CUBA LIBRE:

Visiting the Plantation (Annoying Old Guy, December 15, 2002, Thought Mesh)

A close friend of mine who is a journalist is going to Havana to celebrate her birthday this winter. She asked if I wanted to go along. I sent her this article about a Cuban airport worker hiding out in the landing gear in order to escape to Canada, commenting "I can't imagine wanting to visit someone place people are so desparate to get out of".

But that was just a glib riff on something I feel much more deeply. I don't understand the moral difference between enjoying a vacation in Cuba and visiting a slave plantation. For what is Cuba except a plantation writ large?

Also on Diane Rehm today, there was a discussion of the "new" American policy of pre-emption, with Ken Adelman and James Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg, with whom I was not previously familiar, made the "anti" case, but he was generally as common-sensical a "dove" as you're likely to find. The one exception--and, as the beloved AOG suggests here, it seems to be a permanent blind spot of the Left--was referring to the "successful" handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis without taking pre-emptive military action. The end result of that disgraceful episode, and of JFK's pledge never to invade the island, was, of course, to make America the effective guarantor of the inhuman Castro regime. For forty years now, under Republicans and Democrats alike, we've failed to free the people of Cuba, to our undying shame. The concept of vacationing in such a dictatorship truly is grotesque. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 16, 2002 1:09 PM