By Michael Tomlin
The Daily Record Newswire
I’m ready to hear it. Denying a business relationship with Cuba today is as absurd as not selling a computer to a kid in baggy pants, just because you don’t like their pants.
There was a reason in the 1960’s, I lived the Bay of Pigs, and the missile crisis. I get it. Cuba was a pawn of the Soviets, a clear and present danger. Okay, but that was then and this is now. This has long since been “now,” and no U.S. President willing to say “enough” for too long. Probably since Ronald Wilson Reagan challenged Mr. Gorbachev to tear down the wall, and won the cold war.
But suddenly everyone has new interest in Cuba. I have read four major articles about it in the last week. These seem to come in cycles, there’s a glimmer of hope of an opening, and then we hear about how many Cuban refugees there are in Miami and the political reality sinks in. Nope, can’t do it, refugees might not agree, it’s politics you know.
But this time we have business data. Too funny. Business data about Cuba. It seems they are laying off government workers and easing some anti-capitalistic types of restrictions. They have to actually, their economy is tanked and they have no other recourse to create revenue. Even Fidel himself reportedly said so, though he denies meaning exactly that.
The incredible story about Cuba is its potential. They have natural resources and good soil, they are located in a great spot and should be a thriving agricultural, business, import/export and tourist economy. And we should be participants in all of that.
The only reason we are not is back to that baggy pants example. Green army clothes actually and a deep-seated dislike of the brothers Castro — mostly Fidel. But I cannot imagine anyone under 50 years old in Idaho, Minnesota, Vermont, or anywhere not Miami, who cares much about who the Cuban leader was or is. We trade with countries who did not like George W. Bush, or who do not like Barrack Obama.
The truth is we trade with and travel to countries who hate us, and yet with Cuba withhold the same from a non-influential “island” where we merely dislike their leader? It makes no sense.
It’s a question too that is hard to answer along political lines. President Clinton understood when he returned little Elian to his homeland while “pro family” conservatives called for keeping him from his father. Yet no major political party is on the right side of this issue. That is, the conservative side — let Cuba be Cuba, but hey, wanna trade?
That should be the second biggest campaign question of the season for candidates for national office this year. “Will you work to open Cuba?” The candidate who will work to end the anti-capitalist practices of our own President, and actively support opening Cuba could have my vote in a minute. Who cares if Fidel “won” the decades old stand-off with us? Let him have it. Give him the trophy. Invite him to Dancing With the Stars. Whatever. And let’s celebrate with a really good cigar.
