Post-Castro Cuba
JEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEZ-UUUUUUUUUUUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!
The friggin' gall! And some people wonder why other countries don't like the US or won't trust the US. Here's the story from cnn: Report: Get ready for post-Castro Cuba
So, apparently someone in the admisitration has spotted buzzards over Havanna and figures that they must have some inside info about Fidel. This triggers a report which says, and I paraphrase, that when Fidel croaks the US should be ready to swoop in and save the place by making it a democrasy. (since we've had such recent success with installing Democrasy throughout the world)
Of all the nerve... of all the gall... which just can't be content with sweeping our own porch (and there is more than enough dirt here to keep us busy). We have to make plans to go screw with another nation. WE haven't finished screwing up the middle east yet.
I know that a nation has to be concerned with it's own well being, there for we sould be concerned about what we should do when Fidel falls off his perch. Yes, there very well could be a power-vacuum created there and that could cause all kinds of problems. I'm not naive enough to think that our goverment isn't going to have a plan in it's ownself interest. But jeepers, do they have to release/leak it? My god, I already picture Bush wearing a Napolean hat writting "mine" in crayon on a globe. I'm sure this report will do alot to help the US image abroad, and help ease tensions between the US and Cuba. Yeah, right.... it's like someone said "gee, what can we do to make sure that Cuba is on DefCom9 when(if) Castro dies?.... I know! Lets let the people there know that has soon as he dies, the US will charge in on a white horse and save them from themselves."
I don't know.... maybe Bush really wants to save Cuba from Fidel's neice. Social liberals are universal dangers after all.
It's not that I think Fidel is a great person or a great leader. I'm not Cuban, and I don't live in Cuba, so I'm not really a person to judge that. What concerns me it that the US has this elitist, imperial attitude that WE know best for the rest of the world, and it is up to us to fix things. It's one thing if a country asks us to step in. It's a whole other beastie if we assume that the people will want us to simple because we are so wonderful. How often is that a person becomes what they hate with out really noticing it? Is democrasy truely democrasy if it forced on people? It's all very well and good to say that the ends justify the means if it is in the best interests of "the people". But was that ever a principle of the founding fathers of this nation?
posted by Loren @ 12:48 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
I think there will be the normal "power strugle" after he dies. Hopefully, and I think the people will rise up and retake their island, some good old excacutions down at the gas stations.
Wait, damn what was I thinking! Trips and I are going to be running that show!
We brought Cuba upon ourselves - we lusted afer it for 150 years - finally get our shot, and blow it.
I hope Fidel has found the secret to enternal life - if just to spite the Cold Warriors and Cuban elitist, racsit, capitalistic swine emigrees in Miami who can't die peacefully kowing he's still in power.
Don't get me wrong - I think he's screwed up many things, but he has also done many things right. Universal health care -check. Equal access to education - check. End racial discrimination - check (although now with the opening of Cuba to all western nations but US, some "preferential hiring" based on "looks amenable to tourists" has reemerged, but officially, they made a valiant, and largely successful effort on that front)
Just let 'em alone - Christ - after 500 years, don't they deserve a freakin' chance at true self-governence?
If you follow the links and read the article about Fidel's niece (btw, her DAd appears to the first in line to the throne, so to speak) Cuba could become the most liberal of all the latin american nations. I think if they can keep the US out, Cuba will do just fine.
Her dad is should be at the top of the list for the rope in front of the capital.
Granted the Cuban Revolution did not achieve all that it set out to, but it did achieve one major thing: it gutted the creole ruling class that had oppressed the vast majority of Cubans for centuries. It got rid of the mafia and the US imperialistic presence. And for that alone, I respect, to a certain degree, Castro.
If the Cuban people were not behind him, the Bay of Pigs and all our other pathetic attempts to off and/our oust him, would have succeeded. The emigrees in Miami and elsewhere are bitter - bitter because their cushy existence of living off the wealth created by others is over. They long for a Cuba that will never be again - the colonial Cuba ended when Che and Fidel came down from the mountains.
Do I agree with the suppression of political activity under Castro? no. Do I agree with the suppression of freedom of worship? no. Do I think Castro has made disastrous decision viz-a-viz the Cuban economy? yes. However - as I stated before - cradle to grave health care, universal literacy, erasure of the gender gap and the eradication of hereditary privelaged class that were leeches on the greater Cuban society are no mean feats.
Cuba has never been the threat to us that it has been painted as -it is poor, it is isolated, it is 35 years behind in technology - there is no way they could get a boat across the straits much less launch a missile, even if they wanted to, which, BTW, Castro does not want to do. We pushed Castro into the arms of the Soviets almost 50 years ago - we told him you be our puppet or theirs. He chose them. Who could really blame him? We were to a large degree responsible for the perpetuation of the racist, sexist and classist society that saw 90% of the population living in poverty and repression, the very society he wanted to transform into a model of equality for all.
see, all that reading for Latin American History paid off, didn't it.
heh - I actually thiught that after I got off the soap box! :-)
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