Dude, comeon, drop the “It’s all (Carters/Clintons)fault” bs.
History and politics in Cuba go back a couple months more than that.
Making the type of statement you made is as productive (and analytical) as posting yet another picture of Helen Thomas.
The SOS ain’t working. We need to find a way to invite Cuba into a political and economic sphere that will benefit all involved.
Agreed. To give Carter a little credit -- just a little, don't have a heart attack -- when Carter visited Cuba, he insisted on speaking on national television, live, in Spanish. His Spanish is really terrible. i don't even speak the language, and I could tell. But it meant that there wasn't a translator to muck around with the speech, in which he praised a group of dissidents Castro had recently jailed.
The SOS ain’t working. We need to find a way to invite Cuba into a political and economic sphere that will benefit all involved.
We need to be -- and I'm fairly confident we are --- planning for a way to help glide Cuba to a soft landing. Fidel has succeeded in building a communist personality cult, the way the Kims have in North Korea or Mao did in China. Far more Cubans feel loyalty toward Fidel than toward communist principles.
With Raul as "interim" president (raise your hand if you think Fidel is ever coming back, if indeed he's alive right now), the cracks in the facade are already starting to show. Raul is only a couple of years younger than Fidel, and all the other towering figures of the Revolucion are either elderly or dead. It's not as if Che is next in line. To protect their own power, Fidel and his cronies have not raised a next generation.
The best we can hope for right now is the kind of soft landing that most of Eastern Europe had in 1989-90. A new leader who sees the writing on the wall and allows multi-party elections. Western companies ready to invest.
Cuba has some advantages -- a population that is literate and well-educated, even if that education included a lot of propaganda and indoctrination. Abundant natural resources. A climate that is pretty close to paradise, aside from the occasional hurricane. It is ripe for counter-revolution.
If the new hotels and casinos are built by Marriot instead of the Mob, they could bring jobs and prosperity and freedom without the stench of corruption. Pre-Castro Havana was comparable to Las Vegas when it was run by the mob. If post-Castro Havana could be comparable to Vegas today, that would be a huge victory.
The US government should be prepared for Fidel's death, ready to nudge developments in the right direction. Subtly, because being seen as an American puppet is the last thing a new Cuban government wants. The front line is going to be the exile community in the US, because Cubans are less likely to distrust or resent their own kin.
The future of Cuba is in Miami waiting for the call. They're passionately pro-democratic, and in the last few decades, some of them have made a lot of money that they would love to invest in a Nuevo Cuba.
There are many reasons to doubt the foresight of American intelligence, but all the signs are that smart folks in our government are planning in the ways I've just outlined. I don't know what plans are in place, and I don't want to know, if my knowing would also mean that Fidel's cronies know.
When -- not if -- Cuba reaches the crisis point, we need to be prepared. Until then, we need to hang fire. If the crisis is seen by Cubans as one manufactured by the US, it will not end well for us. Cubans must take the lead, and then we offer assistance.