Last week, President Barack Obama took a stride towards a kinder, more gentle nation by easing restrictions regarding travel to and money sent to the little commie-island of Cuba. But don’t pack your bags for a Cuban vacation yet my WASPy little friends; at current the eased restrictions for travel to Cuba only applies to those who have family in our cigar-smoking neighbor to the South.
In addition to eased regulations regarding travel and monetary export from the United States to Cuba, the Obama administration is allowing United States telecommunication firms to set-up shop in Cuba (granted Cuba will allow such modernist democratic luxuries), the first big step towards terminating one of the world’s longest standing economic embargos.
Our liberal humanitarian president has better intention in mind; through improved relations with Cuba the United States hopes to influence Cuba’s communist regime to follow our democratic lead. I suppose we believe that if the United States allows Cuba to again pursue economic exchange with us that Cuba will finally, after years as a socialist state see the light of democracy, which they have so vehemently resisted in past years—all this by the powerful force yielded at the gracious hand of our honorable Barack Obama.
We’re trying a new method, Obama isn’t policing Cuba like we did in the 50s and 60s, but just giving them a gentle nudge in the right direction, that direction being democratic of course, because as any true red, white and blue-blooded American knows, democracy is the life-blood of any stable modern nation… seems to be working for us.
So while you United Nations liberals sing the praises of our humanitarian superman who labors so that these oppressed communist Cubans may be able to experience the swank of a mobile phone and republicanized individualism, I think we should consider the real motive. Money.
It’s no secret that America’s economy is about as rich as Australian farmland. So what a better ploy to increase export and exchange than reignite economic relations with this labile nation? We’ll take any financial boost we can worm our fingers around at this point and if that means opening the trade flood gates with a nation that wanted to blow us to smitherizes about 50 years ago, who cares? Who remembers the Cuban Missile Crisis anyways? Do they even teach children about conflicts that were not resolved in America’s favor?
As such, Barack Obama will be seen as the great liberator who mended decades of tarnished international relations and refinished world perspective of America. Good intentions as they may be, what gall do we have to suspect that Cuba will dance at our wedding, that they should jump at our offer and fail to see that the United States is still trying to influence the world order and make every country a little America, a little version of ourselves, that we can maneuver and bleed for our own economic advantage. It didn’t work in Vietnam, it didn’t work in the Bay of Pigs and it damn sure isn’t working in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But hey, maybe those commies will see the futility of their socialistic ideals and revert back to capitalism, the very hell they were running from in the first place. Maybe? And should they, let it be known that our intentions were not so selfless, we were only grasping for a thread of monetary hope under the guise that we may influence communist Cuba to liberate their people with cell phones and tourism.
