8/13/2011 | Email Humberto Fontova | Columnist's Archive
Ron Paul in an exasperated tone during the Iowa debates: "All these
trade sanctions!…this is why we still don't have a trade relationship
with Cuba."
Ground Control to Candidate Paul: according to figures from the U.S.
Department of Commerce the U.S. has transacted almost $4 BILLION in
trade with Cuba over the past decade. Up until two years ago the U.S.
served as Stalinist Cuba's biggest food supplier and fifth biggest
import partner. We've fallen a few notched recently but we're still in
the top half. Furthermore, the U.S. has been Castro's Cuba's biggest
donor of humanitarian aid including medicine and medical supplies for
decades.
Ground Control to Candidate Paul: For over a decade the so-called U.S.
embargo has merely stipulated that Castro's Stalinist regime pay cash up
front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no
Ex-Im (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales. (You'd really, really
think a Libertarian would approve of this?) Enacted by the Bush team in
2001 this cash-up-front policy has kept the U.S. taxpayer among the few
in the world not screwed and tattooed by Fidel Castro. Here's a few
other items Candidate Paul might keep in mind before any campaign stops
(especially in Florida):
Per-capita-wise, Cuba qualifies as the world's biggest debtor nation
with a foreign debt of close to $50 billion, a credit–rating nudging
Somalia's, and an uninterrupted record of defaults. Standard & Poors
refuses even to rate Cuba, regarding the economic figures released by
the regime apparatchiks as utterly bogus.
Ron Paul in an exasperated tone during the Iowa debates: "It's about
time we start talking to Cuba!"
Ground Control to Candidate Paul: In fact "we" (The U.S. Central
Intelligence Agency) started engaging with Fidel Castro began before he
was even in "office." To wit:
"Me and my staff were all Fidelistas," (Robert Reynolds, the CIA's
"Caribbean Desk's specialist on the Cuban Revolution" from 1957-1960.)
"Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except
(Republican) ambassador Earl Smith." (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba,
Robert Weicha.)
Their advice was taken and January 7, 1959, thus marks a milestone in
U.S. diplomatic history. Never before had "we" (the U.S. State
Department) extended diplomatic recognition to a Latin American
government as quickly as "we" bestowed this benediction on Fidel
Castro's that day.
Nothing so frantically fast had been bestowed upon "U.S.-backed"
Fulgencio Batista (note the obligatory prefix, used in every MSM and
"scholarly" mention of him) seven years earlier. Batista had in fact
been punished by a U.S. arms embargo and heavy diplomatic pressure to
resign for a year. Batista was subsequently denied exile in the U.S. and
not even allowed to set foot in the country that "backed" him.
In fact, during Castro's first 16 months in power, "we" (the U.S. State
Dept.) made over 10 back channel diplomatic attempts to ascertain the
cause of Castro's tantrums and further "engage" him. Argentine President
Arturo Frondizi was the conduit for many of these and recounts their
utter futility in his memoirs.
Result: In July 1960 Castro's KGB-trained security forces stormed into
5911 U.S. owned businesses in Cuba and stole them all at Soviet gunpoint
– $2 billion were heisted from outraged U.S. businessmen and
stockholders. Not that all Americans surrendered their legal and
hard-earned property peacefully. Among some who resisted where Bobby
Fuller whose family farm would contribute to a Soviet-style Kolkhoze and
Howard Anderson whose profitable Jeep dealership was coveted by Castro's
henchmen. Both U.S. citizens were murdered by Castro and Che's firing
squads.
In July 1961, "we" (JFK's special counsel Richard Goodwin) met with Che
Guevara in Uruguay and reported back to Kennedy: "Che says that Cuba
wants an understanding with the U.S., the Cubans have no intention of
making an alliance with the Soviets. So we should make it clear to
Castro that we want to help Cuba." (how Che managed a straight face
during this conversation requires an article of its own)
Result: Soviet nuclear missiles locked and loaded in Cuba a year
later–and pointed at Goodwin and Kennedy's very homes.
In 1975, "we" (President Gerald Ford, under Henry Kissinger's influence)
allowed foreign branches and subsidiaries of U.S. companies to trade
freely with Cuba and persuaded the Organization of American States to
lift its sanctions.
Result: Castro started his African invasion and tried to assassinate
Ford. You read right. On March 19, the Los Angeles Times ran the
headline "Cuban Link to Death Plot Probed." Both Republican candidates
of the day, President Ford and Ronald Reagan, were to be taken out
during the Republican National Convention. The Emiliano Zapata Unit, a
Bay area radical group linked to the Weather Underground, would make the
hits.
In 1978 "we" (President Jimmy Carter) in a good-will gesture, lifted
U.S. travel sanctions against Cuba and were poised to open full
diplomatic relations with Castro.
Result: More thousands of Cuban troops spreading Soviet terror (and
poison gas) in Africa, more internal repression, and hundreds of
psychopaths, killers and perverts infiltrated onto the boats and shoved
our way on the Mariel boatlift.
In 1982 "we" (President Ronald Reagan) sent Alexander Haig to meet
personally in Mexico City with Cuba's "Vice President" Carlos Raphael
Rodriguez to feel him out. Then he sent diplomatic wiz Gen. Vernon
Walters to Havana for a meeting with the maximum leader himself.
Result: Cubans practically take over Grenada, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
(But unlike the aforementioned Democrats, Reagan responded to Castro's
response–and with pretty salutary results.)
Pres. Clinton tried playing nice again in the 90's.
Result: Three U.S. citizens and one resident who flew humanitarian
flights over Florida straits (Brothers to the Rescue) murdered in cold
blood by Castro's MIGS. Castro agent Ana Belen Montes moles her way to
head of the Defense Intelligence Agency's Cuba division, resulting in
the deepest and most damaging penetration of the U.S. Defense Department
by an enemy agent in modern history.
President Obama is now playing nicest of all. In executive order after
executive order, Pres. Obama abolished Pres. Bush's travel and
remittance restrictions to Castro's terrorist-sponsoring fiefdom and
opened the pipeline to a point where the cash-flow from the U.S. to Cuba
today is estimated at $4 billion a year. While a proud Soviet satrapy
Cuba received $3-5 billion annually from the Soviets. Some "embargo."
Result: "U.S. citizen Alan Gross has just been sentenced to 15 years in
Castro's dungeons for the crime of distributing computer equipment in Cuba.
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