My Thoughts On Cuba
The other day I kind of touched on the Cuba issue without saying anything substantial (in all fairness to myself, I did warn you all in that very post not to expect anything meaningful from me), but I want to make this blog (at least some of the time) more than just ankle biting, snide remarks and ad hominem attacks. So today, I will do as North, one of my friends and readers suggested and actually write what I think about Cuba, rather than just make fun of what other people have said about it. I'd like to begin by saying that anticommunism is not really an obsession of mine. I disapprove of much of the the US cold war meddeling in Latin America (Pinochet, the Contras, etc., etc.) and have never thought Cuba (at least since they 1963) was much a concern. I think that US should end its embargo against Cuba, because Castro isn't much of a threat to America these days, the embargo impovrishes Cuba without weakening the regime and provides a convient excuse for Castro. However, Castro's new crackdown is completely inexcusable. No amount of "provocation" justifies this and any attempt to defend it is just nonsense mongering. By that kind of faulty reasoning all tin pot dictator's crimes are perfectly acceptable because Western (usually American) "Imperialism" can always be blamed for the latest tightening of the screws, even when in the case of the Afghanistan war the "provocation" is completely unrelated. I'm really disgusted by this kind of boot licking anti-enlightenment moral relativism that serves as a justification for "revolutionary", "third world" or "anti-imperialist" tyranny. Anyone with a brain ought to see that Castro (or for that matter, Arafat and Saddam) are responsible their own crimes and their people's suffering, to say otherwise is behave like the mealy mouthed pro-stalin party liners of the 30's and 40's.