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U.S., Cuba to restore diplomatic relations after 50 years

Rials6 said:
It was a hotspot for the mafia. And with the hotels and casinos it was a cash cow also.
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You shouldn't all your historical information from the movies. Cubans were wotrkinhg and, msot importantly, they were not held prisoner.and could leave any time they wanted.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
Lincoln freed the slaves by executive order. That's kind of how our system works. The checks and balances in our system distribute power so that no one branch can do everything. Obama has changed how the executive branch will handle relationships with Cuba, and he did so because our incompetent and lazy congress has done nothing on the subject for the past 57 years.

What really baffles me is that you're complaining that Obama is implementing the will of the people. Do you prefer the status quo where congress just ignores what we want and hands fat sacks of cash to lobbyists and corporations?

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No debate. No discussion. Just the edict of the Emperor declaring it all a "failed policy" and issuing his edict. Then people parrot that statement of "a failed policy."

Never mind the policy means Cuban isn't a nuclear weapons power.

Forget that Cuban was exporting weapons and even troops for revolutions and taken overs by military overthrows in the Americas and Africa.

Ignore the weapons connection between Cuba and N. Korea with weapons and missile flow between them intercepted just last year.

Ignore that the Cuban government is a drug cartel or is a money laundering country.

Don't mention that Cuban to this day is a base and safe haven for Columbian terrorists and kidnappers including of Americans.

Doesn't matter that Cuban is harboring American fugitives including murderers and a Black Panther cop-killer shooting an American trooper twice in the head.

Just chant with the Emperor "a failed policy" and post feel good messages cursing the USA. The current generation of Americans are running this country into the ground - FAST.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Their politicians call themselves Communist. A lot of ours call themselves conservatives. Politicians call themselves by names that don't really fit all the time.
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Really?
From the first paragraph of the link I provided explaining the Communist Party of China...

"The Chinese Communist Party's more than 80m-strong membership makes it the biggest political party in the world. Its tight organisation and ruthlessness help explain why it is also still in power.

The party oversees and influences many aspects of people's lives - what they learn at school and watch on TV, even the number of children they are allowed.

It is made up largely of government officials, army officers, farmers, model workers and employees of state-owned companies.

It is unrepresentative of China as a whole. Only a quarter of its members are women, for example. It is also obsessive about control, regularly showing itself capable of great brutality in suppressing dissent or any challenge to its authority. "

Basic definition of Communism- a way of organizing a society in which the government owns the things that are used to make and transport products (such as land, oil, factories, ships, etc.) and there is no privately owned property.

I'm sure you will find since the take over of the Communist Party in 1949, almost all lands are now either government owned or collectivities.

They are a Communist country.
 
poweRob said:
What's really cool about this thread is how its drawing a distinctive line between conservatives who think and then usual conservative hacks who have nothing to say other than... "I hate obama" as their every post. Don't you agree?
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You people will appease and make excuses for anything and anybody.

Cuba offered nothing, and we just gave them a big pass. This is like excusing Hitler for the Holocaust in exchange for a Jetta.
 
vesper said:
“It is a fallacy that Cuba will reform just because the American President believes that if he extends his hand in peace that the Castro brothers suddenly will unclench their fists. A majority of democratic activists on the island, including many that I have met with, have been explicit that they want the U.S. to become open to Cuba only when there is reciprocal movement by the Castro government. They understand that the Castros will not accede to change in any other way."
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It's also a fallacy, with a 55 year record to prove it, that the Castros won't accede to change in the face of embargo, etc.
 
Erod said:
You people will appease and make excuses for anything and anybody.

Cuba offered nothing, and we just gave them a big pass. This is like excusing Hitler for the Holocaust in exchange for a Jetta.
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You imagination really is bigger in Texas, and you threw in Hitler to boot! Congratulations!
 
joko104 said:
No debate. No discussion. Just the edict of the Emperor declaring it all a "failed policy" and issuing his edict. Then people parrot that statement of "a failed policy."

Never mind the policy means Cuban isn't a nuclear weapons power.

Forget that Cuban was exporting weapons and even troops for revolutions and taken overs by military overthrows in the Americas and Africa.

Ignore the weapons connection between Cuba and N. Korea with weapons and missile flow between them intercepted just last year.

Ignore that the Cuban government is a drug cartel or is a money laundering country.

Don't mention that Cuban to this day is a base and safe haven for Columbian terrorists and kidnappers including of Americans.

Doesn't matter that Cuban is harboring American fugitives including murderers and a Black Panther cop-killer shooting an American trooper twice in the head.

Just chant with the Emperor "a failed policy" and post feel good messages cursing the USA. The current generation of Americans are running this country into the ground - FAST.
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Severing all diplomatic ties for 50 years has done nothing to stop any of the things you've itemized. Even our embargo is moot not only because we're the only ones participating in it but because Cubans have been importing American products from third-party nations for years. So if those facts don't render both as failed policies how would you describe it? More to the point, you complain that there was no debate or discussion yet do nothing but complain about the policy shift. Criticisms that aren't constructive are worthless. Propose an alternative or, at the very least, explain why a policy which has been ineffective at accomplishing it's goals for decades should be maintained.
 
Erod said:
You people will appease and make excuses for anything and anybody.

Cuba offered nothing, and we just gave them a big pass. This is like excusing Hitler for the Holocaust in exchange for a Jetta.
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Further, US engagement with Cuba will not raise the probability that they'll evolve away from their repressive socialistic totalitarian regime. EU countries have been spending and investing there fro 20-30 years now, and it's not budged a micron from that.

What will be interesting to see is what happens after the Castro brothers die off (they are 85 or so), and how the transition of power is handled.
 
Erod said:
You people will appease and make excuses for anything and anybody.

Cuba offered nothing, and we just gave them a big pass. This is like excusing Hitler for the Holocaust in exchange for a Jetta.
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Hitler...LMAO.
 
eohrnberger said:
Further, US engagement with Cuba will not raise the probability that they'll evolve away from their repressive socialistic totalitarian regime. EU countries have been spending and investing there fro 20-30 years now, and it's not budged a micron from that.
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I'm not sure to what extent the EU has engaged Cuba on those issues if at all.

eohrnberger said:
What will be interesting to see is what happens after the Castro brothers die off (they are 85 or so), and how the transition of power is handled.
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Renewed diplomatic relations may provide us with opportunities to influence the outcome of such a transition.
 
Napoleon said:
I'm not sure to what extent the EU has engaged Cuba on those issues if at all.
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It's a popular vacation destination now that similar locations in the Med are typically booked beyond capacity. It think there's a fair amount of trade going on between the two as well, but less certain of that part.

Napoleon said:
Renewed diplomatic relations may provide us with opportunities to influence the outcome of such a transition.
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That's the only thing that makes any sense to me as a motivation to take this action at this time. What would be the administration downside to actually saying, or hinting, at this during the press conferences?

All politicians need to learn how to communicate better, more specific, clearer, easily understood, I'm thinking.
 
JasperL said:
It's also a fallacy, with a 55 year record to prove it, that the Castros won't accede to change in the face of embargo, etc.
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The question has never been whether the Castos and military will accede to anything. The question is whether we will finance the Castros and prop up their military dictatorship. The answer has always been no - until Czar Obama decided to rescue one of the last two vestiges of worldwide Communism, something no American President was willing to do or even approach.

This should be Obama's foreign policy legacy - the President who saved Communism.
 
poweRob said:
Your hate.... It consumes you. Your journey to the dark side is nearly complete.
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Your love of brutality against poor people is noted.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Communism is a failed ideology. It is dead. There is no longer a need to be fighting the cold war. We already won.
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If only!

Communism, like most political isms, failed coming out of the gate but that doesn't mean it still didn't have its fanatical supporters and doesn't have them regrouping now.. They'll just call it something else, another 'ism' will take its place, and many in the democracies will support this new 'ism. We see that now with Islamism and its support from the same dysfunctional minds who previously supported Communism, Fascism, Nazism, and so on.

These isms are not just a one-off and then relegated to the dustbins. They are a constant plague on the civilized world, with just the names changing, and they never entirely go away. They only complete with each other for which will the most dominant at any particular time.
 
Erod said:
You people will appease and make excuses for anything and anybody.

Cuba offered nothing, and we just gave them a big pass. This is like excusing Hitler for the Holocaust in exchange for a Jetta.
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Well, THAT'S a stupid comparison.
 
JasperL said:
Hitler...LMAO.
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He really did exist. You people like to laugh off any comparisons to him and the Nazis because it so often hits so close to home.
 
joko104 said:
The question has never been whether the Castos and military will accede to anything. The question is whether we will finance the Castros and prop up their military dictatorship. The answer has always been no - until Czar Obama decided to rescue one of the last two vestiges of worldwide Communism, something no American President was willing to do or even approach.

This should be Obama's foreign policy legacy - the President who saved Communism.
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Well, surely "communist" China is a bigger legacy, and when you buy your S&P 500 index fund, you invest in 500 countries that are actively propping up the largest communist country on the planet with roughly 150 times the population of Cuba, is an immeasurably greater long term communist threat to the U.S., and as a bonus has little regard for human rights and like all communist countries laughs at the notion of political freedom. Walmart is a worldwide outlet for communist made goods - I'd think the communist leaders get a kick out of the fact that one of America's richest families got there by selling communist goods, therefore promoting the interests of communists. The promoters and defenders of 'free trade' with China are many times more guilty of promoting the interests of communists than anyone involved in changing our relationship with Cuba.

BTW, when has the U.S. ever had a philosophical problem propping up a military dictatorship? If they agree to serve our interests (i.e. cut the U.S. into a share of profits), we might have installed the dictator!
 
Erod said:
He really did exist. You people like to laugh off any comparisons to him and the Nazis because it so often hits so close to home.
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No, we laugh off comparisons to him when they're patently absurd, such as here. If you want to compare Castro to anyone, you can take your pick of a couple dozen dictators or "elected" leaders in Central and South America and whose record of human rights is no better than the Castros in Cuba. Pick any one of many puppets we've backed and/or installed in various countries in the Americas and whose atrocities we ignore so long as those atrocities serve U.S. interests. Those would be meaningful comparisons.

Hitler? LMFAO...
 
Erod said:
He really did exist. You people like to laugh off any comparisons to him and the Nazis because it so often hits so close to home.
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Yeah, THAT'S why. :roll
 
JasperL said:
It's also a fallacy, with a 55 year record to prove it, that the Castros won't accede to change in the face of embargo, etc.
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Actually in the 90's the embargo was expanded after the fall of the Soviet Union which Cuba relied on much of its needs to encourage Castro to have a change of heart.

The Cuban Democracy Act was signed into law in 1992 with the stated purpose of maintaining sanctions on Cuba so long as the Cuban government refuses to move toward "democratization and greater respect for human rights".

In 1996, Congress passed the Helms–Burton Act, which further restricted United States citizens from doing business in or with Cuba, and mandated restrictions on giving public or private assistance to any successor government in Havana unless and until certain claims against the Cuban government are met.

In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton expanded the trade embargo even further by also disallowing foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade with Cuba.
And it was working. Cuba was in a world of hurt.
That same year Hugo Chavez was elected. Chavez then started sending very healthy checks to Castro from Venezuela's petro profits and spoiled the progress on the effects of the embargo. Chavez died last year and Venezuela's economy is in the tank. Once again Castro is really hurting. But we didn't have to wait for another Chavez to step in. Obama threw Castro a life-line.
 
vesper said:
Actually in the 90's the embargo was expanded after the fall of the Soviet Union which Cuba relied on much of its needs to encourage Castro to have a change of heart.

The Cuban Democracy Act was signed into law in 1992 with the stated purpose of maintaining sanctions on Cuba so long as the Cuban government refuses to move toward "democratization and greater respect for human rights".

In 1996, Congress passed the Helms–Burton Act, which further restricted United States citizens from doing business in or with Cuba, and mandated restrictions on giving public or private assistance to any successor government in Havana unless and until certain claims against the Cuban government are met.

In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton expanded the trade embargo even further by also disallowing foreign subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade with Cuba.
And it was working. Cuba was in a world of hurt.
That same year Hugo Chavez was elected. Chavez then started sending very healthy checks to Castro from Venezuela's petro profits and spoiled the progress on the effects of the embargo. Chavez died last year and Venezuela's economy is in the tank. Once again Castro is really hurting. But we didn't have to wait for another Chavez to step in. Obama threw Castro a life-line.
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The embargo has been in place since 1960. It has failed.
 
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