When it comes to a position on the Cuban embargo, it’s all too predictable.
The pro-embargo crowd consists of the usual hardliners, including many who literally take it personally, and those they can influence. Often that means intimidate and buy off. Self-serving politics first, the best interest of America–from economic to geopolitical–a distant second.
For the anti-embargo crowd, it’s neither a personal vendetta nor a litmus test for human rights–not when we have normal relations with the un-democratic likes of China, Vietnam, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and virtually every country that ends in “stan.” They also see through a Cold War atavism for the counterproductive relic that it is.
But who would have expected this? The October issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine, not to be confused with Mother Jones or Rolling Stone, will feature a piece with the headline: “Fifty Years of Failure: Petrified U.S. Policy Toward Cuba.” Its prominent co-bylines: Don Bohning, former Miami Herald Latin America editor, and Jay Mallin, former Latin America reporter for the Washington Times (not Post) and news director of Radio Marti during the Reagan administration.
They raise the usual, all-too-familiar arguments against the embargo, including overwhelming United Nations’ condemnation–the vote was 187-3 last year. (Thank you, Israel and Palau.) They also reference the embargo as “essentially an absurdity that accomplishes nothing.” Moreover, they assert, it “has been a boon to the Castro government, providing a handy excuse” for its endemic failures.
To be sure, we’ve seen these arguments repeatedly, but this is Soldier of Fortune magazine–not The New Republic.