If the CIA and American mob couldn’t bring down Fidel Castro, nobody can, so why do the United States and European Union think that continuing more than half a century of trade embargoes, sanctions and demands that Cuba become a democracy, perhaps something like that in Afghanistan (wait, bad example) will do the trick? As Spain, which now has the rotating Presidency of the EU but still doesn’t know what to do with it, has already declared, it is inevitable that Europe and the US will one day have to recognize and deal with Cuba, so why not now? The EU and US will talk to lunatics in Iran, Venezuela, high-school dropout dictators in Myanmar, and a dangerous despot in North Korea, but not to Cuba? Because it’s Communist?
The US, EU and UN deal with Vietnam – a Communist country which had a protracted war with the French in the 1950s and then America in the 1960s and 1970s, killing scores of thousands of French and Americans, and millions of Vietnamese. The US, EU and UN deal with China – a Communist country they regularly assail for a lack of human rights, censorship, intellectual property theft, and dumping goods into their trade markets. Why? Because there’s trade and money at stake and that almost always trumps politics, except that the US has a personal grudge against Castro for thumbing his nose at America, surviving assassination attempts, allowing Soviet missiles into his country, perched 90 miles off the coast of Florida; repelling the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, a cuckoo plot hatched by the CIA and doomed before it started; suppressing human rights cracking down on dissidents (see all the above and more;) and for outlasting a string of American Presidents and administrations who continued the same policy of trying to isolate a county that didn’t care what the Americans and EU thought.
The EU, which lifted some sanctions against Cuba two years ago, goes easy on other countries when it thinks that its vaunted “soft power” approach of dialogue and negotiation will work, but not with Cuba. Several months ago, the European People’s Party in the European Parliament held a seminar which concluded that the EU should play tough with Cuba because of the continuing human rights violations and general suppression. But that’s the kind of thinking that hasn’t helped Cuba from becoming a failed economic state, and if isolation, sanctions and trade embargoes haven’t worked, what will? US President Barack Obama made some initial steps to reach out, with the seeming promise that diplomatic relations might resume, but when US Secretary of State Hillary “Hot Foot” Clinton walked out of an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting last year because that group finally wised up and figured it was time to end a 47-year exclusion of Cuba Obama’s tiny gesture was lost, and with it any hope for now that even he hasn’t realized that the ailing Castro might outlast another US President. Don’t bury Fidel yet because his enemies have been trying to do that since 1959 when his ragtag rebellion that began with 82 men brought down the corrupt American-mob infiltrated administration of American puppet President Fulgencia Batista.
American historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., asked by the US government to analyze Batista, advised that: “The corruption of the government, the brutality of the police, the regime’s indifference to the needs of the people for education, medical care, housing, for social justice and economic justice ... is an open invitation to revolution.” That’s the guy America SUPPORTED, so what did they think the Cuban people thought about him? Batista was mobbed up and made Havana the Latin Las Vegas by dealing with gangsters like Meyer Lansky, and all you need to see how that worked out is see The Godfather, Part II again, especially the scene where Michael Corleone sees a rebel blow himself up with a hand grenade just to kill a police captain. “Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren’t,” Corleone said to the character Hyman Roth, who represented Lanksy, and who asked: “What does that tell you?” Corleone said, “It means they could win.” Human rights groups are right there’s little human rights in Cuba, but their way, of hammering Cuba with sanctions, hasn’t worked, so recognizing Cuba and ending embargoes and sanctions is now the best, and only, way to getting what the EU and US – and human rights groups want, and for helping the Cuban people.

Sleeping with the enemy
All the ill-advised policies of the US and EU have done is drive Castro, and now his brother Raul, who is ruling the country, into the arms of people like Venezuelan President Hugo “No Go” Chavez, who fashions himself the next Fidel Castro of Latin America; Bolivian President Evo Morales, a minor-league Chavez, but whose country – like Venezuela – is a major oil and gas exporter. They may be political lightweights outside of Latin America, but Chavez and Morales are rousing support for more governments like them, the kind that American-led anti-Communist Right-Wing dictators tried to kill off with executions and death squads, creating the same kind of hatred against the US that now has been shifted toward the Muslim world. And recently, Cuban Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Marcos Rodriguez went to Tehran to meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki where they called for strengthening cooperation. If the US and EU deal with Cuba, then Cuba wouldn’t be so anxious to talk to the likes of Chavez, Morales and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose brain is still in the 15th Century somewhere and represents a real threat. Cuba reached out to the EU late last year, a rarity, in seeking closer ties, but has been ignored and, thus, rebuffed, because of pressure from human rights groups who justifiably feel there is still persecution, including arrests, jailings and perhaps still even killings, remembering 15,000 to 17,000 people were reportedly executed after Castro came to power. But China under Mao Tse-Tung killed millions, so the real reason for trying to keep Cuba on ice is because Fidel Castro is still alive, and his country won’t be recognized until he’s gone because that’s the only way to save face. If ignoring or sanctioning Cuba hasn’t improved human rights there, let’s try recognizing Castro, the same strategy Obama and the EU use on the rest of the world. If that doesn’t work, here’s a surefire plan that will. Have American Major League Baseball expand and admit the Havana Cubans, who’ve already proven they can beat major leaguers, build a new field and call it Fidel Castro Stadium (he used to play the game, after all) and have him throw out the first pitch at the inaugural game against the New York Yankees, since you can’t really invade if the Yanks are in town and then the Cubans can’t yell “Yankees go home.”