‘Oppeasement’ wrong
Professor Chi Chun-chieh (紀駿傑) in his opinion piece on Saturday (“US embargo on Cuba is absurd relic of the past,” Jan. 3, page 8) essentially said it is about time that the US lifted its embargo against Cuba.
Many people around the world would agree with him.
However, sympathy for Cuba’s oppressed people alone misjudges the real motivation that the US has for sticking to its hostility against the Cuban government.
I will not address the content of the professor’s article, aside from the contention that “the Cuban government … has at least done much to improve the standards of living, healthcare and education of its people.”
Former Cuban president Fidel and Cuban President Raul Castro’s government has done nothing except terrorize Cubans, murder their dreams, chain them to the island, bind their hands and feet, cover their ears and eyes and muzzle them — all in the name of fealty to Fidel Castro and a failed “revolution” that has broken the hearts and backs of millions of wonderful people.
It is much the same as in China, basically, where loyalty to the dictatorship and the Chinese Communist Party is the beginning and end all of Chinese aspirations, with suffocating obedience and oppression the theme of all government.
It is not surprising that US President Barack Obama is the one to implement this policy abandoning the embargo.
It is just another example of his foreign policy of terminal hesitation and “Oppeasement” — a naive, somewhat dewy-eyed hope that being nice to tyrants will somehow reform them and change the conditions under which they oppress their people.
“Oppeasement” and terminal hesitation have not worked with Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, China, Burma, Hamas, the Taliban, Syria, the group formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant or much of the fundamentalist Islamic world.
Obama, a follower of former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s school of foreign policy, has littered the past six years with meaningless sliding red lines, impotence, abandonment of allies, rapprochement with enemies who have no inclination to change and tongue clicking in the face of danger, hegemony, nuclear aspirations and aggression that has not resolved a single thing — other than to weaken US resolve against oppression, and in some cases has given a green light to more tyranny over a greater swath of territory.
With Cuba, rather than working on a solution which involved requiring King Castro I, and his brother, King Castro II, to leave government without members of the royal Castro family taking part so that free elections might take place to release Cubans from the Castros’ grip, Obama simply gave up, once again arguing that somehow simply “resetting” relations will result in change (compare to the failure of “resetting” relations with Russia).
In the case of the Castro Dynasty, only the end of the line for the Castros can bring any hope of change to the totalitarian system that has plagued and paralyzed Cuba for 50 years.
Opportunity missed. Oppeasement at work.
Of course, the Cold War is over, but disgusting remnants of the Cold War remain everywhere — in Russia, Vietnam, Burma, North Korea and China, as well as in the Caribbean and parts of South and Central America — especially with Cuba.
So long as there exist nations where residents are enslaved by tyranny and dictatorship (according to Freedom House, only 40 percent of the world population is “free”), nations where freedom is merely a dream, the US should stand strong against such oppression.
This does not mean war. It just requires resolute diplomacy.
The US president mouths the words, but his feet are always moving backward, hesitating, endlessly.
He is most irresolute.
I understand professor Chi’s point of view.
As I said, many share it, so it is not an outlier perspective.
Many have said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result and many have argued that this applies to the 55-year-old embargo against Cuba.
Actually, I would argue that this applies more to “Oppeasement” than anything else.
How can the president repeatedly believe in his “Kumbaya” foreign policy, which has achieved absolutely nothing in six years, and oftentimes has had the opposite result? Is that not the definition of insanity?
Iran is on the verge of nuclear weapons (with how many red lines in the rearview mirror?), while Russian President Vladimir Putin is running amok, seemingly assembling a Soviet 2.0.
The Islamic State group, given a free pass for enough time to entrench itself like a virus, is reinventing barbarism, while typical half-measures are less than successful.
Meanwhile China has grown only bolder and more determined toward free and democratic Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong, despite the US government’s “pivot to Asia,” which sounded good, but has turned out to be nothing more than another disappearing red line and a succession of smiles. The Castros and former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez did not change.
North Korea, despite its change in dictators, has not changed. The global dictator’s club has been celebrating Oppeasement for six years now.
Despite all of our collective fervent hopes in the US that Cubans can be free, choose their own leaders and experience a free and fulfilling life in the 21st century, as opposed to the 1950s, there remains a big possibility that removing the embargo might actually prop up the faltering Castro regime (Falling oil prices make dependence on Venezuela impossible).
The poor choices the US made in the past in South America and elsewhere, choosing often the lesser of many evils, do not justify making weak and stupid decisions now.
Cuba is not a socialist Nirvana. It is a totalitarian communist debacle run like a cult by the Castro brothers, enslaving the entire population of the nation for more than 50 years, with the Castros clamping their hands firmly over the mouth of every man, woman and child, squeezing the very breath out of them.
I am not surprised that Obama is the one who decided to give in without sufficient conditions.
I feel shame, not exhilaration, because once again and for the “umpteenth” time, the president missed the chance to be resolute and actually do something to make a difference, instead of half-measures.
That, in fact, is insanity.
Lee Longhwa
Los Angeles, California
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