Saturday, December 20, 2014

Cuba Sí, Rubio No

Let's stop listening to Marco Rubio.
Oh, I know he's a hotshot down in Florida, mainly because he's a hip, young Republican who can do something no Florida Democrat not named Bill Nelson has been able to do statewide since 1998 - namely, win an election - and his star (Rubio's, not Nelson's) is on the rise, and he's being talked about as possibly the first Hispanic President, but since he's been wrong on so many things, we should ignore him.  Especially on Cuba.
President Obama is normalizing relations with Cuba as much as he can - the embargo can only be repealed by Congress, and the incoming Republican majorities are more intent on repealing the Affordable Care Act - by re-establishing diplomatic relations with Havana, easing restrictions on trade, and expanding travel opportunities not related to tourism.  This means that, while you can't visit the hottest spot south of the Copa for the fun of it, you will be able to buy Cuban cigars.
Marco Rubio looked like the guy who got one of those gag cigars that explode.  The son of Cuban immigrants who fled Castro (Oops!  Correction: They fled Batista) has gone on and on and on about how this will embolden Raul Castro to consolidate power in Cuba, blah blah blah, how it legitimizes the Cuban revolution, blah blah blah, and all that . . ..  
Yeah?  How come the embargo hasn't worked?  And how come our efforts to force a left-wing dictator out of power so we can get a right-wing dictator back in there have done nothing but enrage other countries?  I remember how then-President Jacques Chirac of France, in 1996, blasted the U.S. government for passing the Helms-Burton Act, which set to penalize foreign companies that owned Cuban property formerly owned by Americans and confiscated by Fidel Castro, saying that passage of that law was unstatesmanlike, disrespectful of international law, and generally dumb.  Well, we Americans dismissed Chirac as an idiot, because, after all, he's French, but they can't all be idiots - this law (still on the books) ticked off everyone on the planet.  Even the Canadians.  The United States has long been the only country with an embargo on Cuba, an embargo the rest of the world understands to be a wrongheaded attempt to regain American influence over Cuban economic affairs and to consolidate American power in the Western Hemisphere.
Except now, Obama wants to give the Cuban government more carrots and not so many sticks, realizing that friendly dialogue is the best way to instigate change in Cuba, and noted leftie groups like the United States Chamber of Commerce and noted liberals like Rand Paul support him.  Opposed to Obama's idea, apart from Rubio, is that well-known New Jersey Republican, Democrat Robert Menendez. :-p (He's Cuban, as you might have guessed.)  Raul Castro was very helpful in getting Internet contractor Alan Gross, jailed in Cuba for five years for trying to set up illegal World Wide Web service on the island, released and returned home (with help form the Pope), and he might be able to get convicted murderer/fugitive Joanne Chesimard sent back from Cuba to New Jersey (are you paying attention, Senator Menendez?) to serve out her prison term, so this is a win-win situation for the United States.  It also restores some badly needed sanity to our foreign policy.
I mean, come on. If this embargo were a good idea, it would have worked long ago.  It's been in place about as long as President Obama has been . . . alive.        
Oh yeah, here's another little bit of trivia: Jesse Jackson supported restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba . . . as a presidential candidate in 1984.  What's more, he was the only presidential candidate at the time who advocated such a thing.  To think . . .  there was a remote possibility of a black President re-opening ties with Cuba thirty years ago from the time of this post . . . and damned if it didn't turn out that way! :-)      

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