CUBA COMMUNIST COMPROMISE WITH U.S. DEMOCRACY

Cuba is in the news. The Marines are going to raise the United States flag today in Havana, the capital city of that country for the first item in 54 years. I fell in love with this tropical country in the early 1950’s. The clear water of the warm Cuban seas and the beautiful rain forest fascinated me. Consequently, for all of those years, the details of the tumultuous political situation in this country drew my special interest in the intervening years. I recall an exchange between the right-wing detractors and the newly elected President Obama with respect to negotiating foreign policy. The exchange was at a policy level. The new president made the point that it just did not make sense not to talk to our enemies not try to resolve differences by negotiation. In contrast, Republicans have an innate policy position, which is not to negotiate if there is any indication they might have to compromise to accomplish their goals, which is an unreal expectation in the real give and take world. As unreal as it is, when they hold the presidency, who is in charge of negotiating foreign policy, then that policy becomes the goal of the United States. In the case of Cuba, a Cuban lobby reinforced by an inbred fear of communism corrupted our policy toward that country even further, which meant that the Republican policy of no negotiation with Cuba became the policy of both political parties. The power shift caused by the waning fear of communism and the assimilation of Cuban exile into our country, although both were still there and active, the lobbies slowly lost significance. By executive order, the present reversed that policy. We can now try to reverse the human rights violations and move toward installing free enterprise into that country. My belief, after talking to many Cubans, is that the Cuban people will still embrace communism as a form of government but will move toward democracy. Contrary to what the Cuban exiles are saying, for the most part, the Cuban people embrace the idea that everyone is more economically equal now than they have ever been. At the same time, of course, they recognize that they are all poor but after 53 or 54 years of communist teachings, they feel very strongly that it is unfair for some to have everything while others have nothing. The detractors of peace with Cuba refuse to accept that the Cuban people embrace communism and hold the Castro brothers, their leaders, in high regard. Their evolution is a great thing for them just as our revolution is a great thing for us. The revolution freed them from the tyranny of the rich just as our revolution free us of the tyranny of the English royalty. My hope is that the American people will come to accept this truly historic compromise of a communist country by a democracy. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated