March 19, 2003
DON'T WE HAVE ONE SPARE CRUISE MISSILE?:
US outraged at Cuba arrests (BBC, 3/19/03)Washington has angrily demanded the immediate release of dozens of Cuban dissidents arrested for their contacts with the US representative in Havana.State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington was "outraged" by the detentions.
"This is an appalling act of intimidation against those who seek freedom and democratic change in Cuba," Mr Boucher said.
He also strongly defended the US envoy, James Cason, against Cuban accusations of carrying out subversive activities.
It's forty years too late to prevent the suffering of the Cuban people, but couldn't we at long last effect regime change in Cuba? Posted by Orrin Judd at March 19, 2003 8:35 PM
Here's something to chew over:
Don't you think that in any sane
society, Steven Spielberg's comments calling his dinner with Fidel Castro "the most meaningful night of my life" would receive at least
as much attention as Trent Lott's racist gaffe?
It's a good bet that most people in Cuba want Castro gone. But there's no reason to believe that many people in Cuba want to see their country trashed and a lot Cubans killed in a war launched by America to depose Castro. Shouldn't we repect the Cuban people's wishes?
Posted by: Peter Caress at March 20, 2003 12:34 AMPeter:
When they get to vote we'll know what those wishes are.
A simple answer: bigger, bigger fish to fry.
Posted by: MG at March 20, 2003 3:58 AMMr. Caress;
That's why OJ suggested a cruise missile, not B-52s. Castro's dinners take so long that we could easily launch a cruise missile during appetizers and have it arrive during dessert.
Dead men don't vote outside of Georgia, so we'd never know how those who died felt about the war.
We can reasonably infer that Iraq and North Korea are so awful that people in those countries are praying for liberation. Can we make the same inference about Cuba? I'm not convinced, so prudence suggests we should not go to war.
(And if we're really interested in alleviating Cuban suffering, we should lift the embargo.)
Peter:
The embargo comes off an hour after the cruise missile goes off.