Cuba's Embargo Limbo

Fidel Castro said today that the U.S. has done nothing to lift the decades old trade embargo on Cuba and will not beg for it to be lifted.

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As much as I disagree with communist leaders like Castro, he's telling the truth here. While President Obama has recently lifted some travel restrictions on Cuba, there is still a lot of progress that's left to be made. Embargoes are counterproductive to the goals we say we want. We use them to try to put pressure on foreign dictators and regimes we don't like in hopes that their people will overthrow them. However, this only gives them political ammunition to use against us.

The U.S. government has had an embargo on Cuba since 1962 and have tried numerous times to assassinate Fidel Castro in hopes that his regime would fall and a more modern democracy would take over. The funny/sad part about it is Fidel Castro had been the leader of Cuba for almost half a century before stepping down in 2008 due to health reasons. He's been in power longer than John F. Kennedy lived. If that's not an epic failure, I don't know what is.

There's a good reason why Castro does not want Cuba to beg for the U.S. to lift the embargo. The U.S. embargo is one of the main things that has helped people like Castro stay in power. If there's a shortage of food, or medical supplies, people don't have to look towards their flawed communist system, or their corrupt, "glorious" leader, to place the blame. Castro can simply blame it on the capitalists in the U.S. and their embargo. People in these countries suffer from lack of trade goods, but these embargoes end up helping the ones in power. We currently have sanctions against Iran, denying them airplane parts. The result is that civilian Iranian aircraft are crashing due to poor maintenance, killing innocent civilians. Iran is still going forward on building nuclear technology. How is relations with North Korea? They're probably the worst out of any country right now.

If a regime is so bad, why not just leave them alone to fail on their own? There's no sense in us aiding in the suffering of the people in hopes they'll rise up and overthrow the regime. It only builds more hatred for the U.S. and gains more support for the evil dictators of the world. Just about everyone hated George W. Bush, but if China and other countries had decided to stop trading with us and people in this country started suffering from lack of food and medical supplies, we would have all rallied behind George W. Bush. Bush would have said we need to bomb these countries, that we would never give into their demands, declare emergency powers for himself, and he'd might even still be in power for a third term as president today.

If we want to promote democracy and capitalism, then the best way to do it is to trade. I'm not saying trade weapons to crazy dictators, but food, medicine, and other goods build friendships and promote the exchange of ideas. If the people could see first hand what can be done under a capitalist and free society, then that's what they'd want. The problem with embargoes is it denies them of seeing that first hand. They only know of what capitalism is from what their government tells them and the only thing they know first hand is that capitalists Americans are denying them of the stuff they need to live. Let's not forget that this also hurts American businesses by denying them customers. Embargoes are just all around a bad idea and I hope that we'll see an end to them soon.