Why Kiss The Castros' Butts Now?

50th Anniversary of Castro's Coup Show Decrepit, Failing Cuba

January 1, 2009 marks the 50^th Anniversary of Castro's 1958 Cuban coup points out a paper released today by the Brookings Institution. Cuba is decrepit; its leaders are ill, dead or nearly so it rightly says…

"Everything that needs to be said has been said on Cuba," opines Brookings' writers.

."Too much time-a half-century-and too much change on both sides of the Florida Straits has passed. Why add another word, another admonition to change U.S. policy, or another plea for a democratic Cuba? Is there anything new that will convince Miami and Havana that it is time to end this feud?"" For the tenth time since Fidel Castro rode into Havana, a new American administration is rolling into Washington, and Miami and Havana are again full of hope and fear in equal measures. Indeed they have reason. Cuba rhetoric did not dominate the presidential debate in Florida and Raul-not Fidel-Castro holds power. President-elect Obama's campaign promise to lift restrictions on Cuban-American travel and remittances would be a welcome New Year's gift to separated families. And, Raul Castro has offered up several olive branches. Although no longer wrapped in the usual rhetoric, they are heavy with demands for the return of Guantanamo Bay and Cuba's "Five Heroes."

But if past is prologue, a change of American administrations is not enough to change the dynamic between the United States and Cuba. Cuba who found succor from the old Soviet Union is once again courting the ruble crowd; hosting Russian warships and flirting with Hugh Chaves, Venezuela's current nutcase.

Brookings recounts the mishmash of Cuban American relations as follows with my own clarification and addition:.

• President Kennedy adopted and modified a scheme for invading Cuba from the Eisenhower administration taking care to buy up as many Cubvan cigars as he could find before shutting off relations.

That Bay of Pigs fiasco gave the Soviet Union an excuse to protect its newest client in the Americas, resulting in a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union that brought us to the brink of nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis.

• Bill Clinton thought he could balance domestic politics while unraveling the embargo, but Fidel Castro sunk his good intentions with two made-in-Cuba crises: the shoot down of the Brothers' to the Rescue aircraft and turning little Elian Gonzalez-the Cuban child returned by U.S. courts to his father-into a Cuban hero and a Cuban-American disaster. Another fiasco for feel good grouping.

• When George W. Bush took office he initially continued the liberal travel polices of the Clinton administration and even flirted with the idea that greater contact, outreach, and bilateral talks might promote change in Cuba. But Jeb Bush's re-election campaign intervened.

Florida's powerful Cuban Liberty Council demanded that the Bush administration increase Cuba's isolation and return to the politics of regime change-revolution not evolution. The resulting hard-line politics of the Bush administration cutoff its access, thereby aiding a smooth succession to what has become a split presidency in which both Castro brothers rule.

• Enter Obama and his more than ample hyperbole. When push comes to shove and Jeb Bush is running to keep the swing seat in the U. S. Senate in Republican hands all that high-faluten high-horseness will desolve into partisan politics.

But, before that Russia is going to play a trump card like the Soviet's did with JFK and get things it wants in exchange for U. S. concessions like Kennedy taking U. S. nukes out of Turkey in 1963 it will be Obama blocking the Missile shield in Europe and more.

The Czechs are used to getting the wet willie in their ear by American Presidents since FDR backed Neville Chamberlin at Munich and ceded it to Hitler, and Truman left them peering over the Iron Curtain for half century. But, to their credit they saw this one coming and are sitting on an OK of their part of the shield until they see which way Barack's banner blows.

Cuba's "friends"-Venezuela, Brazil, Mexico, China, Spain, and again Russia-are extending credit based on grabbing up some of its vast offshore crude oil reserves and most of them just to stick their finger in the USA's eye not friendshipwith or trust of trhe Castro boys. They'd be there now had not crude oil prices collapsed.

Brooking thinks, "U.S. sanctions now serve more to punish the Cuban people and harm our image than hurt the Cuban government. Our influence is at its nadir having been drained away by Venezuelan oil subsidies to Chavez's regional acolytes, the potential of Cuban deep-sea oil, and our adventures in the Middle East."Brookings writers ask, "How many times has it been said that if we hope to help give Cubans a voice in their future we will have to jettison our policy of regime change and engage the Cuban government? But this is a family feud in which the protagonists are shouting, not listening nor understanding that there is no victory, no winners, and only losers between the protagonists who share a common heritage."

The papers conclusiion advances the thought that, " a changed world offers opportunities to those Cuban Americans and Cubans bold enough to bury the past and build a future friendship among all Cubans and Americans. "

Logic notwithstanding here's my own simplistic syllogism– I ask what does the U. S. gets, except for a few cigars, in kissing the Castros' wrinkled butts now? The Castros and their henchmen are enfeebled and dying out. So, be patient, send lillies, and act decisively to promote and support a genuine Cuban democratic republic there permanently removing Russia's local toy isolating and hopefully engineering the  removal of the America's biggest nincompoop — Hugo Chavez.

Admittedly that will take a lot more than president-elect Obama's Rodney King diplomatic philosophy; or Hillary's waddling her way toward the White House in 2012 as a pretend Secretary of State while Obama spends a lot of time watching his back front and both sides.

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