In his post A Foreign Policy President, Booman wrote:
American-born Cuban Americans voted overwhelmingly for the president on Tuesday. There is no longer any political reason for the Democrats to worry about normalizing relations with Cuba.
Yes Booman!!! Absolutely. This may be the most important foreign policy action that Barack Obama can take for the future of the United States. Why? How? Let me explain.
Cuba is the linchpin of a good relationship with South/Central/Caribbean America, and much of that area is presently in a boom state. It promises to become the next China…a “China” I might add that in my opinion is overall in much healthier condition in a cultural and sociopolitical sense than is the real China. Given the abysmal history of the U.S. south of our borders, a real détente w/Cuba…the first country in that area to successfully defy U.S. domination, a heroic model for the entire region and most certainly the most important single cultural source for all of Caribbean America for the last several hundred years…normalizing relations would send a clear and unmistakable message that the racist era in U.S. foreign policies has come to an abrupt and final end. Even more than the United States, South/Central/Caribbean America represents the beginning of coming together of all three major races into one real human race. This hemisphere has been called “The New World” since the 1400s…less than 600 years, a blip on the timescreen of the human race. This “new” world is still in its infancy, and I firmly believe that it is the picture of a better world to come. With all the talk…accurate talk, I might add…about a demographic sea change in the U.S., about a multi-ethnic New Majority, it’s time to strike while that particular iron is hot and change the direction of our foreign policy far and wide.
Read on for more.
I bet my life on the idea of a multi-racial culture as a very young man when I chose to play multi-cultural musics, and it looks like I was right. I didn’t make that choice on any deep philosophical basis, the music just lifted me out of my 14-year old life by its sheer power, but over the ensuing half-century or so…a half-century that has been marked by the beginning of the end of European/American hegemony over most of the rest of the world…the reasons behind the power that I felt have become increasingly clear to me. The blending of different cultures into new and better forms can be seen in both macro and micro-elements. I don’t care if it’s Jackie Robinson opening up baseball to the gifts of black, latino and oriental players, Louis Armstrong finding a way to blend African and Western European musical traditions into something entirely new or the education of wide swaths of the populations of Europe and the U.S. to other…mostly Asian…ways of considering the state of the universe and human beings’ place in it; the fact of the matter is that every time one culture adapts positive elements of other cultures into its system, that culture benefits.
So here we are at a turning point. There is not only no political risk in ending the Cuban/American hostilities of the last 50 years, there is plenty of political gain to be made from it. If Obama has the foresight, courage and political acumen to get it done fairly quickly…before Fidel Castro dies…a picture of Castro and Obama embracing in Havana would change the state of the world immediately. It would do so not only in this hemisphere but throughout the rest of the world as well. The real point of most radical Islamist propaganda…tacit in most instances, but quite clear…is that the U.S. only uses its power against non-white people. Recognizing Cuba and taking an active part in helping the country to rehabilitate itself would be a political and foreign policy masterstroke if done correctly and well.
I wrote a piece here after a trip to Cuba with the wonderful…and now sadly, defunct…Chico O’Farrill Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra in December of 2010. (Read it if you haven’t done so. It’s a worthwhile read if I do say so myself. (Cuba and CommuCaribbeanism-A Sad, Strange, Brave Old New World) It was a fairly dark piece…dark about the future of a Cuba that has been nearly exhausted by the depredations inflicted on it by the 50 year U.S. embargo…and in it I wrote the following words. (New italics mine.)
The money will come a’knockin’ very soon. When it does, the Cubans are eventually going to open the door and although they will make some serious profit on the action, they will get fucked in the end, just as has every other culture that has surrendered to the blandishments of the U.S. except perhaps Japan.
Only a vast political and cultural sea change in America would spare them from this fate, and I do not see that happening in the foreseeable future.
Well…I was wrong. That sea change has happened. So now…what are we going to do about it? Muddle around in the old politics and let this particular hot iron grow cold or take a bold new direction? This has little or nothing to do with the federal legislature…all Obama has to do is say the word and everything changes.
Say the words.
VIVA CUBA!!!
Let us pray.
Make it so, Mr. President.
Make it so.
Like Nixon in China, brother.
Please.
Open it up.
Now.
Let Fidel know that he has succeeded.
He deserves that before he dies.
In a comment on that same article, I wrote:
There is footage of Castro on a plane…I believe it is when he was flying to the US for a 2nd visit…being interviewed by a reporter. He is asked “It has been reported that you wear a bulletproof vest at all times. Is this true?”
Castro gives the interviewer a big smile and unbuttons several layers of fatigues, shirts, etc. until he gets to his bare chest. And then he smiles even more and says:
I am better protected by my moral vest!!!
Castro gets a bad rap from most U.S. intellectuals, almost all politicians (those who want to win, anyway) and pretty much the entire U.S. media. “Vicious.” “A ruthless dictator.” Etc., etc., etc.
He did what he could with what he had to use, and he succeeded in his efforts to maintain a free Cuba. He will be seen by history as the George Washington of South/Central/Caribbean America, in my opinion. Give him his due, Mr. President. And give us our due as well. Let “The New World” truly unite. Get that operation started while you are still in office and still basking in the media’s approval after your victory.
Now’s the time.
Do it!!!
Please.
Later…
AG