Jesus In Heaven Don't We Have Enough On Our Plates?

This is all fantasy. I've no doubt we'll try to impose our will.
Agree with Edgarb re isolation.

We already established that both Dag and I, and the other posters here, resist "forcing our will on Cuba". No military intervention.

Thats not the end of the answer, its the beginning of it.

What then? Instead? Use any diplomatic pressure we have to make the dictatorship there respect human rights, think about democracy? Support dissidents there, training or funding civil society organisations that could become an alternative?

Or say, like eBeth did - what business is this of America's - none, thats's what. Say, like BiPolar does - Cuba is no threat to the US, and anyway, there's lots of people living in trouble around the world, we shouldnt put starving foreigners over starving Americans.

Seems that all the American liberals on this thread so far headed straight for the second line, in no uncertain terms. Thats what Im referring to when I am pleading, please - the healthy answer to Bush's unilateral sabre-rattling is NOT "staying the f*ck out". Its smart, Clintonian international engagement.

You seem to feel a mission to intervene in Cuba. I don't. That is still not isolationism.

I don't mind being engaged and supportive. I can't imagine that any support from Bushco will be other than coersive and ultimately of negative result in backlash. Cubans aren't brainless. Do they not have a country?
Even non military imposition/manipulation is arrogant. I suppose I speak as a purist. All this world wide intervening, with accompanying incendiaries as tends to happen somewhere along the way, give no room for any kind of democratic muscles to develop from the land and the people. Or socialist muscles. They are the people who stayed.

I'm not saying all is roses in Cuba, but there are dozens of nations as bad or worse off. I refuse to pick that one out, when our government, regardless of party in power, hasn't a lick of sense when it comes to liberating people.

I believe the international community should pressure dictatorships to change. No matter which ideological "colour" those dictatorships are. Yes.

(You may want to call that "a mission to intervene" if you want, but that strikes me a bit on the rhetorical side.)


If you don't just oppose military intervention, but you also oppose non-violent means of pressure, support to the opposition, etc - you're basically saying, we should not involve ourselves in any way - then how's that distinct from the isolationist position?

Er, no.


Whats warlike about wanting the US - or in my case, the EU - to use any possible non-violent way to pressurise a dictatorship?

Diplomatic pressure. Support to dissidents. Supporting NGOs that help Cuban citizens directly. Support actions to free political prisoners. Offer training and institutional support to civil society organisations that can play a role when the Castro regime does fall. Supporting media to broadcast to Cuba without censorship. Etc.

There's a whole arsenal of foreign policy instruments between "invasion" and "staying out".

Just because George Bush can only see those two opposite extremes, doesnt mean smart liberals should.


Because "these people" bracket a totalitarian dictatorship and the people who are submitted to it and powerless against it.

If you have a prisoner and a warden, telling them you're going to stay out because you want them "to work it out between themselves" is tantamount to taking the side of the warden.


Nothing new.

The US helped West-European democracies to establish a foothold in tricky conditions after WW2 with lots of financial Marshall support. The US and W-Europe did what they could to tie the Soviets down in at least basic human rights structures (Helsinki, the OSCE) that afforded a chance to indirectly protect dissidents. Western European (local) governments and activists sent aid and volunteers to the budding Sandinista government of Nicaragua, after it had overthrown Somoza's dictatorship - and to the guerrilla/opposition FMLN in El Salvador, before any regime change. European consumers and (local) governments boycotted South African products in the Apartheid era.

More timely and relevant: international organisations affiliated with major US, German etc parties (the National Democratic Institute, the IRI, the Friedrich Ebert and Heinrich Boll Foundations, etc) established trainings and funding for burgeoning independent media, community organisations, human rights activists, human rights lawyers -- operating in opposition in, or in exile from, Milosevic-ruled Serbia, Georgia, the Ukraine. Those people - native opposition groups - have succeeded in overturning corrupt, criminal, repressive governments there now.

Its worth it.


Let them talk? Well, if Castro were talking with anyone - any democratic opposition, any dissidents, any alternative to his regime - that would be an option. But he doesnt even allow them to talk amongst themselves. He throws them in jail if they speak up too loudly.

Dissidents and populations faced with oppressive dictatorships will need our help - the help of outside democracies. Always have needed it - and successfully or unsuccessfully, both Europe and the US have always, in different ways, tried to give it, from Woodrow Wilson through FDR's time and Clinton's 1990s too. Its what makes us different from China or Russia.

Now no mistake, I think the way Bush has gone about doing so - the Republican way, in short - is disastrous. No quabble there. Noone - not Dag or me, anyhow - is pleading for any kind of military intervention. But to lower our eyes and say, well, we'll just not get involved, is no decent alternative either. To "let them be" is tantamount to surrendering them to their dictators.

And George Soros of course :wink:

I wonder what we (Soros, I mean) are doing re Cuba, if we have any activities in that direction... (ashamed to say I dont know by heart)

Why is 'any' involvement immediately read as 'intervention'? Which it is, I suppose, to some extent, but very very VERY different from what intervention usually means in commonspeak these days.

During the 1980s, the time that I do remember, I know many dissidents relied on help from abroad, depending on help whether it was simple book printing, channel of information that served as alternative media, as a tiny opening of truth, hope, whatever. My father was in prison several times and it was protests from Amnesty International and International Helsinki Federation that helped to get him out after months without even a trial. Late 1980s were marked by growing embarassment that the government faced on international fora and it was increasingly hard to cover it up at home. Without such pressure, communism could have easily been around another 10-15 years.

What is 10 years in the grand scheme of things? Well, I'll tell you what. It would be one third of my entire life up to now.

When I mean involvement (and I presume nimh is reasoning along the same lines) that is all that I advocate-grassroots networks, diplomatic pressure, supporting information channels, opening spaces of opportunities. If you want to call that intervention, well then I'm for intervention, I suppose.

I'm speaking of after Castro.

No doubt there are factions, and those factions might devolve in different ways with Castro gone. I am highly against the rest of the world telling them what to think. I assume they will evolve, if that is the right word, to a changed economic way of thinking and of self expression. Am happy they would get help in that, when they ask.

Help may surely come from other countries in the americas, who have stood by them. I don't particularly want those countries manipulating cubans either.

I just see all these big birds flying.

I don't know if Habitat for Humanity and "People in Need" are supported to some extent by Soros, but I know they are involved in working with dissidents. I know because a good friend of mine went on behalf of the People in Need (Clovek v Tisni) and got his (theirs) laptop stolen, hehe.

I, too, am speaking of after Castro as well. There is a difference between 'telling people what to think' and teaching skills, offering options, etc. I lived through that period as well. There is much chaos after a regime falls and educated people don't grow on trees. You have to realize that there are very few leaders at this point who would have skills to lead even local organizations well. We were grateful for any involvement from abroad we could get after communism fell. Nobody had a clue what the heck is going on and what to do. All people in working age were 'educated' in communist schools, and those that had open minds were the bright exceptions, not enough to run businesses, schools, society at large. That is precisely what I am talking about - need for involvement from abroad.

I'm not against involvement. Am against will imposing as multiply stupid.

What is 'will imposing'? I guess I don't quite get where you would draw a line. Or only murkily. I don't think anyone here was advocating will imposing, but I don't quite know what you mean.

No argument with your last post, Dag.


But, I'm pretty afeared of some kind of Buckaroo Bonzai thing. (I never saw the movie, just using the title words to express my worry.)

hmmm,never saw it either, so i'm still kinda in the dark.

I have somewhere on my other computer an article about a guy in cuba who had worked out this garden thing, a community garden that earned them all a bit of money. The interesting part about it was that it was sort of a collective action and sort of an ordered by an individual action. Smart fellow that guy, and he was, y'know, just another cuban person. His garden thing made sense not just in his district alone.

I'd not like people there like him to be over-ridden by wellwishers swooping.

That will happen, too, I am sure of it. There are always users and abusers. And we had our share of them. Oh, the 'Harvard Investment Fund' that skinned thousands of people of their lifelong savings, pyramid schemes, dumping of Euro money on projects that look good on paper but produce little positive if not outright negative social results, influx of weird sects of all sorts trying to capture new souls and markets.... but does that mean it is all useless and we should stay the heck away? Hell no. Just means that it needs dilligent work of all conscientious people that are willing to make a difference, one day at a time, against all odds.

and if he's so smart, he could probably use support from international funders to develop his project further, right? spread it to other areas, give opportunity to more people.sorry, i just don't see where it clashes.

Actually, osso,let me rephrase. I do get your concerns. But let me ask you this: what is the alternative?

see, i can imagine all that can go wrong, that's easy. but the hard part is to come up with a viable strategy for help.