let’s compare it with another nation with which the United States does have diplomatic ties.

It’s Vietnam.

Consider a few facts about this country.

* We fought Vietnam in a bloody and brutal war for roughly a decade. The Vietnamese killed 58,000 Americans during that struggle. How many Americans have died fighting Cuban military personnel since Fidel Castro assumed power in 1959? Nineteen, while fighting Cuban troops during our 1983 invasion of the island nation of Grenada.

* How did the communists from the north respond when they took control of Vietnam? They imprisoned those who had worked with the South Vietnamese government, sending them to what they called “re-education camps,” which was a euphemism for concentration camps. I met a few of those “re-educated” Vietnamese when I returned to the country in 1989. Believe me when I say that they were treated as common criminals by the conquering communists.

* Have the Vietnamese enjoyed the same kind of human liberty and freedom that some in Congress are demanding of Cuba? Hardly. Vietnam remains a hardline communist autocracy. There’s been plenty of economic reform since Saigon fell in April 1975 and the country is enjoying some economic prosperity. Its people do not live totally free, however.

And yet we’ve been diplomatic partners with Vietnam since July 11, 1995, when President Clinton opened that door.

Why are some of us now so reluctant to follow the same course with Cuba?

Let’s get real. If we can bury the hatchet with a former battlefield enemy, then surely there lies opportunity to forge a relationship with a nation that poses zero military or economic threat.

 

 

International news, political news

Lame-duck status has its advantages

Sometimes it can be good for politicians to use their lame-duck status to move important debates forward.

Take the lame-duck president of the United States, Barack Obama. All he has done in the past few days is call for a profound change in our nation’s relationship with Cuba, with which we’ve had zero relationship for, oh, the past 50 years.

With no more campaigns to run, or elections to win (or lose), the president has done what he could have done years ago. Indeed, earlier lame-duck presidents dating back to the Johnson administration could have done it.

They chose sit on their hands.

Contrast that context with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a possible — if not probable — candidate for president in 2016. He’s a TEA party Republican who’s backing the Democratic president on this deal.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/rand-paul-supports-opening-cuba-113677.html?hp=b2_l3

Paul will have some answering to do if he faces the deeply split Cuban-American community in south Florida in a couple of years.

Obama has staked out an important change in U.S. foreign policy with this push for “normalization” of relations with Cuba, which came with the release of Alan Gross, an aid worker who’d been held prisoner for five years on a bogus spying charge by the Fidel/Raul Castro regime in Havana.

He had to have figured he could act now that he’s a lame duck. Of course, no politician ever admits to such a thing. They offer up high-minded rhetoric about “doing the right thing” or “acting in the best interests” of the city, state or nation.

That explains, perhaps, the president’s change of heart on Cuba. It doesn’t explain Sen. Paul’s courage on the issue, given that he’s bucking many fellow Republicans on this matter.

About the only thing that makes sense about Paul’s support of Obama on the Cuba policy issue is that he’s not going to run for president after all. I hope that’s not the case.

As for the president, well, lame duck status does have its advantage.

 

International news, political news

Cuba policy change provokes GOP fight

President Obama is picking a fight — between two Republicans who might want to succeed him in the White House.

I love this infighting.

Obama has announced a dramatic change in our nation’s policy toward Cuba. We’re moving toward normalization of relations, you know, with embassies in both countries and ambassadors representing their nation’s interests.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky supports the change; GOP Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida opposes it.

So, what does Paul do? He calls Rubio an “isolationist.” He mentions his colleague by name. He takes direct aim at the young Floridian’s opposition to what Paul thinks is a reasonable and long overdue change.

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/rand-paul-tears-isolationist-marco-rubio-over-cuba

I happen to agree with Sen. Paul on this one.

He wrote an essay for Time magazine in which he lays out his argument. “The supporters of the embargo against Cuba speak with heated passion but fall strangely silent when asked how trade with Cuba is so different than trade with Russia or China or Vietnam,” Paul wrote. “It is an inconsistent and incoherent position to support trade with other communist countries, but not communist Cuba.”

Rubio is among those “strangely silent” lawmakers who cannot grasp the need for change in the U.S.-Cuba relationship.

Rubio actually baited Paul with a statement he made on Fox News: “Like many people who have been opining, [Paul] has no idea what he’s talking about,” Rubio said. Paul’s op-ed essay in Time was in response largely to what Rubio said.

So the intra-GOP fight has commenced.

Rubio’s own Cuban heritage gives him some credibility on this issue. However, like a lot of politicians who blind when the subject of Cuba comes up, Rubio needs to look at the big picture and understand what Barack Obama and Rand Paul both get: If a 50-year policy doesn’t produce any positive change, then it’s time to change the policy.

 

International news

U.S. need not continue pointless embargo

The United States embargo against Cuba did not work.

It won’t work in the future.

So, the president of the United States made a calculation: If the sanctions are being enforced by just one nation in the world, ours, what is precisely the point of continuing a policy that the entire rest of the world is ignoring?

http://dallasmorningviewsblog.dallasnews.com/2014/12/50-years-is-long-enough-to-prove-that-cuba-sanctions-werent-working.html/

Let’s put it another, harsher, way: One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

OK, our Cuba policy wasn’t exactly insane. It just nutty.

The Cuban people deserve to be free. President Obama has declared his intention to keep applying the pressure on Cuba’s leaders to give Cubans basic human rights that others in civilized nations ought to enjoy. The best way for the United States to apply that pressure is to engage the Cubans directly through diplomatic missions. So, let’s start that project.

Our non-relationship has lasted 50 years. It began when the Cold War was going full bore. That “war” has ended. Cuba is a Third World country that does business with Canada and Mexico, North America’s other two giant nations. It also does business with virtually the entire world.

Only the United States enforces this so-called “embargo.”

It is good that we end it. The sooner the better.

As the president noted, if we can engage nations such as China and Vietnam — two nations we have fought on the battlefield — surely we ought to do the same with Cuba.