History Has Picked Strange Bedfellows

Fifty-one years ago, a military dictatorship, which bled dry the economy of Cuba under the ruthless leadership of General Fulgencio Batista, was overthrown.  In the years from 1952 to 1959 with the complete support of the government of the United States, industrialists, and even Organized Crime, General Batista amassed a fortune, which he secreted out of the country leaving behind nothing but poverty and starvation.

In the 1950s on the other side of the world again with the blessing of the government of the United States, the land of the free, support was given to another ruthless dictator named Ngo Dinh Diem, the First President of South Vietnam.  A political position made by the CIA of the United States.  Here too, corruption and ruthless use of power, with the complete support of the most powerful country in the world acting as a protectorate, and making excuses for any appearances of political dalliances, allowed Diem and American corporations to gorge on immense profits, at the expense of a starving, agrarian, illiterate, and fearful population.

In the 1950s, baby-boomers remember all too well their Duck and Cover Drills, in grade school.  The cold war was ramping-up at an unprecedented rate, measured in larger and more powerful nuclear, and thermonuclear bombs, detonated at more than one a week, by all the nuclear power countries for years, as a display of strength.  The Communists were afraid of the Capitalists, and the Capitalists were afraid of the Communists.  There were sayings such as, “I would rather be dead than Red.” The root of all the terror and fear was politics.  What better way to get elected than to promise safety from the “Communists” attacking and eating your children, in the middle of the night.  Only the names have changed, the game is still played the same way.

Along come men who say, “Enough is enough.”  Men who have the intestinal fortitude [BALLS] to take on giants, because they have right on their side.  Fidel Castro Ruz with the help of Ernesto “Che” Guevara and some 800 guerrilla fighters, defeated 30,000 trained, well supplied with American weapons, professional soldiers, while Gen. Batista left the country in the middle of the night.  A new government for the people was formed, and some day the USA should help that country, because that country did exactly what our country did, when it was bled dry by England and other European nations.

The US government pulls out of Vietnam completely after the fall of Saigon [Ho Che Minh City] in 1975.  However, unlike the situation in Cuba, our government has preferred trade agreements and excellent diplomatic ties with Vietnam.  Why, well it could not possibly be human rights issues.  The Vietnamese still severely suppressed, in the area of free speech, and work in what the US calls sweatshops, from a very young age, hardly meet even the minimum requirement standards of preferred trade qualifications.

Cuba sits ninety miles to our Southern most borders and could be considered an asset to our National Security, but instead is still shunned by our government.  The only reason Cuba is doing as poorly as it is doing on the world stage, is because the United States conversely, has punishing policies, left over from the Kennedy [Jack] administration, and the Eisenhower administration.  Why not, or when will, our country embrace our neighbor Cuba?  The American people who pay the price tag of the last vestiges of a long dead and gone cold war, deserve to know how their tax dollars are spent, defending us against Cuba [He said facetiously].