Tag Archives: U.S.-Cuba relations

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

Yes, we won the Cold War

Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States will begin normalizing relations with its long time enemy Cuba brings to mind a truism that plays into this development.

It is that the Cold War is over. We won! The communists lost it.

Indeed, long before the Cold War was declared over — with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 — we had relations with communist countries. China and the Soviet Union are the two examples.

The president noted today that we even restored relations with Vietnam, a nation with which we fought a long and bloody war that cost more than 58,000 American lives.

Cuba? Until today, it remained on our list of nations non grata.

And why? Well, it didn’t pose a military threat. Its economy is in shambles. Its people still are suffering from lack of freedom and the depravity brought on it by the repressive economic policies of the Marxists who run the island nation.

We’ve made our point. Our system is better than their system.

We outlasted the communists by forcing the Soviet Union to spend money on its military while its people suffered. Then came its restructuring and its newfound openness policies.

All the while, we maintained an embassy in Moscow and they had one in Washington.

The Cubans? We continued to punish them.

President Obama has done what should have been done — could have been done — many years ago.

It’s no doubt going to anger many members of the Cuban-American community who hate the communists who govern the nation of their birth. Will it matter in the grand scheme to the president? Not one bit. He’s a lame duck. He’ll be out of office in two years. The Cuban-American voting bloc supports Republicans overwhelmingly as it is.

The normalization should proceed quickly nonetheless. We won the Cold War. It’s time to move on.