Category: International

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.

For fans of contrast and intriguing, ironic juxtaposition, consider the public pronouncements of the Castro brothers the last fortnight.

First, Cuban President Raul Castro took disillusionment and disingenuousness to a new low. Even for one who has co-conspired to institutionalize societal spin. Two weeks ago in announcing some token changes in the Cuban economic model, he said this: “With experience accumulated in more than 55 years of revolutionary struggle, it doesn’t seem like we’re doing too badly, nor that desperation or frustration have been our companions along the way.” He really did. 

You don’t have to be a Diaz-Balart to perceive the sophistry of Raulization.

There’s a reason that only Cuba and North Korea remain among the Marxist-Leninist hard core. Everyone else has acknowledged that command economies and governmental control over the means of production have not, well, worked. The you-pretend-to-work, we’ll-pretend-to-pay-you system is ultimately not sustainable. A government-run economy that still proscribes private ownership and marginalizes incentives is antithetical to certain facets of, well, human nature. It’s an unforgiving, global economy out there. Ask Mikhail Gorbachev.

Imagine, ration cards after a half century. Having to depend on a subsidizing patron–from Nikita Khrushchev to Hugo Chavez. Needing to reference priority-challenged Pyongyang to feel any sense of progress. How, well, revolting.

Then last Saturday former President Fidel Castro, 84, made his first official government appearance in front of parliament since his surgery four years ago. He only spoke for 11 minutes, so he had to cut right to the rhetorical chase. He warned of planetary Armageddon precipitated by U.S. nuclear strikes against Iran or North Korea. But he also voiced cautious optimism in the prudent decision-making capacity of President Barak Obama, “…(the) one man (who) will make the decision alone…”) to avert ultimate devastation.

Ironic. If memory serves, Fidel Castro wasn’t particularly judicious during that nuclear episode back in 1962. He certainly wasn’t keen to see the missiles of October shipped back to the USSR, nor in favor of his island being less of a Cold War, nuclear trip-wire.

Maybe one of the brothers has learned something other than that using charisma and blaming all wrongs on Uncle Scapegoat is a pretty good strategy for longevity.

All of a sudden that paean to gluttony, the IFOCE-sanctioned, Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July International Hot Dog-Eating Contest from Coney Island, doesn’t seem so outrageous. Even something called the International Federation of Competitive Eating seems less repulsive.

That’s because there is such a thing as the World Sauna Championships–recently held in Helsinki, Finland. Basically, last contestant to remain conscious under 230-degree temperatures, wins. It came down to two finalists. The runner-up died.

There’s government spin — and then there’s dizzying levels of disillusionment and disingenuousness. This is what Cuban President Raul Castro said last Sunday:

            “With experience accumulated in more than 55 years of revolutionary struggle, it doesn’t    seem like we’re doing too badly, nor that desperation or frustration have been our    companions along the way.”

He really did.

There’s a reason that only Cuba and North Korea remain among the Marxist-Leninist hard core. Everyone else has acknowledged that command economies and governmental control over the means of production have not, well, worked. The you-pretend-to-work, we’ll-pretend-to-pay you system is ultimately not sustainable. A government-run economy that still proscribes private ownership and marginalizes incentives is antithetical to certain facets of, well, human nature. 

Ration cards after a half century. Dependence on a subsidizing patron, from the Soviet Union to Venezuela, to stay afloat. Needing to reference North Korea to feel any sense of progress. How revolting. So, what exactly would a credible definition of “doing too badly” be?

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took some shots at Vietnam while on her Asian sortie that mostly dealt with the enigmatic loose cannon that is North Korea. She took time out from saber-rattling and DMZ-visiting to remind Vietnam that the world continues to look askance at its increasing incidence of governmental intolerance and disrespect for dissidents.  It was a pretty good dressing down that ranged from Vietnam’s sorry track record of attacking religious groups to its penchant for censoring the Internet.

How ironic. We fought, however ill advisedly, a war over that country and lost 58,000 Americans in battle and brought home thousands more scarred for life. Post-war Vietnam has undergone economic reform and courts outside investment, including from the U.S. But they’re hardly paragons of freedom and liberty. They so love their periodic crackdowns on those who dissent.

But we have normal relations with Vietnam. Have had them, in fact, since Secretary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, formalized them in 1995.

But yet we’re only now engaging in a serious approach to start dismantling this Cold War relic of abnormal relations with Cuba. Ironic, indeed. Incongruously, frustratingly, stupidly ironic.

The result of a deal brokered between the Cuban government and the Catholic Church calls for the (incremental) release of more than 50 political prisoners from Cuban jails, who will be allowed to leave the country. It’s being billed–including via AP accounts–as the island’s largest “mass liberation” since Pope John Paul II visited in 1998. It was trumpeted after a deal-sealing meeting between Cuban President Raul Castro and the archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega. Also formally weighing in and giving his geopolitical blessing: the foreign minister of Spain, Miguel Angel Moratinos.

“Liberation,” however, hardly seems appropriate.  

Political-opposition activists are not being freed to speak their conscience in a Cuba that remains anathema to personal liberties. Those being released are representative of a long-running Cuban strategy. The government periodically releases political steam from the pressure cooker of frustration that is daily life in Cuba for those who dissent. They are thrown out of their own country.

No, exile, is not to be confused with “liberation.” Indeed, it is liberation that is still in exile.

The irony.

One of the ways that Cuba is trying to gin up tourism is via condominium developments in conjunction with the construction of golf courses and marinas. Think Dominican Republic without propaganda billboards and socialist calamity.

The projects would be in remote locations, outside major cities and away from locals taking umbrage at a blatant “have/have not” juxtaposition. There’s even talk of the condo-golf-marina synergy being catalysts for a complementary business. The building of workforce housing nearby.

Can you say United Fruit?

Finally, after a daily drumbeat about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church, Pope Benedict XVI figured out a way to quiet the firestorm of what Cardinal Ratzinger knew and when he knew it.  

Go to Cyprus.

The pressing subject there isn’t pedophile priests. A more immediate concern is the protection of sacred Christian monuments and a lessening of tensions in the decades-old conflict between ethnic Turks and Greeks on the divided island.  Annexation, military occupation and smoldering animosity are an ongoing reality.

But Cyprus is still viewed as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East. A Middle East where many Muslims remain outraged by the Pope linking Islam to violence during a speech in Germany in 2006. Consequently, this Papal visit featured the Pope as diplomat — meeting with both the head of Cyprus’ Greek Orthodox Church and with a key Turkish Cypriot Muslim religious leader.

Imagine the ethnic/religious/geopolitical cauldron that is Cyprus being a respite from anything. But for this Pope and this church in this era of sex-abuse cover-ups, it was.

Imagine, the age limit to compete in Olympic gymnastics is 16. It’s for the good of the competitors, who could be exploited.

But it’s ok for an American lad, 13-year-old Jordan Romero, to be hailed as the youngest person to reach the 29,000-foot summit of Mt. Everest. And had that historic climb not been successful?  Can you say reckless endangerment?

Nobody doesn’t like the Red Cross. It goes where others fear to tread and ministers to those in need. Politics and affiliations notwithstanding. It’s about humanity. They’ve been treating war-wounded for more than 150 years. Who doesn’t get that?

Having said that, a case can be made for an exception. The International Red Cross’ neutrality policy continues to justify its practice of giving first aid training and kits to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan. Arguably, neutrality is not the appropriate response to those who would strategically target innocents, regardless of age or gender.

The Red Cross does, however, make a concession of sorts. Part of its three-day first-aid courses includes opportunities to show participants the need to abide by the Geneva Conventions. The conduct-of-war rules that the Taliban violate with impunity.