Cuba the Morning After shuld be required reading in Hollywood.

Cuba certainly needed a political revolution, as it has never been well-governed.

The curious thing is that, although Cuba was comparatively well off (highest literacy in Latin America in the '50s), its citizenry had zero interest in preserving this swell state of affairs.

Even curiouser is that, following a further 40 years of bad government, and despite what might be thought of as a congenial laboratory for exiles in S. Florida, there is STILL no Cuban movement for good government.

Hmm. I bet, to Castro, calls for "good government" = "counterrevolutionary". He just had three journalists executed late last year on a trumped-up treason charge -- they had been criticizing the Gov.'t, calling for reforms & such. So it's no wonder if Cubans are reticent.

If I remember correctly, Castro didn't come out of the closet as an orthodox marxist until after the revolution -- maybe the Cubans figure they got burned last time they bothered to revolt -- what's the point of trying if the new boss is (effectively) same as the old?

Cuba was no worse governed then than the average country in today's OECD, and it was probably well above average for the world at large. BUT this is really not saying much. Thus, they experimented with a revolution, which is also not saying much, as most countries in the world did some time during the 20th Century. This is not so curious.

It is also not so curious that many accepted Castro, as even many of Castro's opponents of today started out thinking that he was the "tweak" that was needed: he would "ban" corruption, bring back some of those Constitutional niceties that Batista Part II (not to be nbecessarily confused with Batista Part I during the 1940's) had been abrogating, etc. In many ways, it was a revolution by stealth, so is not surprising that many fell for it.

Harry's second point, the lack of follow through on counter-revolution, is indeed more curious. Falcow speculates that the sanctioned and unsnactioned "exiling" to the US may have ended up providing a relief valve for anti-Castro, anti-revolution frustrations, as well as having robbed the island od the animus and brain power to lead a counter revolution. However, nobody shuld underestimate the effectiveness of Castro's repression; as well some charisma, which has allowed him to continue to rule unchallenged. In this context, Miami is irrelevant, in the same way the US would have been irrelevant in its disdain of Nazism had we never put the disdain into aggression.

Harry:

Of course there is, they elected Jeb and George Bush.

Harry:

Of course there is, they elected Jeb and George Bush.

I wouldn't discount the fear of wouldbe anticastroists in Cuba (though I also would not give a fig for them--if they don't have as much guts as Castro, who needs 'em?).

But where are they in Florida, for pete's sake? Where is the Cuban exile equivalent of the London Poles?

One possibility is that they expect Uncle Sugar to return their country to them without any effort or expense on their part (which I take be Orrin's position), and then they will see who has "gas in the tank" to get to Havana.

That is one explanation of how Castro got in. There was more or less zero appeal for any particular antiBatista faction, but Castro, having paid his dues in the Sierra Madre, had gas in the tank and the ones lurking outside the island found him in the palace by the time they got there.

A corollary to this view is that, by refusing to link up with the US, Castro accumulated all of whatever (slender) Cuban national feeling there was.

Anyhow, when it came to Iraq, Orrin was all for giving the place to the ones who stuck out the Saddam regime and throwing out the exiles who waited for someone to clear out the dictator for them.

With Cuba, his views are 180 degrees opposite, for no reason I can imagine.

Harry:

You just explained it. The Cubans are docile and will accept pretty much anyone who just takes power. The Shi'ites are democrats and fiercely proud--they'll dispose of the exiles in a heartbeat.

Harry -

I think you are holding Cubans in exile to a much higher standard than any "deposed" group since WWII. Moreover, I would hate to see how far the brave Poles (and they were) would have gone if our involvement in the war had been a la Bay of Pigs. I can't frankly think of too many countries which fell to organized Communism (i.e., were the government could count on almost unlimited financial and military support from the USSR) that were liberated through conflict. I could make the search even harder, if I specified that the country be an island (which certainly helps insulate your population). And, yes, oj is right, Cubans (in Cuba and in Miami) are more docile (and civilized?) than some of the firebrands that resort to terrorism in the quest for political gain. A point the Cuban-haters may want to remember when they paint this community as rabid animals.

MG:

Grenada

Grenada would not satisfy my criteria because they were a client state of Cuba...presumably too piddly for the big bad USSR itself. However, I would not quibble much since it was Uncle Sugar (as Harry would say) that liberated it, not the brave Grenadians.

Well, if the Cubans don't care who rules 'em, Orrin, why should I?

While I think if they were serious, they'd have a guerrilla in Oriente, I'd settle for just a government-in-exile that could validly claim the support of some broad swathe of the community. That's not dangerous.

Because we're Americans, not Cubans. We believe all men have inalienable rights.

Except Armenians.