Cuba

I read this article this morning from Ralph Peters. He's ex-military, offering advice to America on our problems with the world. He says some interesting things in support of his thesis: that America thrives when the world is changing. He struck a chord with me on Cuba, in particular:

"Cuba may be a small problem in the geostrategic sense, but it certainly fixes America's attention. The instability likely to embarrass us in Cuba will come after Castro's disappearance, as the island's current regime weakens and dissolves. The Batista-Cubans we have harbored in South Florida, whose political influence has maintained one of the most counterproductive of American policies, will try to reclaim, purchase, and bribe their way into power in the land they or their elders exploited then fled. The Cubans who stayed in Cuba, for better and worse, do not want their rich relatives back. And were we to be the least bit just, we would recognize that those who stayed behind have earned the right to decide how their island will be governed in the future. For all our ranting about the Castro dictatorship--which may not be admirable, but which is far more liberal and equitable than many of America's client governments (tourists clamor to go to Havana, not Riyadh)--an honest appraisal reveals that the average Cuban, though impoverished by the policies both of his own government and of the United States, enjoys a better quality of life than that of the average resident of many a "free" Caribbean state. If we intervene at some future date to protect the "rights" and the "legitimate property" of the Miami Cubans at the expense of the Cuban people themselves, we will shame ourselves inexcusably. Post-Castro Cuba, on its own, has an unusually good chance of evolving into a model democracy, but it will not do so if we sanction and support the carpetbagging of emigres who have never found American democracy fully to their tastes."

How true. I grew up in South Florida, and still have some links to Miami, and it's surprising the extent to which the Cuban community has refused to 'Americanize.' In rough numbers, I think a third of Miami Cubans would attempt to return to a post-Castro Cuba.

My buddy Jesse, who sent me the article, points out that this is a particularly bad thing for Floridians since the Cubans are an activist, aggressive voting block and so hold a disproportionate share of power at the state level: the two-thirds that remained behind could compel Florida and possibly U.S. politicians to attempt just this kind of foolishness.