Blogger Right About Dropping Cuban Embargo
BY SAM FIELDS
Guest Columnist
Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez has them shaking their heads, if not shaking in their boots on Calle Ocho.
This leading Cuban dissident has called for an end to the Cuban embargo that has been the centerpiece of American foreign policy for almost fifty years.
Right on girl!
Sanchez believes unrestricted access to Cuba will spread the kind of ideas that will bring down the Castro brothers and their corrupt dictatorship.
The notion is not naïve and there is clear historical precedent.
If you got a passport during the height of the Cold War–the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s–it said it was not good for travel to : Albania, The Peoples Republic of China, North Vietnam, North Korea or Cuba.
You could use it to travel to all the other Communist countries: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Latvia, the USSR; etc.
And we did. Tens of millions of American tourists visited these countries often to see family members who, without these visits, had little idea of what was happening on the outside.
The four Communist countries left are four of the five that we were prohibited from visiting. The exception is Albania.
The United States of America is not a place or a people it is an idea. It is the best idea to emerge in recorded history. It is embodied in our Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
It is freedom and self-government and the right to challenge the government without fear of retribution. And while we have not always lived up to those ideals, we are still the best damn place on Earth to live.
For 200-plus years, we have fought to spread our ideals in a battle of ideas. That battle of ideas is most effective when it comes from our people and not our government.
If it were not for tourism, East Germans might have believed their government’s bullshit that it was the West that put up the Berlin Wall.
My guess is that the average Cuban believes that Radio Marti, controlled by Washington, is another propaganda device just like the ones controlled by Castro.
The Castro brothers greatest fear is not the CIA. It is MTV. It is not American terrorism. It is American tourism.
There is one caveat. I strongly suspect that if President Barack Obama completely lifted the travel embargo, Raul and Fidel, could impose one at their end.
Just because they are evil does not mean they are stupid.
Now the world would see a Cuban Embargo home-grown in Havana.
For fifty years we have allowed our Cuban policy to be dictated by people like the Balart brothers and the Old Bulls on Calle Ocho. They don’t understand what has made America the envy of the world. Deep in their hearts they fear that Castro has better ideas then we do.
They are convinced that if we allow Americans to go to Cuba, they will come home believing in communism.
If they didn’t, then in the competition of ideas they would be the first to proclaim: “Let the games begin.
The reactionary whack jobs in Miami will say Sanchez was forced to write this or she is a double agent for Fidel.
Either way they will continue to live in their own stupid little world that is best characterized by 50 years of failure.
Yoani Sanchez is the future and we need to encourage her and the people who think like her.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Sam Fields has neither the credentials nor the intelligence to comment about foreign affairs.
November 25th, 2009 at 12:26 pm
Yoani Sanchez is an intelligent Cuban living on the island, not on Calle Ocho, who is looking for a wave democratic change to smash against an unworkable regime.
She is saying what most intellegent people have said for years except on Calle Ocho.
The only way to bring democracy to Cuba is for there to be greater interaction between the Cubans there and the Americans here. Less interaction leads to status quo. More interaction leads to more reforms.
It is not the threat of nuclear war that brought an end to the USSR. It was McDonalds, Levi Jeans and Rock albums that did that. It was not the threat of continued distance that brought China into the new world economy. It was the catching on of the capitalist concept of profit that did that.
Once communism understands that capitalism is not so evil as they say, they convert.
The embargo served the purpose of containing communism to Cuba within the hemisphere during the nuclear age. 50 years later we need new tactics. End the embargo. Let them see that we are not evil and can offer them a better way of life. And watch them evolve toward us. This is the time for change in Cuba and it’s sad to see the angry Cuban element continue to stand in the way of Cuba Libre.
Yes, I am a Cuban.
November 25th, 2009 at 3:34 pm
I concur with the first poster. As for the Cuban, it was the arms race and not McDonald’s, etc. that cooked the Rooskies. They couldn’t afford what they were trying to accomplish. But then you were probably educated in South Florida where they teach revisionist history.
November 25th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
As for my credentials allow me to advise you that prior to becoming a lawyer I earned a MA (Miami) and studied for a PhD (The Catholic University of America)in Russian History and foreign policy.
In particular I was very interested in the Russian Revolution.
I am one of the leading experts concerning the Allied Intervention into the Soviet Union in 1918. You probably did not even know that he United States invaded the Soviet Union in the Baltic and through Vladivostok.
Those are just a taste of my credentials. What are yours?
Let me further disabuse you of the notion that the Reagan buildup bankrupted the Soviet Union.
That presumption is at odds with publications such as the The Current Threat of the Soviet Union which was a Defense Department publication.
It showed that as a percentage of GNP the Soviets were actually spending less in 1989 then 1981
If you read DOD Sect Carlucci’s 1988 analysis of the Soviet Threat it is clear he did not have a clue that the Warsaw pact and the USSR were about to implode.
Along with Pearl Harbor, it was one of the great intelligence failures of the past 150 years. I have list of the others if you interested in reading it.
The rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe, which was no doubt boosted by the election of a Polish Pope, along with the failed Afghani War [which demoralized the Soviet army in the same way Vietnam did that to our army] were two of the three reasons causing the failure of the Soviet Union.
The third and most important was the corruption under Brezhnev whose twenty year reign was a monument to cronyism and incompetence.
I have always thought that his daughter–who had the misfortune of looking like him–was symbolic of the failure. An obese alcoholic whose numerous lovers [if you could call them that] were given the kind of no show jobs that would have embarrassed Chicago.
People will tolerate a dictator as long as the streets are safe and the trains run on time. By the time of Brezhnev’s death government was delivering neither.
Like most empires the inner rotting, not the foreign threat, is the main reason for collapse. The foreign threat is just a distraction to keep the populace from complaining about the rot. But even that can only last so long.
Russians met the millions of american tourists which only further emphasized how bad their lives were and how good they could be.
November 26th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Every BOY can say that he is right but a real man can say that perhaps he made a mistake. Once the BOYZ of south miami can admit that perhaps they were wrong, we will end the embargo and the Cubans in Cuba will be free to enjoy the same economic and spolitical freedom as we do here as they well deserve it.
November 26th, 2009 at 9:16 am
Castro is a bad guy and so are the thugs who surround him. The exile community has a solid reason for despising him and his revolution.
Though, well intentioned from Kennedy through Bush 2 the embargo has not freed the Cuban people. It has though entrenched the revolution.
Now, the question is whether we want to keep the Castros in power until their death or create a new revolution.
Continuing the embargo will guarantee another 20 or more years of communism.
On the other hand, if the embargo is lifted and all major cruise lines and airlines help flood the island with Americans and capitalism, I’d give the Castros and their ilk about six months.
It comes down to this; do we want to take the long way or the short way?
November 27th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Back at Thunder: To the extent it’s relevant to you, I was educated at Yale. Many of those educated in South Florida seem to have a decidedly different view of this subject.
It was not the arms race that brought the USSR to an abrupt end. The Russions themselves will tell you that it was the introduction of American culture into Russion that changed the USSR. Same thing happened in China, and Vietnam, and everywhere else it has been tried. Wherever our culture is introduced, they become more like us.
It is a big reason why terrorists in the Middle East hate us. They fear losing their “way of life” in favor of Americanization which is the inevitable result of our culture being introduced there.
The contrast of seeing that wave of new culture their own countries is what makes the people of those contries want a different lifestyle, our lifestyle. And so the desire for change has to erupte from the people up, like it did in the USSR, China, Vietnam and the like, forcing the government to change.
The tactic is as hold as the Trojan Horse. And it works. You don’t have to go to Yale to follow the logic.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:34 am
“disabuse”
What a cool word!
November 29th, 2009 at 9:19 am
For whatever unknown reason, until we find out 75 yrs. from now, the U.S. has gained benefit from having Communism 90 miles away. Otherwise, we would’ve ended this 48 yrs. ago. I’m convinced we’ve wanted Fidel there. You, Sam, who have all the qualifications, tell me why.