Val
Don't mind Arnold. He gets a bit too nostalgic for the Cold War sometimes.
Many of us on the Right don't think much about Cuba anymore since it is perceived as a bit of a waiting game. However, your comments remind us that the brutality Castro is inexcusable and shouldn't be forgotten - or condoned the way many on the Left do today.
Scott

I can't decide if Arnold H. was trying to be very offensive, or willfully ignorant. What he has done is an old tactic of strawman, in this case saying that since nothing was perfect before, we should not try to improve things now. His assertions on re-invading and such are absurd, and I rather suspect that he knows this. If he does believe this, he either is a fool or has not spent much time around those of Cuban heritage. You have done a good job of knocking down the secondary strawmen within the post, but I fear that little can be done to educate and enlighten the mind behind it. I sure do hope I am wrong on this, and that maybe he was doing this for some other reason, but I have to wonder. As far as greater threats, do you think it might just be possible that Castro and his lapdog in Caracas might just be aiding the recruitment efforts by AQ that are underway? Hmmmmmmm. I wonder. Good job Val!

" One of the bitter truths we ought to have learned from Iraq"

I think that there are many lessons to be learned for the Iraq adventure, not just one. And I do not necessarily see the exiles in Iraq as having no backing, or not having a right to go back to try to make a difference.

"That means you are not the people to bring democracy to Cuba after the commie dictator bites the dust. After all, your people didn't exactly bring democracy to Cuba under Fulgencio Batista or his predecessors, either. Did you?"

No, that generation was fooled into believing what they wanted to hear. not the first or the last time that happens.
But there is a new generation today ready to pick up the banner of freedom and take the fight to the enemy, be they foreign or domestic.
"To die for your country, is to Live."

Madtom

Claiming that Cuban-Americans kidnapped Elian Gonzales is de facto Castro apologism. I credit nothing from anyone who makes such a claim, the same way I ignore political comments from people who claim that Ho Chi Minh was the George Washington of Viet Nam.

Mothers don't throw themselves into shark-infested waters just to escape from "free health care," Michael Moore's fat-braindead-Marxist-orangutan opinions notwithstanding.

Val,

I found your blog via Diggers Realm. Here is a quote from my post, TIME FOR A CUBAN CIGAR? (02/02/04):

"I have said to myself that I will smoke a cigar from Havana on the day of Castro's death. Do you think the time is ready?"

Check out Liberty for Cuba.

Best Premises,

Martin Lindeskog - American in spirit.
Gothenburg, Sweden (a.k.a the socialist "paradise").

"which will be owned and controlled by outsiders."

Has he ever heard of Chrysler?
What is it with these peoples and free markets, I mean under the Clinton China deal we get foreign controlled media outlets, Yes in China of all places. What in the world would be so bad with a little foreign investment in a free (or at least free'er) Cuba?

"On the brighter side, a lot of them have gotten educations"

How stupid, like if the dictator invented public schools on the island. My Grandmother was born in the year 1900, and she would teach us our multiplication tables when we were growing up. Were in the hell do you think she learned to multiply?
Oh and she was also the volunteer nurse for her neighborhood, that gave the poor thier injections, In what I must assume was the non existent health care system of the day, I say non-existing because this is all before the dictator was even born (there's a Cubanisum I could use here)

Madtom

Bien dicho Valentín. Of course there is nothing wrong with foreign investment, on the contrary. But just a little stat: something like 60% of pre-1959 Cuban sugar mills were owned by CUBAN NATIONALS.

Elian someday will be President of Cuba.

First off I want you all to know I'm not Cuban (Scot-Irish at best), and that I am a high school student, but thanks to my great hate of the bearded bastard I have written and am directing a play about a greedy cruise line hiring a cheap, drunk assassin to go to Cuba and kill Castro (I jsut changed the names around a bit). Its really funny, and cool. I figured you might think its kinda cool too, like that prank phone call, remember that? Im' eventually going to try to get it published.

By the way its name is "Flint OR Hoover's How-to:Killing the Communist Dictator and other fun facts about politcal assassination". Notice the Dr. Strangelove reference?

This is probably thre begining of the end for Castro. The decline to death in the elderly often begins with broken bones, There is threat of embolism, clots and stroke associated with broken bones and the inactivity they bring,

I don't know that there will violence and bloodshed when Castro dies, I doubt it as it is a regime with a powerful police mechanisms.

The question is will the US be" instrumental in bringing liberty to the Cuban people"

There are probably plans in place to prevent the mass migration that might occur.

After that ,hopefully for the Cubans ,not by the Iraq model of "Shock and Awe", invasion, and occupation.

Val, you certainly gave me a fiskover. But I won't respond the same way, because I hold fisk fights in contempt and not worthy of good blogsites. An identical copy of what I'm posting here is going to your blogsite as well.

1) No, I certainly don't get any information from Cuba from its communist government sources or any of their henchmen. But the reason I don't expend effort seeking information from Cuban exiles about current conditions in Cuba is that I don't trust subjective subjective judgements such as your community is noted for. I was trained, in my undergraduate degree program, for a career in journalism. And one of the things I learned up front was not to look for objectivity either among victims or perpetrators.

The US government in 1959-1960 made the mistake of listening to your people too seriously about the likelihood of Cubans taking to the streets en masse to get rid of Castro. If they had any common sense, they would have used an information source other than a group of revenge-bent exiles.

Your people, in turn, made the mistake of listening to the promises of a pack of liberals whom you ought to have known would never follow through on a commitment such as they made to the Miami Cubans.

The initial landing was supposed to have been made near Trinidad, on the south coast near the Escambray mountains. At the last minute, Kennedy chickened out on grounds that he did not want it known that the US had organized and supported the invasion, which purportedly would have been more obvious at the Trinidad location.

So the CIA dumped the 1300 men of Brigade 2506 off swampy coast of the isolated Bay of Pigs. At night, yet, despite that no successful seaborne invasion in World War II had been attempted at night. If your commanders in Guatemala had any common sense, they would have called it off right then. Instead Brigade 2506 suffered 114 men killed and 1,189 men captured to endure the ignominy of Castro's prisons. In short, just another failed Cuban emigre filibuster, like those of Narciso Lopez in the 19th century.

2) I don't have anything personal against any Cuban or Cubans. I am not and never have been a racist. I am in fact a culturalist, in that I strongly believe in the relative superiority and inferiority of various cultures of the world. Culture determines that Germans almost always beat Frenchmen in wars, that Israelis almost always beat Arabs, that Anglo-Saxons beat Latin Americans. Culture determines that some groups inhabit graduate schools and others inhabit prisons. Culture determines that Yankees invent and build steam locomotives, automobiles, airplanes, radio, televison, and thermonuclear weapons. Culture determines that Latins endure unstable regimes and bad government.

And in my objective judgement, the cultures of the Caribbean peoples — whether they be Cuban, Puerto Rican, Haitian, Dominican, Jamaican or any of the rest — is that they are marked by unstable governments dominated by military adventurers; general cultural backwardness in terms of education, public health and economic and industrial development; and local rule by rich landowners who are in position to hire their own armies of thugs.

You probably feel insulted by what I have written here. But if I were in your shoes, I would think long and hard about what made Cuba just another Latin hellhole that has suffered bad government, general economic backwardness and other social ills for 500 full years since the first the first Spaniards sailed around your island. And I would think even harder about how to reform Cuban culture and society. Without which, it will be only a matter of time before another Batista or another Castro fucks over the lives of the Cuban people.

3) About Elian Gonzales. No responsible mother that I can think of would have waded out into the shark-filled Florida straits with her small child, protected only by an inflated inner tube from an old automobile tire. And I can think of nobody I know who would have denied that child's surviving father the right to come here to the United States and take his son home. Irrrespective of communism or Castro.

And I can think of no community in this country that sounded more irresponsible about this issue than the Miami Cubans with their quasi-religious-based hysterics in attempting to keep that child from his rightful father. I thought then and I think now that Janet Reno did the right thing in returning that kid to his natural father. Regardless of Castro using him for his fading propaganda machine.

4) You and your people are part of our Republican coalition. And I value you all for that. Because without you, Algore would have won the 2000 election in Florida and with it the US presidency.

But I equally value the support of the 33 million evangelical christians, even though I believe in no religion at all, and the anti-abortion crowd, despite that I support abortion rights. Because western civilization is at a fateful crossroads right now, and we need to keep George Bush in power. In return for that, I will go along with Bush doing everything possible to keep Cuba's communist regime diplomatically and economically isolated until Castro dies.

But when that happens, I want Cuba to transition peacefully to a stable constitutional government. Maybe then, us Norte Americanos will no longer have reason to think of Cuba as the place where the Spaniards proverbially discovered a whorehouse and built Havana around it.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb

Arnold,

As much as I disagree with most of what you just responded, I think I would have accepted most of it as "agree-to-disagree-with-agreeably." I have always valued reading your take on things at Deans. We are in total agreement on many issues.

However, I completely lost all respect and estimation when I read the following:

Maybe then, us Norte Americanos will no longer have reason to think of Cuba as the place where the Spaniards proverbially discovered a whorehouse and built Havana around it.

You see, sir, my mother is from Cuba. As are my grandmother, my sister, aunts and every other female member of my family. And I can assure you that any one of those culturally backward, uneducated, religiously hysterical whores, have more class and dignity, even in a fleeting thought, than you could ever even contemplate.

Ill not address your other comments publicly because I really, truly believe that this anger of yours is a manifestation of your frustration with yourself as a person.

Ow. That's gonna leave a mark...

Scott Kirwin has it correctly. A lot of us on the political right in the USA no longer think about Cuba. Because with the downfall of the Soviet empire 13 years ago, it is no longer significant to the overall interests of the United States. This presupposes that Cuba is not about to become an outpost of islamo-fascism, with which we are now in a long term conflict.

So for you Cuban-Americans, or Cubans in exile, or whatever you privately think your destiny is, Cuba is your problem and yours alone. You know as well as the rest of us do that Castro, now in his mid-70s, will be gone from the Cuban scene in a decade or less.

Then, if matters take their course, US investment will flood back into your island. Then you still won't have any real independence, any more than your people did under Castro, Batista, Laredo Bru, Grau, Machado, Menocal, Gomez, Estrado Palma or any other blatherskite leader of the island since the Spanish forces were booted out in 1898.

Anyway, good luck to the lot of you in decommunizing Cuba. As long as you don't involve the United States of America in your schemes. Because, as I have written, we have other and more important problems these days.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Val, I am sure the women in your family were not and are not among the whores of Havana. That little sarcastic phrase has been part of the American general culture since long before you were born. Probably put their by many a US Navy enlisted man who landed in Cuba for a few days' shore leave.

And I just have to tell you that among the generation with which I grew up, those coming of age in the 1950s, a common experience was a legendary short trip to Havana (for the boys only) for a legendary and not-too-expensive fuckfest, a chance to waste some money in some La Cosa Nostra casino, and a general opportunity to pretend you were Sky Masterson in "Guys and Dolls" (Marlon Brando does the town in Havana).

So what can I say? I only assumed that aspect of life was an accepted part of the Cuban culture.

One of the things you ought to be complaining about in connection with this bastard Castro is that he has turned into the country's pimp-in-chief in efforts to aid and abet hungry women selling their bodies to tourists on the Havana streets. Even Mao Zedong didn't stoop that low in the worst days of communism in China.

Anyway, growing up here, you know Americans as well as I do. If they don't get proper economic and industrial development in Cuba, that exactly is what visiting Americans will travel to Cuba for. Just like they go to Bangkok for the same reason.

Remember, Val. You can change your culture, but nobody escapes from it.

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

"2) I don't have anything personal against any Cuban or Cubans. I am not and never have been a racist. I am in fact a culturalist, in that I strongly believe in the relative superiority and inferiority of various cultures of the world. Culture determines that Germans almost always beat Frenchmen in wars, that Israelis almost always beat Arabs, that Anglo-Saxons beat Latin Americans. Culture determines that some groups inhabit graduate schools and others inhabit prisons."

If this don't say it all, then nothing I say will help
are these your right wing friends? this must be the Lott camp

madtom

Wow! This exchange reminds me of the Elian days when I lost quite a few friends over that Clinto mess. I was called a "right-wing reactionary" and also a Cuban "hothead" for wanting Elian to enjoy freedom. See my link here. Arnold is another member of that lost generation that still sees Fidel as a hero. What a sad, pathetic lot they are.

Arnold Harris:

Viejo verde, this obsession of yours with whores and whorehouses obviously reveals your frustration in a certain area.

As to Elián González, I'll say this oooonce agaaaaain: There is no such thing as a parent's right to force a child to live in tyranny. I categorize the actions of Juan González as child abuse. Parental rights are negated in cases of child abuse. Elián should've remained in this country.

What the...? That old man is extremely stupid. His parroquial superiority makes me puke. Anglosaxons superior to Spanish? Hahaha. The Spaniards saved the world from the Muslims on Oct. 7, 1571. Of course he wouldn't even know that.By then the English were too busy killing and repressing Catholics to do anything about the Muslims. Pope Gregory, an Italian with Spanish advisers, changed the Julian Calendar to the one we all use now-a-days called Gregorian Calendar in Oct 1582. The stupid English wouldn't accept it until 1752! It took the "brilliant" Anglosaxons almost two centuries to catch up. The first university in Spain, Salamanca, was founded in 1135, the first one in England, Oxford, in 1167. Slavery was abolished in Mexico by our first president, Guadalupe Victoria, in 1824. When was it abolished in the US? The treatment of black people in Spanish America was way better than in Saxon America, that's why race relationships are a lot better down here. Mexican workers in the US are highly regarded by their American employers, because they work harder and better than most Americans. On the other hand the fact that Saxons win wars, or Germans, well, Mongols are the best winners in history, so that must be your paradigm, to be like Genghis Khan. Want some tacos or enchiladas man? Maybe a burrito or guacamole? Perhaps fajitas? Tamales? Our food is conquering your stupid superiority. And what problem do you have with religion? Is it bad to worship God? Is it bad to be a Catholic? My Church invented universities, hospitals, elderly homes, orphan asilums, the printing press and hundres of other important things that would take too much space to enlist here. Right now my Church is taking care of one quarter of all aids patients on planet Earth. And it has 11,000 hospitals to take care of the poor in most instances. My Church educated a third of all the skilled people in Africa. And so on, and so forth. And this is just a small sample of what I can tell you about Hispanics and Catholics. And all of this without insulting your women, which would be a total lack of taste and respect. Bug off with your ignorant and racist remarks.

Miguel, your self-centered parochialism on behalf of Hispanics seems to be practically a mirror-image of Arnold's Anglo-Saxonism.

"The Spaniards saved the world from the Muslims on Oct. 7, 1571."

I presume you think that the fleet under Don John of Austria that defeated the Turks at Lepanto was largely or even primarily Spanish? The overwhelming majority were Venetian. Add in the Neapolitan, Sicilian, Genoese, Savoyard, Maltese and Papal ships, and the Spanish were a fairly small minority.

"The stupid English wouldn't accept it until 1752!"

What a giveaway. And I suppose us Russians are even more "stupid" for not abandoning the Julian Calendar until forced to do so at gunpoint in 1917?

"The first university in Spain, Salamanca, was founded in 1135, the first one in England, Oxford, in 1167."

Oxford has no official date of foundation. Dating the university's creation to Henry II's 1167 ban on English students attending the University of Paris is inaccurate, as there was clearly teaching going on in Oxford well before then, going back to at least before the turn of the eleventh century. Regardless, Bologna predates either Oxford or Salamanca and Al Azhar in Cairo predates all of them. As if any of that actually signifies anything.

"Slavery was abolished in Mexico by our first president, Guadalupe Victoria, in 1824. When was it abolished in the US?"

In 1865, of course, but last I checked you were attacking "Anglo-Saxons," not just the US. It was the Royal Navy that ended the international slave trade, starting in the 1830's; most of the ships they intercepted were Spanish and Portuguese, followed by the French and the Dutch, and only lastly American (since the US Constitution actually abolished importation of slaves after 1808).

"The treatment of black people in Spanish America was way better than in Saxon America,"

Saxon America? I've never heard that term before. It's completely inaccurate, too, of course, since British settlers, while indeed majority English, also had a disproportionally high number of Scots, Welsh and Irish: those are Celts, Miguel, not Saxons.

"that's why race relationships are a lot better down here."

Oh, please. Latin America is notoriously stratified by race. I'll be stunned if I ever see anyone as black as Colin Powell or Condi Rice in an analagous position south of the border.

"Our food is conquering your stupid superiority."

No, it's just becoming as native as pizza or eggrolls.

"My Church invented universities,

The university as a concept dates back to the Academy under Aristotle in ancient Athens.

"hospitals, elderly homes, orphan asilums,

You'll find that all those things existed in China several centuries before Christianity. I'm not saying that the Church developing them was bad, just that you're demonstrating self-centered ignorance by this rant.

"...the printing press..."

Huh? That Gutenberg was Catholic means the Church invented the printing press? Does that mean that radio is a disputed invention between Catholicism (Marconi) and Orthodoxy (Tesla)?

HAHAHAHA, did it hurt Dave? Well is just the other way around with Arnold, and he comes here to hurt. As for your account of Lepanto, it is plain BS, the great majority of troops in those vessels were Spaniards, the Venetians were mostly sailors. Try to get it right. Yes, the Russians were even more stupid, denying reality even for a longer time. The dates I offered for Salamanca and Oxford are the dates of their official approval by the respective crowns. The US is an Anglo-Saxon country in it's origins, for your information. I'm a quarter celt also, by the way. South of the border we have had several Indian PRESIDENTS, not just Secretaries of State or whathaveyou. In Mexico I mean, where there are very few Black people. Guerrero, Miramón, Juárez, Díaz, Cárdenas and others were Presidents of the Nation, all of them Indians. In South and Central American there have been several black Presidents like Hugo Chávez in Venezuela right now. And that is just a part of race relationships. Blacks in Latin America don't hate whites, as they do in the USA. I would love to extend over the huge difference in the treatment of slaves in the US and Spanish America, but it will take lots of space. Suffice it to say that up there families could be sold every individual apart, babies snatched from their mother's arms. In the Spanish America families had to be sold all together or none. Up there, masters were owners of life and death, down here, masters would go to prision if they would not only kill, but hurt badly a slave. Yes, the Academy was like a university, but it is not alive today. Salamanca is. Just like the Vikings being here before Columbus. So what? They didn't leave any trace at all in our current world. Ditto for the Chinese institutions. The food issue was a joke, but the "Saxon superiority" doesn't show at all in the cuisine, anyways. And for Gutemberg, I've always considered any Catholic achievements as part of my Church, though you can contend that, it's quite subjective. Now Dave, I don't know you, so don't take this as anything personal, please. I DID take it personal from Arnold, because he was even insulting the Cuban women and coming down with this ferotious anti Spanish anti Catholic rant, most of it false. With him I felt it like a personal thing, but not with you at all, a sensible, calm discusser. To finish: your numeric account of Lepant is completely wrong, get the right info about it, please. God bless all around.