Barry Farber. NewsMax.com.
Tuesday, Jan. 30, 2001.
OK, so Cuba's a failure; a maddening, depressing, flat-out flop; a living
museum dramatizing the impossibility of making communism work among humans.
If Castro were to say to the Cuban people, "You may go," and if
America said, "You may come," then Cuba would be a bird sanctuary by
noon tomorrow.
Cuba's captives have a hard time escaping, and Americans who care about Cuba
have a hard time escaping the hard question of whether or not to lift the
embargo.
This question puts me in the position of the schoolteacher in North Carolina
who went to the Smoky Mountains to apply for a job. The principal asked, "Do
you believe the Earth is round?"
"Personally I believe it is," replied the applicant, "but I
can teach either way!"
Never before have I encountered an argument with as many good points on both
sides as the argument over whether or not to lift the U.S. embargo on Cuba –
not abortion, not gun control, not school vouchers.
"After all these years," goes one embargo-lifting argument, "the
embargo hasn't paid off. Castro's still in power. Castro and his top communist
henchmen eat well and live well. It's the innocent people of Cuba who suffer the
punishment of the embargo. Precious medicines are denied Cubans who themselves
probably despise Castro and wish the end of his rule.
"The embargo provides Castro his only excuse for the abject failure of
his 42-year tortured contribution to Cuban history. And how does America explain
expanding business and diplomatic relations with communist dictatorships like
China and Vietnam and even North Korea while the much smaller tyranny, Cuba,
alone gets targeted?
"And besides, don't American exporters deserve a shot at the Cuban
market instead of watching it all go to Canada, Mexico and other countries in
the Americas and Europe?"
On the other hand, American sanctions on Cuba were imposed after Castro
confiscated billions of dollars of American property in Cuba. The embargo is a
legitimate nonviolent response to Castro's theft. How dare America lift it and
hand a victory to this long-term despot who presents himself to the world as a "David"
successfully outmaneuvering the Yankee "Goliath"?
Lifting the embargo would send the message worldwide that if a dictator is
cruel enough to hang onto power long enough, he will, despite his one-party rule
and human rights abuses, win America's apology. Besides, the Cuban people,
though outrageously deprived, are not starving. Therefore, why not leave the
embargo hanging there as a reminder of all the good things that will come their
way once they depose Castro, as Castro in 1959 deposed Batista?
Readers of my first two articles on my visit to Cuba over the New Year's
holiday have messaged me emphasizing that my substantial Havana-based evidence
that the Cubans are fed up with Castro would be reinforced if I, like they, had
recent experience in the Cuban interior living in private homes. I believe that.
The comparison of Cuba today with Yugoslavia under Marshall Tito is
irresistable. Until 1948 Yugoslavia was a totally subservient member of the
Stalinist communist bloc unbroken, as Winston Churchill said, "by even a
star of hope." Suddenly, drama! Tito was ejected from the Soviet club for
insubordination, and Yugoslavia found itself isolated and in immediate danger of
invasion and liquidation by Stalin.
Tito wisely threw himself into the arms of U.S. President Harry Truman and
the West, and fascinating things began to happen. American businessmen, not
Soviet bureaucrats, began pouring into Yugoslavia, followed by dollar-laden
Yugoslav-Americans overjoyed to be able to visit relatives who they'd been
separated from by Stalin's Iron Curtain. They were followed by tourists from
America and thousands more from Western Europe. Western products from toothpaste
to baked beans sprouted on Yugoslav retail shelves along with movies, music,
jazz groups, dance crazes and inexpensive guitars.
Tito, lifelong hard-boiled communist, hated all this like the devil hates
holy water. He knew this exciting influx of free people would weaken communism's
grip on Yugoslavia. It was Tito's tough luck. He had no choice but to watch his
apparatus of control dissolve. There was nothing he could do about it.
One thing Americans have a hard time believing is that in communist
countries the very names of the communist secret police are never uttered. We
Americans say the name "FBI" without wincing. Yugoslavs, before the
free folks arrived, never dared speak forth the name of the dreaded communist
UDBA.
When I was in Yugoslavia in 1951 the people were afraid of the secret
police. By the time I returned in 1956 – years after what we can call the
end of the "embargo" – the secret police were afraid of the
people! I halfway expected a Yugoslav UDBA agent to try to sell me tickets to a
secret police barbecue.
Oh, sure, Tito was still officially in charge. The Yugoslav Communist Party
officially ran everything. But, in fact, Yugoslavia was free. People could all
of a sudden come, go, worship in a church, leave a state collective farm,
contact relatives abroad, start a business, curse the government, write and
publish that which the regime hated, subscribe to American and Western European
publications, speak freely to everybody; name it, Yugoslavs could do it.
Tito became irrelevant. Communism became irrelevant. That relevance was
never regained.
Those who sense I'm saying "Lift the embargo and Castro and communism
will become irrelevant" may reply: "Look, the embargo HAS been lifted
a little bit, and even that slight little bit of lift has ALREADY made Castro
and communism irrelevant. We don't have to give that monster any more relief.
Cuba is already a dollar economy. Pictures of Fidel have already given way to
pictures of the martyred Che Guevara. People already long less and less silently
for a change. They speak forth their true feelings more and more loudly. So
leave the embargo exactly where it is."
They may be right. I can't help wondering, however, if a sudden, total
lifting of the embargo wouldn't, in effect, suck Cuba up America's exhaust pipe
and leave Castro and communism hanging out to dry.
They love Americans in Cuba. They realize Castro is a failure and a fraud.
They want what their labors deserve. Why not go all the way here and now and let
American culture, American products and Americans drown the final fumes of
Castroism in a riptide of American business, cultural, touristic and personal
engulfment?
He who proclaims decisively deserves much honor.
He who merely presents opposing points of view fairly deserves a lot less
honor.
Am I – a five-time visitor to Cuba, three times under Castro – now
recommending a total lifting of the embargo?
Don't pressure me.
I won't know, myself, until I contact that schoolteacher in North Carolina.
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