Time to end the Cuba embargo?

Pardalis said:
So you want to add Cuba to the list? Let's make it consistent, let's trade with all of them, right?
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no. since Cuba's human rights record is much better than China's, we should remove the embargo, give THEM most-favore-nation trade status, and enforce some economic sanctions upon China.

silence is acceptance...and our trade with China is silence like none other.
 
Pardalis said:
You're right, we should accept them as they are, and openly trade with them. It doesn't matter if they abuse human rights and don't allow free speech and democracy.

Let's just call it "cultural diversity".
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you mean like we do with China and Saudi Arabia?

ETA: Thunder was quicker
 
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thaiboxerken said:
Obama may not have lifted the embargo, and he may not. However, he did lift the ban on Cuban musicians having concerts in the USA.
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Reason enough to impeach him, don't you think? :D

For the rest of you, please, read my posts. A year or so ago, I pointed out that Cuba and the US have already begun some trading, see the word "Alimport."

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3484014&postcount=32

But should we expand it? I'd say somewhat, if they have anything we want to trade for.

Besides cigars and nice weather, what does Cuba have that we want? Ask people in the sugar industry ... not just the old school Anti Castro crowd. ;)
 
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It is my honest belief that the more authoritarian regimes trade with the USA, the more the people want to BE......like the USA.

And I'm willing to suggest that the American embargo may have indeed been one of the reasons why Communism and Castro have survived soo long in Cuba.
 
IMO we're punishing the wrong people with the cruel, anachronistic, and pointless embargo. The Castro crime family is doing quite well for itself, and since they can get away with blaming the USA for the troubles of ordinary Cubans, we're just helping them maintain their grip on power.

I say put a McDonalds and Starbucks in the middle of Havana. The Castros won't survive for six months.
 
corplinx said:
Right now there is an effort to open travel to Cuba. As a diver, I would love to dive Cuba without doing what other Americans do: traveling to grand cayman and visiting cuba from there, they don't stamp your passport. Its a "wink wink" loophole in the travel ban.

However, visiting Cuba is difficult morally (for me anyway). The resorts.... well.. you can do your own reading. I'm not sure I would go unless they liberalized tourism on their side.

No matter how much sense it makes to end the embargo, and let people who think its a good idea boycott Cuban goods, I just don't think it will be politically viable until the Castro brothers are gone. We have ex-Cubans living in America who remembers their family members being killed by death squads in the revolution. That is a powerful grudge to get over.
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Which is another reason: The CUban embargo is working about as well as prohibition does.
 
ravdin said:
IMO we're punishing the wrong people with the cruel, anachronistic, and pointless embargo. The Castro crime family is doing quite well for itself, and since they can get away with blaming the USA for the troubles of ordinary Cubans, we're just helping them maintain their grip on power.

I say put a McDonalds and Starbucks in the middle of Havana. The Castros won't survive for six months.
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Hey, that is what worked in Moscow...

In fact I am betting that despite all the yelling, the Cuban government is secretly scared stiff that the Embargo will be lifted.
 
Thunder said:
It is my honest belief that the more authoritarian regimes trade with the USA, the more the people want to BE......like the USA.

And I'm willing to suggest that the American embargo may have indeed been one of the reasons why Communism and Castro have survived soo long in Cuba.
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Agree up to a point. I would be very cautious about what kind of business we allow with certain regimes...nothing of any military value.
 
Ending the embargo is probably a political impossibility at this point. Limiting it, however, may still substantially undermine the regime and it's something that could conceivably be done by an intelligent, bold leader.

McHrozni
 
Half a dozen bickering/uncivil/off-topic posts have been moved to Abandon All Hope. Please keep things civil and on topic. Note: the topic is not each other.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: LashL
 
Thunder said:
Canada has normal trade relations with Cuba. Just sayin'.
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Basically everyone except the US has normal trade relations with Cuba. However many of those countries had to put in place legislation to protect its citizens engaged in said legal trade from unwarranted legal action from the US.
 
Architect said:
Basically everyone except the US has normal trade relations with Cuba.
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I guess that's because the USA is the only country that really cares about human rights!!

oh...wait...I forgot about our billions in trade with China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc etc.

hmmm.....so why is it then that we still have the embargo?

oh yeah, crazy right-wing Cubans in Florida.
 
The only reason for which I can see an embargo on another country as a rational measure is to prevent that country's becoming a military threat on any significance.

Cuba has no capacity to inflict serious harm on any of their neighbors, nor would they be likely to become much more capable, militarily, should we begin normal trade with them.

I think a lot of the people who want the embargo left in place are still bearing a grudge over the loss of some assets siezed after the revolution.

Too bad.
 
Thunder said:
you got it. it has nothing to do with "human rights".
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I think that whether the resources of a country are used to feed the peasants or to enrich foreign investors is a human rights issue.

"First, feed your own people" should be a steadfast law written on the heart of any ruler. And no outsider has a right to object as long as the ruler does not reach outside his borders to sieze food for his people.
 
leftysergeant said:
"First, feed your own people" should be a steadfast law written on the heart of any ruler.
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It appears, from your language, that you prefer that people be ruled, rather than served.

You surprised me with that one. The farewell to kings was one of our founding principles. Rulers are for the era of the divine right of kings, one would prefer governments that serve their people in a more enlightened era.

DR
 
Visiting Cuba is interesting. It's hard to imagine what it would look like WITHOUT being propped up by Russia for three decades with generous oil subsidies, food imports, and manufactured goods. Only inept leadership could turn a beautiful Caribbean island into a living museum from the 1950's...

Cuba's only hope is tourism. But that's not going to happen without a democratic and financially-stable government that is worthy of U.S. investment dollars. Cuba has the potential to prosper overnight. The tourism dollars from the exile community in Miami alone could sustain their country.
 
Darth Rotor said:
Rulers are for the era of the divine right of kings, one would prefer governments that serve their people in a more enlightened era.
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Cuba was a dictatorship before the revolution.

Whether you feed your own people or the criminal class or foreign investors and planters is part of the difference between a benign dictator and a tyrant.
Batista was clearly a tyrant. He sold Cuba's daughters into prostitution to the Mafia and the land that should have fed the peasants to the agribusinesses that fed Americans with money.
 
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