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| Fidel’s Cuba: Irrelevant or Simply Silly? |
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| ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ........................ |
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This is Dark Cloud on Wednesday, January 06, 1999. Amidst the war in the Middle East and a rare impeachment of a United States President, Cuba has again elbowed its way into the news. This ridiculously small and poor island tried for years to be an unbelievable pain to the United States almost just for the emotional satisfaction. Now it succeeds in doing so almost without effort or interest. But to discuss Cuba, at least as viewed in the United States, we need to shut our eyes and visualize our subjects. Ready? Aren’t they wonderful? There is nothing more invigorating than a gaggle of left-wingers, reeking of pot, decrying the United States and its CIA for running drugs and neglecting to castigate Cuba for the same offense. Unless, of course, it is a bunch of corrupt Cuban exiles, reeking of alcohol and other rightwing pleasures, reverting to type and trying to get the United States to invade Cuba and give feudal economic power back to the gentry forced out forty years ago. Which is to say, the United States should conquer Cuba and give it to them, free. To both sides, Castro is a fascination. Even Colonel Robert Brown, who runs the publication the left wing most hates, Soldier of Fortune, cheerfully admits he admires the man in many regards. In the late 1950’s, Castro replaced Desi Arnaz as the Cuban male sex symbol, and those two diverse people were – admit it – probably the only two Cubans most Americans could name. It is hard for anyone, including and perhaps especially the political left wing, to give up an adolescent crush, and the most fervent of Castro’s American supporters generally share the same thing: a groupie-like crush on the man plus a sense that they themselves would be admired more in a Castro-run society. They are probably correct. Once you can visualize these two camps of mutual exclusion, we can proceed. The newest news eruption concerns the rather tedious claim by an exile’s widow that Cuba and its own President, Fidel Castro, are international criminals because they run drugs, plus new movement towards normalization of relations with the island, all commented upon and Cassandra-ed by the powerful Mafia-like exile community in Miami. Her late husband, some military hoo-hah in Cuba’s African expeditionary forces of the 1960’s and 70’s, is assumed to have been killed by Cuba’s assassins. From this coldly objective source, we are treated to four-part harmony about the evil of Castro from the heroic Cuban exile community in Florida and the right wing politicos that pander to them. It could all be true. And as a certified cynic about Castro and his adoring fools, I feel free to emote: so what? So it is hard for the left to even entertain the possibility that Cuba has been running drugs like a CIA operative and accepting payoffs from those who do, despite both the motive, the opportunity, and the evidence. It is almost irrelevant. If Cuba and Castro have not been running drugs, they should have been. Every government has an obligation to effect the best economic status for its country, and since the US has made Cuba a pariah, and their buddies in the Soviet Union left them high and dry, the opportunities for cash are certainly rare, plus the added pleasure of watching the United States waste money on what it laughingly calls a drug war. To Cuba’s disbelief, the United States wastes more money in a day than Cuba could ever imagine having in a generation. The rich are different. And, like a cat hit with a shovel, the Cuban exiles are aghast that Washington would even consider normalizing relations with that relatively insignificant island. Their political lackeys in congress, and there is no more accurate word, have taken the opportunity of Bill Clinton’s troubles and used it to try and prevent this normalization. They have been appearing on television, barely stopping short of calling Castro a Hitler, and saying that Clinton is too weak to deal with this spawn of Satan. They are baiting him to renege on his common sense approach to Cuban-American relations. To Clinton’s credit, he has not caved to these disgusting frauds, or for that matter to anyone, in an attempt to rally support for himself. I would hope the American Left Wing might refrain from stapling its wrist to forehead, cease whining about Clinton’s betrayal of key left values, and reflect upon that. |
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