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Well, you can't just presume that someone is a "sympathizer" of the Castro regime just because of a tourist visit to the island. Plenty of people visit far more repressive governments as tourists (like Uzbekistan, which has a well-traveled Silk Road tourist trade) without being in favor of the behavior of the government.
Again, the fundamental issue is that it simply isn't the place of the US federal government to serve as a "nanny" when it comes to policing people's foreign travel.
Visiting or not visiting may be a personal moral decision, but why would you want it to be outsourced to the feds?
I think that the embargo is pointless and is only being maintained because the Cubans are a large demographic in Florida which is a major state in terms of deciding a presidential election.
I also think that the embargo gives Casto an excuse that he can use as to why the island isn't doing well economically and as to why his people are poor.
We've already made peace with Vietnam and we fought a war with them. They are still nominally Communist, are still a somewhat repressive regime, and we lost a lot of men there.
As mentioned above, we allow people to visit Uzbekistan, which is run by a nasty brutal dictator (Karimov) who akes Castro look like a fairy princess.
Don't get me wrong, I think that Castro is an ******* who has run the economy of Cuba into the ground and what little good he did do is outweighed by all the evils he has done, but he is far from the most loathsome dictator who we do business with and for the most part whom we don't have an embargo with.
I wouldn't visit Cuba because it isn't worth the risk, but if they lifted the embargo I would visit.
We've already made peace with Vietnam and we fought a war with them. They are still nominally Communist, are still a somewhat repressive regime, and we lost a lot of men there.
That's an excellent observation, which points out a major mistake on our part. Exactly why did we establish normal relations with that gang of Stalinist murderers in Vietnam? I'll tell you why: money. Period.
Morally and ethically, there is no reason to have legitimized the Vietnamese communist regime. Doing so only showed the word that America is willing to sell its soul by forgetting the 58,000+ men we lost there -- all so that corporations can employ Vietnamese peasants at lower wages than our own people in the clothing industry.
I will never forget Bill Clinton mugging to the Vietnamese in front of a big statue of Ho Chi Minh. What a disgrace -- though, given Clinton's utter shamelessness, not so surprising. Clinton certainly imprinted his moral standards onto to our country (apparently permanently, as our current President circles the globe looking for people to apologize to).
Why repeat our mistakes? Why extend our charity to it Cuba, and let THEM have a piece of the cheap labor business, putting more Americans out of work and running a healthy trade surplus with us, as long as the Cuban government remains unapologetically repressive, totalitarian and fixated on paranoid hatred for America as a crude method to retain control over its people?
I have no idea what you are talking about, except parroting every anti-American tidbit you can throw together. Your use of the phrase `you guys` suggests that you are not an American. If that is the case, I would ask that you identify your nationality and explain just what gives you the right to comment on American policy vis-a-vis a Stalinist dictatorship 90 miles from our country.
Even before you reply, I can assure you that were it not for the United States, it is doubtful that you would own a computer, enjoy access to the internet, or have the right to post critical comments freely without fear of reprisal.
The reason these things are true is that America has put it all on the line, not once but many times, to defend human rights around the world. We opposed Hitler, Stalin (and his successors), and kept South Korea from being dominated by the lunatics in Pyongyang. We sometimes we have been wrong in the leaders we supported, but to argue that other nations deserve to be ruled by tyrants because America was misled by other tyrants is to distort the truth and engage in the worst kind of historical disingenuousness.
You were probably not alive in 1962, when Castro brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, all out of his personal animus toward my country and his despicable strategy of encouraging paranoia and xenophobia among his people. May I remind you that just because you weren`t here does not mean that these things did not happen and that what I say is not true?
As I stated above, if and when Castro and his `government` are prepared to apologize for their behavior toward the United States and the free world, and permit their people free access to information and freedom of expression, we should consider lifting the embargo. But only then. To do otherwise would be to reward the Castro brothers for their intransigence and the paranoid, dictatorial policies which keep the Cuban people mired in poverty and ignorance.
With respect, many countries have fought in wars, and "put it on the line".
I love how castro, cubans are punished and held to some magical standard. If only Mugabe had the same requirements.
1) The restrictions have no real impact on Cuba other than as a token gesture to the Cuban American population that can swing a big time swing-state like Florida. (See Bush vs. Gore if you don't believe me.)
2) The Cuban government uses the sanctions as an excuse for some of it's own failures.
Frankly, I think we just declare the cold war over with Cuba, lift all restrictions etc. and move forward. I think that would do an awful lot of good for Cuba not to have the US as Fidels personal boogeyman.
I'm not sure if you are asking about Mugabe or Castro....so I will pick the lesser known of the two and you can google about Castro (who just handed the country over to....his brother) on your own.
He has repeatedly declared at public rallies in recent days that he would never allow Mr. Tsvangirai, whom he denounces as a pawn of Britain, the former colonial power in Zimbabwe, to become president through the ballot box, vowing that the bullet is mightier than the ballpoint pen.
“Only God, who appointed me, will remove me, not the M.D.C., not the British,” Mr. Mugabe declared in the city of Bulawayo on Friday. “Only God will remove me!”
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