Cuba—Obama finally does something right

There hasn’t been much that Prez. Barack Obama has done for the progressive left.  His foreign policy is almost completely “Republican like” imperialism and not much different from his predecessor, George W. Bush.

But Obama may go down in history as the president who finally ended the cold war with Fidel Castro’s Cuba.  So far all he has done is open diplomatic relations. The blockade is still in place. But no other president before John F. Kennedy has had the courage to make this decision. The U.S. will also move to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which has mostly been a joke anyway.

It is not surprising that other US politicians have wined and complained about this:

“Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., welcomed Gross' release, but told Fox News, "I'm not in favor of the process by which his release was acquired, because I think it does set a very dangerous precedent."(NPR)

As with many far right politicians they still resent that Cuba left the US Empire and our business people and plantation owners could not go back to their idea of the good ol’ days.

From the Miami Herald:

“Shock reverberated through Miami, the heart of the exile community, where detractors lambasted the policy shift — and the Democratic president — for what they called a betrayal. A frenzy of reporters and politicians descended on Versailles Restaurant in Little Havana, a mecca of traditional anti-Castro sentiment…
… “The demand is for change in Cuba,” said (Hector) Torres, who was born in Havana.”

These guys are right-wing—fascists and long time cry-babies over the loss of their feudal paradise in Cuba. So the more practical side of the US has opened up. Not that they are progressive or sympathetic to socialism—because they are not. But they realize other countries already do business with Cuba and the US has locked its business community out of a market.

The socialist Island will have it easier if the blockade ever ends. While it is still one of the only Marxist-Leninist strongholds left in the world, it is actually a revisionist left-over of the Leonid Brezhnev (Леонид Брежнев) world. It also lacks the democracy that such a state really should have. Still it is one of the few anti-imperialist AND anti-world capitalist countries left and that can only be a good thing in the short run.

-សតិវ​ អតុ

Pix from www.zpub.com.