Does Democracy Prey on Cuba?

No, But Anti-Democracy Does 

        One of America's most notable democracy-lovers is Robert Shrum. He graduated from Georgetown University and Harvard Law School. He was Senator Ted Kennedy's Press Secretary and primary speech-writer. For over three decades Mr. Shrum has been in the upper echelon of America's most prominent and respected political advisors, especially on foreign policy. To americans, Cuba is a foreign country. Like informed democracy-lovers all around the world, Mr. Shrum is ashamed of America's Cuban policy. Online you can find his article entitled: "Obama Should End America's Stupidest Foreign Policy: Isolating Cuba."  

      In the aforementioned article, Robert Shrum penned these logical and brave democracy-loving words: "For the sake of sane foreign policy, the President should now make Rubio, Cruz, and their ilk even angrier by reaching out his hand again -- and, with a stroke of a pen, begin to end the most protracted foreign policy failure in our history." The rest of Mr. Shrum's article, as you would detect if you care enough about the United States and about democracy to dial it up, is just as scathing in denouncing America's longstanding right-wing inspired Batistiano-Mafiosi policy related to Cuba since the pretext for the 1898 Spanish-American War and particularly since 1952 when the U. S. teamed with the Mafia to pillage Cuba, and then brutalized Cubans to protect the pillaging. Mr. Shrum's reference to "Rubio, Cruz and their ilk" is both very brave and very appropriate. Those two first-term Cuban-American U. S. Senators -- and fervent presidential wannabees -- will never have to respond to such critics as Mr. Shrum because the mainstream U. S. media is too intimidated, too biased or too politically correct to hold them accountable. Meanwhile, informed democracy-lovers like Robert Shrum realize that the U. S. foreign policy related to Cuba has, for what Mr. Shrum calls a "protracted" period, done more than anything else to harm America's worldwide image for such an extended part of history. Its Protraction has lingered since the 1898 Spanish-American War and particularly since 1952 when right-wingers in the Eisenhower administration decided the Mafia would be the best partner to make sure that U. S. companies such as the infamous United Fruit company could rob the island blind, as it continued to do elsewhere after the Cuban Revolution ended the Cuban thievery in 1959. Robert Shrum's reference to "Rubio, Cruz and their ilk" relates to the fact that, since 1959, a handful of Cuban-American exiles, aligned with a few right-wingers in Congress and in the Bush dynasty, have continued to dictate America's Cuban policy, a policy that Mr. Shrum correctly calls "the stupidest failure in our history."  Americans who allow this to persist are not democracy defenders.  

"Cruz, Rubio and their ilk..."
Meanwhile, Cuba has friends: 

       Cuba this week signed a major deal with France related to Havana's Jose Marti Airport. President Obama's detente with Cuba has resulted in foreign nations and tourists taking a renewed interest in the island. The sharp increase in visitors has strained Cuba's infrastructure, overflowing the capacity of hotels and creating waiting lines at restaurants, night-clubs, and airports. Cuba and France have agreed that the French-controlled firm Bouygues will now expand and run Jose Marti Airport in Havana. It is the same firm that runs all the major airports in Paris. The new alliance will soon help Cuba's entire tourism industry.

       Thanks to historic actions by President Obama to defy the U. S. Congress's revengeful iron grip on Cuban policy, later in this month of August U. S. airlines will begin regular commercial flights to ten Cuban airports. Prior to Obama, for over half-a-century only special charter flights to Cuba have been allowed. The French contract this week reflects the island's attempt to cope with the changes wrought by Obama, all of which -- as Robert Shrum so elegantly pointed out -- makes "Rubio, Cruz and their ilk" angrier. 

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