Maybe, but it's not really the Right standing alone in this. Hardline Democrat Bob Menendez responded in essentially the same way. This is a very touchy subject for more than a few Cuban Americans regardless if they are aligned with Democrats, Republicans, the Tea Party or the Green Party. Also, if they lived in Cuba at any point in time since 1959, they would beg to differ with you on the idea that the US is even in the same building as Cuba when it comes to human rights violations.
Cuban-American relations heading towards normalization?
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Maybe, but it's not really the Right standing alone in this. Hardline Democrat Bob Menendez responded in essentially the same way. This is a very touchy subject for more than a few Cuban Americans regardless if they are aligned with Democrats, Republicans, the Tea Party or the Green Party. Also, if they lived in Cuba at any point in time since 1959, they would beg to differ with you on the idea that the US is even in the same building as Cuba when it comes to human rights violations.
OK. Cuba's human rights record is bad. But according to these rankings anyway, we have a number of allies that are even worse.
http://www.ihrri.com/contry.php
So it hardly seems to me that it's sufficient justification to keep an embargo and continue to not have diplomatic relations.
http://www.ihrri.com/contry.php
So it hardly seems to me that it's sufficient justification to keep an embargo and continue to not have diplomatic relations.
I will grant you this is a perfectly valid point. The US has called a number of nations its friends and allies when they are in fact neck and neck with Cuba or even eclipsing Cuba in terms of human rights violations. And yes, if the American gov't wants to be truly characterized as a defender of human rights, their consistency when it comes to the worst of the worst needs massive improvement and it needs it now.
Right. I can't see how anyone could really argue that Cuba is "worse" in this regard than Saudi Arabia, for example.
Plus, it's not just Cuba who benefits from a diplomatic relationship. Take the embassy, for example. Embassies serve a lot of different functions, but one of them is to help fellow citizens (meaning Americans in the case of US embassies). The Vox link in the OP lists it as a benefit for Cuba when really it's a mutual benefit.
Hell, you could add some of the nations we have called our friends and allies in the war on terror as well even when we weren't using them to quench our oil thirst: Egypt, Pakistan, Libya and so on. That's why although I still hope America gets some form of concessions from Cuba other than the prisoners they probably released solely for temporary PR purposes, I would support this based on principles of consistency.
Goody for Bobby Menendez, but he's hardly an unbiased source as he has a reason for a major hard-on against the Cubans and I mean that in every sense of the word.
emax100 said:
Been a Black male in New York City, Cleveland or Ferguson lately, emax? Read the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report? Notice how many cameras are trained on you at every intersection you stop at or store you walk into?
The U.S. has no business climbing up on its high horse and look down upon anybody's lousy human rights record.
According to the site Clintl linked to the United States ranks 18th in human rights.
Later for that "America is awesome" noise. There's plenty room for improvement.
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Yes, Castro was a dictator and Cuba is still a pretty nasty place to live. Not a fan of applauding Castro "winning." Yay Castro. Why don't we do a little fist-pump for Mao and Stalin and Pol Pot while we're at it?
But - the embargo has always been farcical, and for the past few decades it's been maintained mostly because of bitter old men in Miami angry that the U.S. never sent the Marines to go repossess their property for them. A lot of those angry Cuban refugees were the wealthy elite before Castro took over.
And it's pretty ridiculous to argue that we shouldn't normalize relations with Cuba because they're bad and evil and oppressive when we normalized relations with fucking China, not to mention Saudi Arabia and other countries with equally reprehensible human rights records.
But - the embargo has always been farcical, and for the past few decades it's been maintained mostly because of bitter old men in Miami angry that the U.S. never sent the Marines to go repossess their property for them. A lot of those angry Cuban refugees were the wealthy elite before Castro took over.
And it's pretty ridiculous to argue that we shouldn't normalize relations with Cuba because they're bad and evil and oppressive when we normalized relations with fucking China, not to mention Saudi Arabia and other countries with equally reprehensible human rights records.
Honestly, I think normalizing our relationship with them is the best way to make sure Castro DOESN'T win.
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We got a guy and a spy back, a cheap tourist destination, and maybe they'll send some medical personnel.
I don't get he's got a point, as there's no guarantee I see of Cuba doing anything in particular.
They didn't have Hong Kong 30 years ago. Whether China has 'improved' or not seems a. seriously debatable (how many political prisoners are there in China?), and b. beside the point. Saudi Arabia, our Partner in Peace. We care not, as an entity, how badly a nation treats its citizenry.
Why? Why does there need to be proof of this? It's a sovereign nation.
Democrat Bob Menendez, the guy so dumb he didn't (and for all I know doesn't; I just heard his comments after Obama's speech and went, 'buh?') understand what Obama very clearly said? That they weren't exchanging the guy for the prisoners, but were doing a spy swap and he was an add-on seemed to entirely escape Menendez and the wrong interpretation formed the basis of his argument.
It wasn't a shining moment.
It's been going on for over six decades now. You really think they haven't figured it out yet?
Maybe we should air-drop on them a gazillion volumes of Ayn Rand "novels", translated into Spanish.
Or just maybe air-drop on them Ted Cruz. With a parachute, of course. Then he can explain everything.
caw
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I've been to Cuba a few times - just the resort areas.
I went to school with a bunch of Americans and it was weird to plan spring break destinations and have to leave Cuba out. It wasn't like the other places we were considering were paragons of political virtue or anything. We could have travelled to countries the Americans were actually at war with, (as far as I know - we weren't stupid enough to try) but Cuba was verboten. Seemed very arbitrary.
So - no, this decision shouldn't be seen through the filter of a pale westerner looking for a place to escape the long winters. But in terms of the US having a foreign policy that makes sense to this Canadian? Normalizing relations with Cuba seems like a good idea.
I went to school with a bunch of Americans and it was weird to plan spring break destinations and have to leave Cuba out. It wasn't like the other places we were considering were paragons of political virtue or anything. We could have travelled to countries the Americans were actually at war with, (as far as I know - we weren't stupid enough to try) but Cuba was verboten. Seemed very arbitrary.
So - no, this decision shouldn't be seen through the filter of a pale westerner looking for a place to escape the long winters. But in terms of the US having a foreign policy that makes sense to this Canadian? Normalizing relations with Cuba seems like a good idea.
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Yep. The hardline Cubans in South Florida--and make no mistake, there are a lot of them and they have a lot of influence in both parties--are furious. Many of them still retain paperwork they believe will allow them to reclaim their post properties once the Castro regime falls.
Normalizing relations with Cuba is a bitter pill for them, to say the least.
Many of their children--and other younger Cubans--feel the same way. But then, there are many who do not. It's going to be an interesting power struggle on this issue down here, albeit one that should have occurred decades ago, imo.
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A new FIU poll came out showing that Cubans in South Florida are indeed divided on the issue.
They are opposed to continuing the embargo by a slight 52/48 margin
One of the interesting things is that of the older Cubans, those 65 and over, 60% are opposed to lifting the embargo.
However, of those under the age of 30 only 8% oppose lifting the embargo.
And perhaps most telling, 53% of registered Cuban-American voters say that they would be inclined to vote for a candidate who favored restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba.
So, not to be cynical, but I think the shift in US policy has an awful lot to do with the shift in the thinking of the powerful Cuban American voting block.
https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2014-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf
They are opposed to continuing the embargo by a slight 52/48 margin
One of the interesting things is that of the older Cubans, those 65 and over, 60% are opposed to lifting the embargo.
However, of those under the age of 30 only 8% oppose lifting the embargo.
And perhaps most telling, 53% of registered Cuban-American voters say that they would be inclined to vote for a candidate who favored restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba.
So, not to be cynical, but I think the shift in US policy has an awful lot to do with the shift in the thinking of the powerful Cuban American voting block.
https://cri.fiu.edu/research/cuba-poll/2014-fiu-cuba-poll.pdf
That's not cynicism, that's realism. Politicians have been behind the societal curve as long as I can remember. From civil rights to women's rights to gay rights to the war on drugs to police violence, changes come from the bottom up, and the political system glacially follows popular opinion.
"Leadership" is apparently concerned with keeping society from going where it wants to go until the forces can no longer be resisted, at which point the "leaders" jump out in front and claim they were for it all along.
Leaders would have never bowed to those with deep pockets and implemented the embargo in the first place.
I think that's true, but not really for the reasons you're implying. The reason it happens is that changes in societal attitudes are usually initiated by new generations, and it takes a while for them to become the generation in power. That's pretty clearly what's happening with the Cuban-American community.
I think the shift for the Cuban American attitudes is simpler; the Cuban American generation that were directly affected by Castro's purges and crushing of dissidents are passing on to the next life by now, so to speak, or becoming too senile to be influential, and the generations of Cuban Americans that are becoming more influential now have pretty much the same priorities and worries any other Americans in their generation have. And so they have gotten over any grudges against Castro's regime, as justified and understandable as they are, and are now worried first and more most about their future as Americans. And many of them inevitably become less optimistic about their future when they think of it under a gov't that tries to dictate where they can or can't go.
Fidel, Keith Richards and Abe Vigoda are greatly amused by your error.
In every case, it's a little hard to tell that they are still with us.
Sorry, I didn't mean to be implying anything. I thought I was stating clearly that politicians are opportunists, doing whatever they need to maintain as much power as possible, and only recognizing the demands of civil society when forced to do so.
What new generation took the White House to make civil rights legislation pass? LBJ was from an earlier generation than Kennedy.
Where has Obama's "leadership" been on gay rights and the war on drugs? He's supposedly of the "new generation" too, but he's kept from showing leadership in both those areas, firmly digging in his heels even though society has made huge gains in the last seven years. He's hardly at the front of the growing anti-imperialism sentiment, either. He also could have spoken up about police violence anytime in the last seven years; this is hardly a new problem.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that politicians' opinions regularly change following shifts in popular opinion, and I can't name a single piece of legislation that waited for a new generation of politicians to make it happen. It happens when the people make it plain there are to be no more delays or the power elite is at risk of losing control of the society they claim to lead.
I hear that this agreement will improve trade with Cuba, but, we're trading with them already. According to that report, the numbers are trending down, due to support from Venezuela and China. I suppose this is why the Chamber of Commerce and big Agriculture are on board with the thaw in relations? (No doubt, they are ignoring the mention in point 5, about the fact that Cuba prefers to deal in government-controlled commodities which tend to have more favorable payment terms and less publicity when those terms aren't met.) Since we're the only nation with an embargo against them, it's hard to imagine that this is much of a factor in the change.
In 2009, the President changed the law to allow unlimited trips and money transfers to relatives in Cuba, while calling on Cuba to do more as well. It was known then that Obama planned to do more, while pressuring Cuba to free all political prisoners as one step towards normalized relations with the US. Is there another Mariel boatlift looming in the near future?
Outside of being allowed to grace their resorts, in exchange for the honor of being derided as 'ugly' Americans, I guess there's the lure of cigars and rum to take into consideration. In other words, I really don't see much to celebrate here.
Rubio has every right in the world to be against this. That's his opinion, shaped by his parents, and the people that he grew up around. He grilled Blinken in November about the future of relations with Cuba while being answered with some linguistic doublespeak. Subsequently, Rubio opposed the nomination a week ago. A day after Blinken was confirmed, the new change in tone towards Cuba was announced. He may be feeling extra put-out about the change and the timing of the announcement. That doesn't mean that he's particularly stupid, mean, close minded, etc., just that this is one of his passionate issues. At least he has the cojones to make a stand about it. I can admire that in a politician, even if I don't fully agree.
In 2009, the President changed the law to allow unlimited trips and money transfers to relatives in Cuba, while calling on Cuba to do more as well. It was known then that Obama planned to do more, while pressuring Cuba to free all political prisoners as one step towards normalized relations with the US. Is there another Mariel boatlift looming in the near future?
Outside of being allowed to grace their resorts, in exchange for the honor of being derided as 'ugly' Americans, I guess there's the lure of cigars and rum to take into consideration. In other words, I really don't see much to celebrate here.
Rubio has every right in the world to be against this. That's his opinion, shaped by his parents, and the people that he grew up around. He grilled Blinken in November about the future of relations with Cuba while being answered with some linguistic doublespeak. Subsequently, Rubio opposed the nomination a week ago. A day after Blinken was confirmed, the new change in tone towards Cuba was announced. He may be feeling extra put-out about the change and the timing of the announcement. That doesn't mean that he's particularly stupid, mean, close minded, etc., just that this is one of his passionate issues. At least he has the cojones to make a stand about it. I can admire that in a politician, even if I don't fully agree.
Seriously? You weren't aware that Fidel Castro is still alive?
And you're still willing to comment on Cuban-American diplomatic relations?
caw
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