Whoever wrote this post over at the Diplomad, a blog purportedly run by Republican foreign service officers, better not ever be in charge of anything important any time soon.
The gist of the post is that we need to invade Cuba and change the regime within the next four years because "it comes down to not letting the old killer die peacefully in bed with his delusions intact." They make the interesting claim that the increasingly minor irritant that is Castro is "an even greater menace" than Saddam. They advocate that we implement the Helms-Burton act and deliberately provoke Cuba by violating its airspace and territorial waters, clamping down on remittances and tourism, and, if that doesn't work, invading outright. To which I return to the question left unsatisfactorally answered at the beginning of their stupid post: WHY? WHY WHY WHY? Who cares about Fidel Castro? And if we can't figure out how to fix Haiti after approximately seven million interventions (to say nothing of Iraq), why should we have any more luck in Cuba? The solution to the Cuba problem is not to invade; rather, the solution is to reconnect Cuba to the world by ending the counterproductive embargo policy that everyone in the world except Jesse Helms, the Diplomads, Otto Reich, and a few bitter exiles in Miami knows is gobsmackingly stupid. Let capitalism work its magic.
Most troubling, however, is their assertion that Kennedy ought to have taken Castro out during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Are these august Diplomads unaware that the Soviets had placed 160 nuclear warheads in Cuba, and that Castro had earnestly recommended to Kruschev that they be used in the event of an American attack? The Diplomads say:
While Americans fought and died against tyranny around the globe, for most of the past 46 years we resigned ourselves to allowing a nation 90 miles offshore, and with long historic ties to the US, to become a prison camp for our friends and a base camp for our enemies.
To which I say, so what? It worked just fine, and most importantly, nobody got nuked in the process.
Please tell me these people aren't going to be in charge of anything anytime soon.
