Nathan Newman wrote:
>Which is why denouncing the Cuba repression is always timely, maybe more so
>now.
-So you'd endorse a Bush admin humanitarian intervention in Cuba? How -far would you go? Covert action? Full-blown invasion?
Come on-- I've opposed war in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The letter itself says the embargo is bad.
The issue is having the left develop a political and moral position that clearly identifies with resistance to authoritarianism and argues for non-violent alternatives. In the case of Cuba, a position should be to end the embargo and open up relations as the best first step.
On a lot of this stuff, the issue is not what is being advocated to do, but the moral authority being squandered by the left in refusing to condemn the dictators, since it means that anyone listening should rightly have little confidence that those defending dictators really want them replaced with a democratic alternative.
It really sickens me that liars and militarists have seized the moral highground of advocating democracy and support for resistance to tyranny, while some parts of the left are mouthing "national sovereignty" and other Metternich-style balance of power arguments for international relations. In some ways it's not surprising, since the neocons have just taken their lineage from Trotsky's permanent revolution but put a conservative spin on it--- but in a sense the neocons have reached back to the Napoleonic "enlightenment by bayonet" tradition that came out of the French revolution.
Here's my bottom line-- I think the ANSWER-style left helped murder Iraqis in the last couple of months by making the moral argument of the antiwar forces look implausible, so those looking to a moral solution could be convinced by the Bushies. And I think those who stay silent in the face of the repression of the Cuban people are helping to assist an invasion of Cuba-- which is partly what the letter itself said about Castro himself. Only a left that clearly identifies with democracy in Cuba will have the credibility to propose and advocate for a non-violent route to that goal.
So those signing that letter are the ones who will be able to fight a Cuba invasion if it comes to it-- not the folks being silent as gross human rights violations and executions happen there.
-- Nathan Newman