Miami, Cuba and American Politics

As so often happens sometimes you need to hear a ridiculous play on the truth of a situation to see how silly the truth is. Cuba, 90 miles to the Southeast of Florida still suffers under an American embargo.

Fidel Castro who now must be 110 years old and is as menacing as your Uncle Earl still haunts the dreams of American Presidents. What is the deal with this.

Castro is a Communist. Last I checked so is China. We do not seem to have any large scale problem with China. Oh of course we make noises about human rights in China but the fact is we do not care. As long as Walmart buys more stuff from China than nost countries own GDP The United States will make nothing but noise about China's internal politics.

Castro however is a different animal. He is a threat to the National Security of this country. It is in the surface the most ridiculous of claims.

Of course much of the problem with Castro is like the American problem in many things, getting out of Afghanistan for example, in that no one wants to be the one to sign the peace treaty or in this case lift the embargo. Because the opposition party would crucify whoever finishes these missions, thereby admitting an earlier policy was at fault, rarely does anyone have any the courage to make a change.

Perhaps electoral politics are the biggest concern. Florida, being a state, that often has a disproportionally large amount of influence in our national elections, has a large Cuban American population. No one can take a chance on losing this group in total in an election. Thus our politicians continue this foolish policy.

If the Cuban population of Miami was in the state of Texas or Mississippi, that is a state that the blue state-red state divide is well established, electoral politics would be out of the Cuba issue and we might well have established a better policy.

It is time for America to grow up in regards to Cuba. There are 20 countries we do business with that have human rights records and abuses that make Cuba look like the Vatican. This makes us look stupid.