Obama announces Cuba trip | Hacker News Reader

Obama announces Cuba trip

nytimes.com

61 pointsmiiiiiike18 comments

Here's what I (as a relatively poorly informed AU citizen who's 'travelled a bit') don't understand about the reaction to this news.

It's clearly not the ideal end-game state. But, it seems to be a marked improvement on the previous (half-century-long) situation. And in order to get from current to ideal, there'll be some intermediary stuff. In tech this is a common and well understood progression - ideally it's short, well managed, not-too-painful, etc. But basically unavoidable.

So why is this announcement being judged in terms of 'This isn't perfect'?

There's a vocal minority of Americans who oppose any softening of policy towards a Castro Cuba. Many (most?) of these have ties to men and women who fled Castro decades ago and who lost a lot to the Castro regime.

There also seems to be an incredible effort to prevent Obama from achieving almost anything.

I'm always confused about the duality of our pro-China but anti-Cuba attitude.

The idea of saturating Cuba with Americans to try something different to awaken the people to alternatives is a good idea, at least better than what we've done for the past half century.

And the scale of the evil the Castros have done is nothing compared to China. Cuba doesn't kidnap people from other countries and have them suddenly appear on Cuba TV confessing to crimes.

The CIA had spent a lot of time and money installing and arming the Batista regime, a murderous, brutal but pliant Mafia-backed kleptocracy in Cuba, and were absolutely furious when it was suddenly taken away from them.

The US has basically been sulking ever since.

And to add to that, the Cubans who fled during and right after the revolution started a Cuban-American Lobby that has been able to continually influence the hard stance our government has taken on them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban-American_lobby

I think the comparison isn't great (I believe the Cuban regime would kidnap people and bring them back if they had the capability to), but there's a lot of history that happens to cause status quos, and the status quo is hard to change. But I think you know that....

For what its worth, if you talk to a random person, there's a very pro-Cuba and anti-China attitude. I'd say the US gov't position difference is more an indicator of Chinese power than anything else.

Also China is going to be an even bigger player as the decades roll by, no matter what anyone else wants. Cuba will never be anything other than a small player on the world stage.

One concern that has always bugged me is that many opponents of relations with Cuba bring up Cuba's confiscation of property and goods owned by locals and foreigners while always giving China a pass on the same.

This treatment of Cuba is long overdue for correction and my only disappointment with Obama is that he didn't do this on his first term. To be out front with it, I am so tired of American leaderships not acting upon entering office and instead waiting until they are reelected when doing things that deserved to be done.

Simple, if he'd acted on it during his first term, there probably wouldn't have been a second term to do anything in...

>The idea of saturating Cuba with Americans to try something different to awaken the people to alternatives is a good idea, at least better than what we've done for the past half century.

Except this wont happen. The natives will become (as they are now) second class to tourists and foreign businesses. The people this benefits are the Castro regime, foreign business, and people that want a new cheap tourist destination.

The more tourists there, the better that second class status will be.

Yes, it would be great if the country just got a good democratic government, with strong institutions. But while that doesn't happen (and the US can not force a change), it helps not to make things worse.

Trade, Not Trust;

Incidentally- “The United States will come talk to us when it has a black president and the world has a Latin American pope,”

-- Fidel Castro, 1973

Edit: flanbiscuit pointed out that there is no official record of this statement. Letting it stay, as a mythbuster.

I don't think that he actually said that

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/19/fidel-castro-pr...

http://www.snopes.com/fidel-castro-prophecy-quote/

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