Cleon
King of the Pod People
Family Values Under the Bush Administration
- Thread starter Cleon
- Start date
Have to admit in today's world I have no idea why the USA maintains it's weird attitude to Cuba - for goodness sake Russian and the USA have made up and at least exchange Christmas cards!
OK no one expects them to best mates - but it does seem nothing more then a petty grudge nowadays.
OK no one expects them to best mates - but it does seem nothing more then a petty grudge nowadays.
Cleon
King of the Pod People
It gets even weirder when you consider how well the US gets on with China--whose human rights record makes Cuba look like Disneyland.
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
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It's really quite simple. Cuban ex-pats make up a sizeable swing vote in a state (Florida) w/ a lot of electoral votes - see the 2000 elections.
Purely politics, Darat.
Tricky
Briefly immortal
Yep. These are the same Miami Cubans who wanted to keep a young boy from being returned to his legal and, by all appearances, loving father because of his PR value. Most of these folks are one-issue voters, so it doesn't take much to keep them happy.
WildCat
NWO Master Conspirator
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Every party in power has coddled the Cuban ex-pat vote, and thus kept up the ridiculous embargo. Clinton was a lame duck when Elian was (rightly) sent home, but this decision cost the Dems dearly in 2000.
I agree to a point. Maybe we should keep the pressure up until the old man dies to see if anything shakes loose. I don't really care as long as we aren't expected to pretend that Cuba is the workers paradise whose only crime is running afoul of their evil white overlords.
Clinton also came closest to doing the right thing on the policy front. He was all about gradually relaxing various regulations and was even coming to Congress about changing some of the laws. Then those dumb bastards shot down two American-flagged civilian aircraft in international airspace. That was it -- Clinton was boxed in.
Better to coddle American citizens than a murdering thug, I always say. But that's just me.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Isn't that the point? The only people being harmed are those ordinary people caught up in a stupid political game. All this doesn't hurt Castro one bit.
But The embargo hasn't hurt Castro one tiny bit; if anything, it has helped him by making us look bad to the Cuban people.
Pardon me, but is it the U.S. that officially calls Cuban political dissenters "gusanos" (worms)? Is it the U.S. that imprisons Cuban political dissenters for their opposition to the government? Is it the U.S. that won't let Cubans leave Cuba? Is it the U.S. that doesn't allow free elections in Cuba? Is it the U.S. that doesn't allow free press in Cuba?
If Cuba's economy is so delicate that people live in squalor and misery without U.S. trade (and they don't - Castro says they have wonderful lives in his socialist workers' paradise, and he wouldn't lie about something like that), why doesn't Castro either 1) institute the necessary social reforms so that the U.S. would lift the embargo, or 2) take the necessary steps to invigorate his economy without U.S. support - i.e., ditch communism?
Exactly. Harmful activity at the expense of harmless inaction, because we have to do something.
HarryKeogh
Unregistered
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Can someone remind me why we still have an embargo on Cuba and not on China?
If I were Tony Oliva, I'd be pestering my congressman to put pressure on Castro to let my brother leave Cuba and come to the U.S. and get the best medical care in the world. 'Cuz he sure ain't gonna get it in Havana.
Are you talking about 40 wasted years with Cuba or the 12 wasted years with Iraq when you talk about the empty effect of sanctions?
Seems there's no pleasing some people. No wonder Bush doesn't even try.