Faith In Fidel!

Nurot

As I sit here procastinating even more on my 12 page final in Technical Communitcations, that is due Friday and is also 40% of my grade <!--emo&:(--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/sad.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='sad.gif' /><!--endemo--> it occured to me to post this. What is everyone's opinion about the sanctions placed on Cuba by the USA. This was my topic, if I do a good job I'll post my report, right now I'm not going to post my views, mainly cause everyone usually hates them, but i'm interested in what everyone else thinks.

killswitch

THe sanctions are more symbolic than anything, they don't do any real good I don't believe. If you really want to free a country from dictatorship you need to empower the people, and for that you need to get them out of poverty. There are no non-democratic countries with less than $6000/capita for example.
Sanctions just hurt the already-impoverished, they don't hurt Castro one bit. In fact it probably helps him indoctrinate his people into believing America is the great evil.

RyoOhki

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It's not really indoctrination when the US is actually economically choking Cuba. Fidel enjoys tremendous popularity, not least because Cubans remember that the US backed administration that Castro overthrew was far, far worse. The US right from 1898 when they invaded Cuba really hasn't done much to endere themselves to the Cuban people.

Almost all of the factories and indiustry in Cuba was built by US companies between 1898 and 1958. With the sanctions in place, Cuba can't import spare parts and technical support. There's a reason why all the cars in Cuba are from the 1950's: the country simply couldn't get any new ones in. Cut off from what was previously their single biggest market, Cuba was economically ruined.

I also find it amusing that Castro only made Cuba a communist state because the US turned their backs on him. Castro wanted to set up a democratic capitalist state much like the US, but the US instead slapped sanctions down and refused to recognise Castro's government. With no real choice, Castro turned to the USSR, who naturally favoured Che Guevara's socialist beliefs.

If the sanctions went down, the US could start to win over Cuba's people. Castro isn't going to be around forever, and the sooner the US admits that they made a mistake back in the 50's and drop these sanctions the sooner democracy will come to Cuba. It's gonna take a while, as there's a lot of bad history between the US and Cuba, but you have to start somewhere.

taboofires

In most ways, it's just a sad relic of the cold war. As Ryo mentioned, the US had (and to a lesser extent still has) a bad habit of supporting any foreign government that suits our interests, regardless of how much it takes care of its people. The converse is true as well, where improvements in governance mean US resistance if they don't fall into line with our policy.

Worst of all, Castro was sanctioned for an alliance with an enemy that no longer exists. Now we're just trying to save face.

The best course of action would be to do what's best for the people of Cuba, which is to lift the sanctions. Other than human rights violations or any other gross negligance of the people's wishes (election rigging or something), we should let them be governed as they choose.