Fidel Castro & Hugo Chavez
admiring their goodluck necklaces.
Posted on 03/23/2002 5:37:38 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
FReegards...MUD
Nawww, MalaiseJimmy whupped up on Jerry Ford as I recall, but he ain't never been quite right!!
FReegards...MUD
It was a RABBIT swimming and trying to get in his canoe! A RABBIT!
Obviously, a patriotic, smart rabbit.
Every communist and totalitarian government has confiscated private property, but we deal with them. I guess you think that the policy that results in the property not being recognized after 40 years will get the job done. One definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing, getting the same results, but hoping for a different result. Your 41 years of lack of results proves the wrongheadness of your approach.
The rest of your reply is about economics and I posit that the same was true of China when Nixon went there. You have to start somewhere.
Is it your conclusion that trade and open travel with us would not be a foot in the door for capitalims either now or soon after the old man is dead? Or that some cultural or social changes would not result?
I saw yesterday with dismay your announcement that you intend to visit Cuba and that you favor the end of the US embargo and the end of restriction of trips by US trips to Cuba.
You certainly know the many crimes against the Cuban people that Fidel Castro and his cronies have committed. The virtual destruction of the country's economy is certainly known to you as is the current lack of the most elementary liberties by the people. Mr. Carter, the responsibility for these crimes fall squarely upon the shoulders of one man: Fidel Castro, the same man you intend to visit and greet. Would you have befriended Adolf Hitler? Why do you now intend to befriend Fidel Castro?
The propositions you have advanced: the end of the embargo and the lift of travel restrictions to Cuba, although in your judgement will be conducive to the improvement of the lot of the Cuban people, are the primary foreign policy initiatives of Fidel Castro. Do you believe that these innitiatives were in the interest of freedom for that people Fidel Castro would seek them now? Cuba can now purchase food and medical supplies in the United States.
The end of the embargo is in reality a policy to grant credits and international loans to Cuba, a country that has officially renegued its financial commitments. What you are proposing is, in fact an injection of hard cash for the benefit of the Cuban Nomenklatura. By your proposal you are becoming in fact, if not in intention, part and parcel of the possibility of a prolongation of the sufferings of the Cuban people.
While you were president I had the opportunity to visit the White House and, full of pride, posed next to you for a photograph that I still keep. I can not express my dissapointment. I once believed in you as an honorable man committed to humane values and human rights. I must say that today you are forcing me and thousands of other Americans of Cuban origin to evaluate our admiration for you.
If you still harbor your beliefs in human rights for which you are so well known, I challenge you to bring some books to the independent "public libraries" - in reality living rooms in people's homes who lend their books to their neighbors... Ask your hosts if you can go and bring books you bring to an independent public library...
In the name of all that is decent in you, I urge you not to go to Cuba and lend your support and credibility to a man whose hands are full of blood.
When you shake them, remember that your hands will be bloody too with the blood and sufferings of millions of Cubans who are in no position to express themselves. You will be wined and dined while Cubans will go hungry. You will sleep in a confortable bed with a beautiful view while thousands of Cuba languish in political prisons. You will be able to read your Bible before going to bed while Cubans are beaten by government-sponsoed thugs for insisting in their right to read and believe that they wish.
How sad it is, Mr. Carter, that you will lend yourself to this charade.
Respectfully yours,
Enrique Rueda Let Mr. Carter know your opinion carterweb@emory.edu
In truth, it is not the embargo the one that failed, but the policy of appeasement by Canada, Mexico, Spain and 150 other countries toward Cuba, which under the pretense that trading with Castro would bring capitalism, freedom and democracy, went to Cuba for the exploitation of cheap slave labor. History repeated itself; you and all those countries are following the same failed policies of Western Europe toward the Soviet Empire, where, as with Cuba, they ended loosing hundreds of billions of dollars. It was not appeasement, but the strong policies of Reagan and Thatcher that brought for freedom to Europe.
And it sounds like he might run afowl of the Logan act.
He makes Elmer Fudd look like a bad ass.
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