Removing the embargo: magical pixie dust

Interesting column by Gwynne Dyer in Australia's Canberra Times. I use "interesting" as a euphemism for idiotic:

The survival of the regime is due in large part to the unremitting hostility of the United States, which lets it appeal to Cubans' patriotism, and to the trade embargo that gives it an excuse for its economic failures.

Yes, the survival of the regime is due "in large part" to the embargo and only slightly to do with all those guns the regime has, along with its network of neighborhood spies willing to turn in their countrymen for uttering a phrase of dissent. And by "unremitting hostility" I'm sure he's referring to the estimated $600 million - $1 billion of un-remittances that Cuba receives from the U.S. every year. Or perhaps the half billion in unremitting food the U.S. sells Cuba annually.

Cubans you see are mental defectives, who haven't been shown the light of day. They are totally in the dark about how they are being oppressed and manipulated because American tourists and corporations haven't shown them yet. This enlightenment is something that only American tourists and corporations can achieve. Canadians, English, French, Italians and even Australian tourists don't have the magical gift of making blind Cubans see the light. Hell even the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who have escaped the island, return to visit and keep in close contact with their blind family members haven't been able to remove the collective hoodwink that exists in Cuba. But removing the embargo will surely cure this. Once they see the light, the Cuban people will rise up and reclaim the civil liberties that are rightfully theirs.

Obama is clever enough to understand that the best way to kill the communist regime in Cuba is with kindness, and he has no domestic political debts that would keep him from acting on that insight.

Ah yes, that's exactly how communism fell in Europe. We financed them to death. We gave them a government backed adjustable rate loan.

In particular, he owes nothing to the Cuban exile establishment in Florida, which mostly voted for George W. Bush.

Yes, those pesky exiles, what do they know about the matter anyway? Forget that Obama promised NOT to lift the embargo without concessions from Cuba, that was just a campaign and besides everyone knows you can't trust a Democrat. No need to keep a campaign pledge, especially one made to those unenlightened exiles.

Once the question of where to send the remaining Guantanamo detainees has been resolved, Obama could close the base down entirely.

You mean the detainees that Australia doesn't want to take?

Indeed, he could give the land back to Cuba as a free gesture, since it has no economic or strategic value to the US. That would seriously undermine the communist regime's argument that the US is an implacable enemy that Cubans must confront with discipline and solidarity.

No, even better, we could offer raul castro land in south Florida so he can build a Cuban base on U.S. territory. Maybe we'll even offer him some nuclear missiles. After all, what's important here is to give legitimacy to the claims of the communists despite their ludicrous reasoning and false premises.

Then he could get to work on the ridiculous embargo on trade and travel to Cuba. The sanctions have been written into law in recent years, so he would need Congress's assent to remove them. But if he got it, all the mechanisms of control built up by Fidel Castro over the past 50 years would probably begin to crumble.

Oh yes, "probably begin to crumble". And I have some land in the everglades that "will probably" appreciate in value. I'm sure the scales will from the eyes of those blind Cubans and revolt will ensue post haste.

...I went to Cuba in the guise of a tourist (there's nothing like having a baby along to make you look innocent) and talked to a great many people informally.

Of course you did. It was "under the guise" of a tourist. You didn't actually stay in hotels or eat food in restaurants that Cubans are prohibited from eating (because of the embargo of course). And if you did, it was out of a sense of journalistic duty to "keep your cover".

Most of them expected the regime to fall soon, and a majority (though not an overwhelming majority) welcomed the prospect. However, they were all frightened of what might come next, for two reasons. One was the fact that at least 10 per cent of the Cuban population over a million people were true communist believers, and they were armed to the teeth.

There's only one group of people in Cuba that is armed to the teeth and that's the armed forces and the state security apparatus. Very few average Cubans believe in the revolution anymore and I bet many of those people in the armed forces don't even believe in it.

The other was that the exiles would come back from Miami and take over. Their money would let them buy up everything of value, and those who had endured decades of poverty under Castro would stay poor and marginalised. Even the few good things about ''socialist'' Cuba, such as the health care system, would be destroyed.

And then there's the issue of those damned exiles again. Imagine the chutzpah of leaving the country with the clothes on their back and having the gall to succeed in free societies and then God forbid that they would want to BUY back what had been STOLEN from them. Imagine people with money buying things of value, the outrage!

But wait a second, I thought Cuban people were blind to the fact that it's the regime that's keeping them down not the U.S. enemy. How is it possible that these exiles of which Dyer speaks could have made a lives for themselves in the heart of evil capitalism?

Fifty years on, the original generation of Cuban refugees is gradually giving way to an American-born generation who still care about the country, of course, but are much less interested in going back and re-creating the Cuba of the 1950s.

Ah yes, the bad old days when the Cuban peso traded evenly with the U.S. dollar and Americans were moving to Cuba at a greater rate than Cubans were moving to America (and the doors to both countries were wide open). Why would we want to return to the days when Cuba was the third most advanced country in the western hemisphere behind the U.S. and Canada? Silly exiles.

So change is a lot less dangerous for Cubans than it would have been if the regime had collapsed in the early 1990s. If Obama sets out to destabilise the communist regime with offers of help and friendship, it might well work. And even if it doesn't work right away, it would make the lives of Cubans a lot easier.

It will certainly make the castro brothers a lot richer, and isn't that what really matters?

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based journalist.

And also a bigoted idiot of the worst variety. You can send him your thoughts here.

Posted by Henry Louis Gomez at January 5, 2009 06:50 PM

Comments

Posted by: Rayarena at January 5, 2009 08:46 PM

Posted by: Humberto at January 6, 2009 09:29 AM