PRESIDENT TRUMP is considering rolling back his predecessor’s orders on Cuba.
No one denies the Cuban government is a dictatorship – despite twice-a-decade elections; elections that some contend are rigged..
No one will dispute that freedoms are limited on the island and that there is a high price to be paid for dissent.
But consider...
China is a much more totalitarian government than Cuba. Remember the Tiananmen Square Massacre? According to one estimate, “the number of civilian deaths has been estimated at anywhere from hundreds to thousands.”
Then there is America’s good friend Saudi Arabia. Oppressive Yes. Misogynistic? Most assuredly.
How about Egypt, another “good friend” of America. When the Islamic Brotherhood won the elections and Hosni Mubarak was installed as president, the military booted him out and Mohamed Morsi was named president. A similar situation happened in Algeria.
Russia, with which we have diplomatic and commercial relations, has Putin, the man who ordered the invasion and theft of the Ukrainian Crimea.
The list goes on and on and on.
Yet the U.S. allows Americans to travel to these countries – albeit often with a State Department “travel advisory” that visiting is not encouraged – more or less freely.
Granted, Russia and China are not a mere 90 miles off the U.S. coast, but both Russia and China have nuclear missiles than can strike U.S. cities. Cuba has no missiles that threaten the U.S. (Why bother? Cuba's dissidents invaded south Florida and took over the place.).
It seems to me that, with so many Cuban ex-pats who claim they want to return to the island, that President Trump should expand his predecessor’s effort and make travel and commercial activities easy for all Americans, especially Cubans who want to go back.
Let Americans invest in Cuban enterprise; give the ex-pats a reason to go “home.”
The Cuban government is LESS dangerous to the U.S. than Russia or China; it will cost the U.S. LESS to prop up Cuban economy than it costs in foreign aid to Egypt and a host of other countries, friendly and not so friendly. (Saudi Arabia received a paltry US$237,832 in 2016, a drastic drop from previous years of the previous administration.)
On top of China’s ability to militarily damage the U.S., it’s proxy, North Korea, is building weapons that can do the same … in cooperation with Iran (no surprise). China also ships unsafe products to the U.S. and manages the rate of exchange to put the U.S. deeply into China’s debt.
Admittedly, Cuban cigars could be dangerous to Americans’ health, but the U.S. has no fear of Cuban missiles or a rigged import/export trade balance.
The Cubans arrived to American hand outs; escapees from the (former) Soviet Union only got hand outs from private individuals and organizations. The latter integrated into U.S. society, learned English, and strived to become red, white, and blue citizens. Not so the Cubans.
To be fair, I grew up in south Florida and went to school with Cuban-Americans whose English communication skills were as good as mine. But, also to be fair, if someone wants to work in south Florida, especially in retail, the person must speak Cuban Spanish, albeit not necessarily English.
Opening the door to Cuba may be the single good thing Trump’s predecessor did in his eight long years in the White House.
I hope Trump has the wisdom to fully normalize American-Cuban relations, to put it on a par with – at worst, Mexico, at best, Canada – countries around the world that (so far) do not export terrorists to our shores.
To me, it’s a no brainer that can be put into a 140-character tweet.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
Comments: BCPlanner@gmail.com
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