Castro retires

I really don’t think Cuba should be celebrated. Yes, decent health care and some other good things. But I find it hard to celebrate a regime under which about one sixth of the population emigrated to escape political oppression and economic catastrophe.

US blockade? Blimey. They’re not very good at it. I slipped through twice. I bet Chris B will be as insistent on celebrating the positive aspects of GWB’s term as well, when the time comes. It’s rotten always to concentrate on the negative, isn’t it?

Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid

You know what? Let’s not. Let’s not hear it for either side in the Angolan civil war. Let’s not hear it for napalming villages, however admirable the health care policies of the bomber pilots in question. Let’s not hear it for another bloody little oil war pushed by nations far from the scene of conflict. Let’s not hear it for forced marches, strategic hamlets, free fire zones, collective punishments. Let’s not hear it for the brigade of Cuban troops who were sent in to protect Chevron’s oil installations.

In short, let’s not hear it for anyone who thinks it’s their god-given right to go half way round the world to teach the natives how to be good little subjects and not disturb the money flow.

Yes, Chris, but those obviously aren’t as important to you as sticking it to the capitalists and killing people in Angola.

Man, I knew Chris B. was near the top of the CT bloggers for willingness to countenance any amount of trampling on individual freedom if done in the holy name of Equality, but this takes the cake.

Unless this is a joke or a troll; it does seem too close an imitation of one of those National Review types who write sentimental reminiscences about Franco and Pinochet. Just like this post, they usually start out with a pro forma tut-tutting about the eggs broken to make the omelet, and end by invoking some slogan of the Great Cause.

Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid.

that would work if South Africa didn’t get involved in Angola partly because Cuba did !

I’ve always thought that if Cuban emigration was mainly driven by political opression and human rights, you would see a lot more Cuban refugees showing up in Jamaica and in the Dominican Republic, which are about the same distance east of Cuba as Miami is to the west.

???
this makes no sense. Even if every Cuban refugee were leaving purely for political reasons, why wouldn’t they pick the US rather than Jamaica, especially if, as you say, they’re equally close?

Say there were a dictatorship in the US, would you really expect equal numbers of fleeing dissidents to turn up in impoverished Mexico as in rich, welcoming Canada?

For reference, some not-left-wing opinions on Cuban health and social development—

If left-right prejudices really are as redundant as the prime minister reckons, his best-advised policy shift should be rather different. Within reason – and though hell will freeze over, while pigs cruise over Downing Street – he should go Cuban. John Harris, BBC Newsnight report

Cuba’s achievements in social development are impressive given the size of its gross domestic product per capita. As the human development index of the United Nations makes clear year after year, Cuba should be the envy of many other nations, ostensibly far richer. [Cuba] demonstrates how much nations can do with the resources they have if they focus on the right priorities – health, education, and literacy. Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations

Cuba has done a great job on education and health and it does not embarrass me to admit it. World Bank President James Wolfensohn

The health system in Cuba guarantees accessibility to the entire population, is free of charge, and covers the spectrum from vaccinations to sophisticated interventions. The results are impressive: Cuba’s health figures are on a par with developed countries that have 20 times the budget. The country is experiencing a difficult period because of the collapse and loss of support from the Soviet Union; over 30 years’ trade embargo by the United States; and the gradual change from a centrally planned economy towards more of a free market system. Shortages are experienced in every sector, and maintaining health care services at the current level is too expensive. Doctors and nurses continue to work towards the goal of health for all Cubans, even though their salaries are minimal. Signs of negligence or corruption, often seen in other socialist countries where incentives for output are lacking, are unknown. Topics such as family planning and AIDS deserve immediate attention. Hans Veeken, Letter from Cuba in the British Medical Journal

“Actually, it looks a lot more like the sort economic migration you’d expect to see in a small poor country geographically close to a big rich country to me; Irealand had net out-migration of about 400,000 compared to a population of c3m in the 1950s.”

That’s right. And remind me, how many of them escaped over the Irish Channel clinging to makeshift rafts? How many drowned along the way?

Good for you, Chris!

Sometimes the simple, “naive” view is has more truth than the sophisticated one, and it takes courage to embrace it without all kinds of hedging-round. This is one of those cases.

I hope Cuba’s immense accomplishments won’t be lost in whatever comes next.

Virtually all the Cuban exiles in Miami look white. Cuba appears these days to be virtually 100% black.

Discuss.

The majority of the commentary on this thread just goes to prove Chris’s point about “posts in the blogosphere saying “good riddance” to Fidel Castro (especially from “left” US bloggers like Brad DeLong who never miss the chance to distance themselves).”

“John M. Oh no, another commenter with questionable reading skills:I wrote: “capitalists and their lackeys”Your wrote: “anti-Stalinists””

Yes, But Chris, how could AJP Yaylor tell which were which? How can you? They would all have claimed to be anti-Stalinist and I believe people should choose their own title. ‘Capitalist lackey’ is just a code for anti-Stalinists that you happen not to like.

“I suspect someone may have been inhaling a little propaganda. “Makeshift rafts” ye gods. The vast majority of Cuban emigres to the USA get there the sensible way; via people-smugglers.”

But a sizeable minority get there, or die trying, on makeshift rafts. As opposed to, er, none escaping from Ireland in this way. And how many left Ireland via ‘people smugglers’? Your analogy is limping a little.

But, obviously, the Cubans who risked their lives to homemade rafts or put themselves in hock to organised crime in order to escape Cuba can’t have been motivated by political oppression. They must just have been chasing the cash (that’s what Fidel says, after all).

A sizable minority of people trying to get to the US from Haiti and the Dominican republic are on makeshift rafts. A sizable minority of people trying to get into the EU from North Africa are on makeshift rafts. How exactly is this any different?

The government of Angola leaves a lot to be desired. They can stash the oil money in secret bank accounts with the best of them. Of course they’re clever enough to avoid Swiss—it’s all in Brazil, with their linguistic cousins. So I’m not sure Cuba gets a positive in the balance sheet from that outcome.

On the other hand, one hears lots of stories in Africa about the role of Cuban doctors in fighting AIDS early on, since they were often the first to come across it with some sense of how serious it was. Don’t know if it’s been written up anywhere. All before combatting AIDS in Africa became a legacy-rescuer for unpopular presidents.

A sizable minority of people trying to get to the US from Haiti and the Dominican republic are on makeshift rafts. A sizable minority of people trying to get into the EU from North Africa are on makeshift rafts. How exactly is this any different?

Honest question: is there a difference in the access to information of the immigrants?

“It’s true that Cuba stands out compared with other dictatorships in the region, but it is so often represented as much better than that.”

Cuba is a tiny island in the Carribean, with no natural resources, poor farmland, a legacy of colonial exploitation and slavery, which endures an economic embargo from the local super-power, has almost no access to investment capital. Oh and let us not forget, where the neighbouring superpower has been trying to destroy the government (dictatorship, fairly benign) and replace it with a “friendlier” dictatorship (lets not kid ourselves). Despite this, the average Cuban is wealthier than the average inhabitant of almost any of the neighbouring islands and has a real export industry (pharmaceuticals). No, its far from ideal, yes I would like it to be more democratic (and Raul seems serious about moving things this way). On the other hand its a lot more impressive than the achievements of many democracies in the world.

Two cheers for the little country that has stood up to the U.S. for so long. Cuba’s crime, from Washington’s point of view, was never lack of democracy—Washington being quite comfortable with dictators—but, as Chris Bertram suggests, that it removed itself from the U.S. empire and ran its own affairs. What made this action particularly unacceptable to Washington is that Cuba is only a few miles from Florida, very much in the U.S.A.’s “own” backyard. As such, Cuba has posed a particularly intolerable threat—what Chomsky has called “the threat of a good example”. After all, if one poor, Third-World country can defy Washington and get away with it, other nations may be infected with similar ideas of independence.
http://www.gocuba.ca/en/index.asp

“On the other hand its a lot more impressive than the achievements of many democracies in the world.”

If you do not place a high value on political, social and economic freedom. Liberals used to think those things were quite important.

And the Cuban pharmaceutical export industry? Please.

You could say the same for Pinochet
Pinochet didn’t improve education, health care and housing in Chile, so it would be a stretch to make that claim for him.

But if Fidel changed his mind, the whole system would change to. That is because he is (or was) a dictator and that is to his discredit.

As opposed to the various democracies where the government has decided to change the whole system once it got into power (and without telling anyone). Or the democracies where the government promised change, and once in power… And that’s in the west – in the developed world democracy often means a choice between plutocrat dee, or dum.

Count me in with those on the “left” who are eager to distance themselves from dictators. Hysteria is bad, but it’s hard to distinguish this kind of “balance” from that offered by Pinochet apologists.

“But we already knew that having a strong state was one of the most important preconditions for a successful society.”

Quite. And it is a lesson that we could equally learn from Chile whose acheivements have been much greater my most measures. But nobody stands up for ‘plucky’ General Pinochet round here (thank god for small mercies, although I am sure there are commentators on CT who will suddenly find virtue there too if the record throws up some evidence of ant-American activity by the Pinochet regime).

The difference is that the states they [people trying to get into US from Haiti/Dominica and EU from N. Africa] are fleeing from are not being apologised for on CT.

They’re economic migrants.

cian: well, that clears matters up. Obviously, as long as you provide a decent standard of living for your own people and keep the exports flowing, your little overseas adventures and their body counts are not worthy of criticism.

In that case… let’s hear it for Richard Nixon!

“Because more groupthink is always a good thing.”

No, because Chris B et al only appear to oppose human rights abuses when they are not ideologically sympathtic to the regime perpetrating them, but find all sorts of jesuitical reasons for forgiving such abuses when they approve of the policial stripe of the abuser. This weakens the ethical standing of left-wing opposition to human right as abuse in may people’s eyes and pushes them to the right.

Cuba is for Cubans. The US obsession with Cuba has always struck me as either a typically American capital-biased reaction, or, pychopolitically, a direct result of Castro’s audacious flipping the bird at big ole’ US daddy all those years ago. What US policy since Eisenhower vis a vis Cuba reveals rather starkly is the 20th century American government’s imperial disposition, a disposition, my friends, that has nearly destroyed republican virtue.

Surely we shouldn’t be taking our ethical bearings from such types, though.

No indeed. We should be thinking for ourselves. Which includes understanding that most things aren’t pure black or pure white. Did you really think their was such a dangerous lack of anti-Castro comment out there that Chris had some sort of duty to provide more of it than he already did in the second goddamn sentence of his post?

Ajay:
Err, what?

To chime in re: boat people, surely it is also a factor in the proportions of immigration flow from each of these island nations that America still grants legal status to any Cubans who hit Florida.

“I’ve always thought that if Cuban emigration was mainly driven by political opression and human rights, you would see a lot more Cuban refugees showing up in Jamaica and in the Dominican Republic, which are about the same distance east of Cuba as Miami is to the west.”

Not really convinced there, you know?
http://www.1yachtua.com/caribbean_sailing/caribbean_sea.asp
Jamaica is to the south of Cuba and the general current is south to north at that point. Even in a powered vessel that wouldn’t be the destiniation of choice.
Dominican Republic (and Haiti) are to the east of Cuba and that current appears to be east to west, so, again, not the destination of choice.
Florida is to the north east of Cuba and the current there seems to flow from Cuba to Florida.
A small test of this could be that The Bahamas also lie on that same current from Cuba. Do Cuban refugees end up there?
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-133839188.html
Why, yes, they do.
“IT’S a wretched story, like so many out of Cuba, but it has a twist: the wretchedness of the government of the Bahamas. These islands are located in an awkward position, just northeast of Cuba, just southeast of Florida. When Cubans flee on rafts and other pathetic craft, they sometimes drift into Bahamian waters, and are picked up by that country’s coast guard.”
Now I realise that’s lifted from National Review but I doubt neo-conness extends to mis-reporting the ocean currents.

Nice one engels.

“So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care.”

I made much the same argument recently, on this forum, WRT Suharto’s Indonesia.

Curiously, it was not met with universal acclaim.

Doug M.

Err, what?

52 to 38.

Doug M is right—the argument for Castro is the same as the one he made for Suharto, at least as far as domestic issues are concerned.

As for Angola, random African has it backwards—Cuba intervened after the US and South Africa—
http://www.strategypage.com/militaryforums/50-9.aspx

Forgot to state my position (like anyone cares)—
It’s perfectly okay to try and give a balanced picture of the good and bad things that occurred under a dictator, right or left. One should not, however, excuse the murders because of increased life expectancy overall. Morality isn’t supposed to work that way, or so I’ve always thought.

I’m not saying Chris did this, but the initial post was a little bit too cheerful for my tastes.

What there won’t be arguments about is that Cubans were fighting (and dying) against apartheid South Africa and that the United States was on the same side as the racists.

Oh please ! Killing Cabindan independentists and peasants from the interior was fighting apartheid ? Supporting a mestizos dominated party was fighting apartheid ?

As for Angola, random African has it backwards—Cuba intervened after the US and South Africa

Errrr, nope. Let’s make it clear: there were two wars in Angola. An independence war fought against the portugese (which were allied with Rhodesian and South Africans) by 4 different movements and then a civil war between those movements. South Africa justified its interventions by using 2 arguments: – Angola was providing shelter to SWAPO and ANC. – Cuba and the USSR was backing an illegitimate regime.

Without the cuban intervention on the side of MPLA during the civil war between former independence movements, the formely China-backed UNITA would not considered alliances with the Apartheid guys.

So yeah, South Africa was active in Angola but it was on and off, Cuba gave them a permanent excuse to be totally active.

I don’t really feel like wading into this, but anyone who thinks, or claims to think, that there is obvious hypocrisy involved in holding a different opinion of dictatorship A to dictatorship B (though both ruled over developing countries, violated subjects’ human rights in varying numbers, improved social or economic conditions to varying degrees, pursued different foreign policies and was subject to different external pressures, etc, etc) is being very simpleminded, but probably not exceptionally so by the standards of these threads.

“no natural resources”, Untrue Oil, Nickel & Tobacco

“poor farmland” Untrue terrific farmland although water is an issue i the east

A legacy of colonial exploitation and slavery, which endures an economic embargo from the local super-power, has almost no access to investment capital. Just like the rest of the Caribbean but the rest of the caribbean hasn’t had billions in Soviet subsidies. To be fair much of that was invested in the health and education infrastructure that Mr Bertram lauds.

Cuba is a special case given the level of development it has achieved with its relative wealth. The question I have, after living there for three years, is could they achieve that development in an atmosphere of more respect for human rights? Or is development in socialist/communist countries necessarily at the expense of human rights?

Suharto’s situation was exactly the opposite – he was a client of the superpower. Castro had to fight that superpower – the Bay of Pigs, dozens of assignation attempts, the blockade, etc. He’s got a good excuse to be a dictator.

I’ve always thought that if Cuban emigration was mainly driven by political opression and human rights, you would see a lot more Cuban refugees showing up in Jamaica and in the Dominican Republic, which are about the same distance east of Cuba as Miami is to the west.

If Jamaica and the Dominican Republic had passed something equivalent to the Cuban Adjustment Act, your comment might make a shred of sense. As they didn’t and you haven’t detailed anything about Jamaica and the DR’s immigration policies, it makes no sense. Your comment calling people republicans for having the temerity to disagree is beneath contempt.

There is a large Cuban emigre community in Spain, by the way. Indeed, several of the most prominent dissidents who have beeen freed – including the most recent group and Raul Rivero – have gone to Spain.

So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care.

Merely the flipside of the argument of those on the right who praised Pinochet’s economic record. All the intellectual rigor of saying that Norman Bates was fond of his mother and a skilled taxidermist or Hannibal Lecter was a brilliant chef.

Jonas Savimbi
“Since the start of the Angolan liberation struggle, Savimbi had touted himself as a nationalist fighting for independence from Portuguese colonialism. However, Savimbi showed more hostility toward the other indigenous freedom parties and forged a clandestine alliance with the Portuguese colonial government and its secret police, PIDE, according to University of Southern California professor Gerald Bender and a series of subsequently released documents. As part of this alliance, code-named “Operation Timber,” Savimbi and PIDE engaged in military actions against rival movements, and Savimbi provided the Portuguese with information regarding the activities of the opposition forces. After the Portuguese withdrew from Angola in 1974, Savimbi thwarted an agreement for multiparty, nationwide elections in November 1975, returned to the bush, and plunged the nation into another two decades-plus of war.

…For decades, Savimbi’s forces fought Angola’s MPLA government, which was supported militarily by the Soviet Union and thousands of Cuban troops—and was recognized by every country in the world except South Africa and the United States. In order to instill terror in the population and to undermine confidence in the government, Savimbi ordered that food supplies be targeted, millions of land mines be laid in peasants’ fields, and transport lines be cut. As part of this destabilization effort, UNITA frequently attacked health clinics and schools, specifically terrorizing and killing medical workers and teachers. The UN estimated that Angola lost $30 billion in the war from 1980 to 1988, which was six times the country’s 1988 GDP. According to UNICEF, approximately 330,000 children died as direct and indirect results of the fighting during that period alone. Human Rights Watch reports that because of UNITA’s indiscriminate use of landmines, there were over 15,000 amputees in Angola in 1988, ranking it alongside Afghanistan and Cambodia.”

[...]Homosexuality was formally decriminalised in 1979, and a year later the Castro government tried to purge Cuba of “anti-social” dissidents, criminals and homosexuals by allowing them to emigrate to the US in the 1980 Mariel boatlift.” – WIKI

But look at the improvements in health care, which made this OK.

Who said the human rights abuses were okay?

If Jamaica and the Dominican Republic had passed something equivalent to the Cuban Adjustment Act, your comment might make a shred of sense.

And if the US congress had passed something equivalent to the Cuban Adjustment Act for the Jamaicans we would see, without a doubt, a mass emigration from Jamaica to the US. So, what’s your point there?

It was in response to this comment upthread:

I’ve always thought that if Cuban emigration was mainly driven by political opression and human rights, you would see a lot more Cuban refugees showing up in Jamaica and in the Dominican Republic

Without going into Jamaica’s and the DR’s immigration policies and without acknowledging the Cuban Adjustment Act that was designed to facilitate Cuban immigration, ignores the fact that most Cuban emigres left for the US precisely because the US made it easier for them. Why is that so hard to understand?

Further to Randy Paul [#91], is it appropriate to mention Castro’s apocalyptic cheerleading at the time of the Cuban missile crisis?

I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike on the United States. The Cuban people are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the destruction of imperialism and the victory of world revolution.

I propose the immediate launching of a nuclear strike…

You can’t really trust dubious quotes like this. Otherwise you’ll end up believing a lot of nonsense.

BTW, Ronald Reagan did actually announce: “we start bombing in 5 minutes.”

Why would the existence of Cuban Adjustment Act make it merely economic?

Randy, it’s one thing when you emigrate and end up in worse economic circumstances than you had in your country. Then you can indeed claim that you’re fleeing political oppression and all that.

But when it looks like you’ve been bribed, given an economic incentive to emigrate – it’s a different story. Your claiming political motivation is not very convincing in this case, sorry.

But when it looks like you’ve been bribed, given an economic incentive to emigrate – it’s a different story. Your claiming political motivation is not very convincing in this case, sorry.

Nor is yours claiming bribery. There was already a small Cuban-American community in Florida. Why would they emigrate to Jamaica or the DR instead?

You’ve provided no prooof of bribery. None.

Thanks for making my point for me.

I don’t quite understand the whole “little country stands up to a superpower” mystique. Cuba was a client state of the USSR, until the USSR fell apart. The United States’ antagonism of Cuba stems from this fact more than anything else. Cuba had Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at the US, with Soviet military officers on the ground. Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union has Cuba been a country “standing up to” the US. But what has that entailed? We haven’t tried to do anything to Castro or Cuba in those years, other than pander to people in Miami every four years. We have an embargo, but that requires the argument that nations are required to trade with each other. Not something that is typically argued for on the left.

I realise that this isn’t really about Cuba, Randy, it’s about the exteme emotional importance to a lot of American leftists of proving that they’re not apologists for theevilcubansses, but if we take Vietnam, for example, where people did actually flee on makeshift vessels, they ended up in Hong Kong, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Phillippines and Indonesia. If they had all ended up in Hong Kong, people would have wondered whether there was an economic element to the migration decision too. (Guess what? It’s possible to make a balanced assessment of the overall effect of the last thirty years of Communist rule in Vietnam too, without falling for either apologism or knee-jerk condemnation).

At the moment you appear to be arguing that since there was a peace of legislation offering very strong economic incentives to attempt to emigrate to the USA, that means that there must have been no element of economic migration. It doesn’t look very coherent to me.

My post #13 was addressed specifically to Republicans, but since you decided not to bother reading it and just call me “beneath contempt”, you may wear it. From now on, you will always be “Randy the Republican” to me. In fact, since despite Chris having been specific about human rights abuses in his post, you’re trying to imply that he said that quarantining AIDS sufferers was OK, I don’t think it’s even particularly inaccurate or uncivil to point out that yes indeed, Randy, you are in fact carrying the Miami Republicans’ political water for them.

Human rights are by definition universal, inalienable and absolute.

I wish this was so and that these rights were as I conceive them. Someone else may have different ideas.

There’s things to celebrate about any place, I suppose. To bad it is often so controversial to point out some of the good things about one side from the other side.

There’s no government on earth that is not a human rights abuser in one degree or another. Therefore the absolutist position is simply silly; degrees and circumstances do matter. Unless you’re a radical anarchist or something.

There’s no government on earth that is not a human rights abuser in one degree or another. Therefore the absolutist position is simply silly; degrees and circumstances do matter. Unless you’re a radical anarchist or something.

What relativist nonsense. Why would nations ratify the UDHR?

#112: Call it simple
Actually, it’s simplistic. Chris condemned human rights violations in Cuba, then pointed out that there were achievements as well, and in any case, US official hostility toward Cuba was not based on devotion to freedom and human rights but rather on Cuba’s unavailability for exploitation by American capital. Why is this “making excuses”?

#115: Doesn’t the corollary to this practically write itself?
No, it doesn’t. It’s perfectly reasonable to condemn Cuba’s or the Soviet Union’s political unfreedom, acknowledge their achievements, if any, and then point out the gross and disgusting hypocrisy of American foreign policy and of its uncritical supporters. Why do you think this is not reasonable?

“If you took away the US-thwarting part, would the rest of Castro’s legacy get even the tiniest amount of applause?”

Considering what was there before?
Yes.

Among all the other things Chris got wrong in this post was celebrating Cubans who “held off” (I think he means “killed,” but I’m not a mindreader) American soldiers invading Grenada. Anyone who thinks Grenada was better off under chaotic Marxist/Hobbesian rule than what followed the invasion is deluded. Yes, the Americans were certainly there for the same imperialist reasons that the Cubans were there, but that’s no reason to celebrate the Cubans.

Good riddance.

That’s not the question. The question is, if tacit acceptance of some human rights abuses are to be made as ABB1 seems to suggest (the old everyonne else does it argument), why then would governments be ratifying treaties and and declarations like the UDHR, the Convention Against Torture and the Convention Against Genocide?

Best government in the world, Cuba’s, and the comments here confirm the narcissim of small differences between left and right.

Bear that in mind the next time someone praises Pinochet.

Castro, of course, is nothing like Pinochet. Rather, Castro is like Allende who refused to be overthrown and murdered.

“Be