Tuesday, February 26 2008
Opinon: By Matt Jividen
The Daily Cardinal (Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison)
Illness, the passage of time and a broken hip did last week what numerous assassination attempts, an amphibious assault, a five-decade-long smear campaign, and an economic embargo could not—force Fidel Castro to resign.
Looking back, the United States’ relationship with Cuba has been at the very least, tepid. Remember the time Cuba installed a missile battery capable of attacking the United States with nuclear weapons, or when Castro seized American-owned businesses 43 years ago? The United States can’t feign innocence, either. The United States trained Cuban nationals to overthrow Castro and even hatched some schemes to kill Castro, or at least make his beard fall out. I think these past events should be water under the bridge. After all, if we refused to extend diplomacy to all the counties who, at some point, have tried to destroy us, we would be quite lonely.
Now that Fidel Castro has resigned, his baby brother—76-year-old Raúl—will take the reins. In the last half century Cuba has been an incredibly closed society. This is in part due to Fidel’s guidance, but the United States has also made its contribution.
For the last 43 years the United States has had an economic embargo on Cuba. This has been the reason why Americans can’t travel to, or directly invest in Cuba, or why your friends have to pay “so damn much” for Cuban cigars. Let’s look at the embargo and see how it came to be, why it is antithetical to our stated mission in Cuba and around the world and why it is downright hypocritical.
Opinion continues at The Daily Cardinal...
