Exploding cigars?
Here's a little exercise in conspiracy theory and pointless political theorizing for you. Given that Fidel has been in power for coming up on 50 years, and given that it is a hideous dictatorship bereft of humanity, and given that the US has denounced the regime ad nauseum for decades, why is the old man still in power? He's ninety miles from the US — how hard can it be to send a few troops over to blow him out of his palace?
I ask this not because I'm advocating it, but because I am genuinely curious as to any potential reasons why we haven't intervened. We are willing to send troops into inhospitable regions around the world to overthrow corrupt and/or anti-American governments, so why haven't we gone into tropical and easily resupplied Havana? And before anyone goes there, it isn't some liberal thing. The Republicans have controlled the government for many years longer than the Democrats, and they passed up plenty of chances to act.
I have three personal theories, of varying degrees of crackpottiness.
- There are still nukes in Cuba. They may or may not launch, but those in power know about the deal between JFK and the Kremlin that allowed them to stay, and they don't want to take any chances.
- Fidel knows the truth about the Kennedy assassination. Maybe the Mafia guys who organized the hit were camped in Cuba, and Fidel had them bugged. Ever since he's been using the information to keep his power.
- The Republicans know that an anti-Fidel stance is the only thing they have in common with the Cuban voting bloc, so they don't want to lose that by resolving the situation. Plus they provide newsworthy distractions from time to time.
So what say you, my well-educated and highly opinionated readers? Why is the Bearded One still around and living a short missile's throw away from Miami? Feel free to indulge whatever paranoid fantasies you may have, or to teach this ill-mannered American a thing or two about realpolitik.
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Oh I would like to say quite a few things about this, both to the group of assumptions/assertions that you pose and as a reply to the question. Can't imagine it would do much good.
The funny thing about this is that it doesn't require wild speculation (not that your speculation was that wild). Rand Corporation and quite a few other policy organizations have answered your question as has Cuba. Anyway...
To appropriate a quote, recognizable to you movie buffs, "Forget it, John. It's Bananatown."
I'm a little disappointed, John -- I was expecting something more from you. I'm not expecting the discussion to do any good beyond entertainment value, but I had hoped for that, at least. I do appreciate the reminder about Rand, though.
Oh, and I don't necessarily agree with the "givens" listed. They are just commonly accepted tropes, so I wanted to avoid derailing the discussion. After all, the US certainly wouldn't avoid invading simply because the Cuban citizens support Castro.
And a couple of weeks ago, in conjuction with some behind the scenes Miami-area blog drama, I used a similar quote: "Forget it, Jake. It's Bloggertown."
So I hear... Miami has me a bit prickly these days. Sorry to be dismissive of an intteresting question. So here is my two cents.
A number of policy studies groups / "tink tanks", have said that an atack on Cuba is the equivalent at this stage to attacking a major naval power, or a nation with a full complement of ICBM's. Being 90 miles away, with every major eastern and Gulf coast city within range of missiles and planes is Cuba's trump card.
I was just reading something referencing the two Cuba pilots that entered the U.S. without any detection whatsoever.
As for Cuba still having those nuclear missiles of course many have speculatd. Cuba is now in the business of selling nuclear reactor technology these days so... There was a supposed revelation in '98 or '99 in the Herald that said the Russians had sent along with the 40 regional ballistic missiles some smaller missiles and that they were removed at a later date. My question is, "Really?" Does the U.S. depend upon the blurting out of nuclear secrets by retired Soviet generals in Havana conferences? Obviously there is more to these things. For God's sake, Cuba refused to join the Non Proliferation Treaty until a year or two ago and there was much wrangling over the language.(Was it ever ratified?)
So my answer in short is that Cuba, unlike other Third World countries with sizable militaries that lack ICBM's and Naval cariers, has the inbuilt advantage of location that works for it.
As for killing Castro, I think anyone not playing the propaganda game knows that one. No system survives from one man, or even one hundred. Running a country, especially one under seige by a major power as Cuba has been, takes hundreds of thousands of people at the very least and perhaps several million (who work cooperatively within the structure). It is utterly false to say that there aren't thousands, even millions of people who would kill or die to support Cuba's Revolution, right or wrong. No matter how wrong or right some systems are, they are in place because there are a lot of people that believe in them.
The Kill Castro Thing probably crapped out after the attempts to do the Kill Castro Thing were exposed by the Church Committee (Frank Church, D-Idaho, right?, whose Senate Select Intelligence Committee or something like that exposed CIA shenanegans ("I'm calling 'shenanegans' on the CIA!") during the mid 70s. After that, attempts to off the bastard probably didn't have much traction, but don't give this administration any ideas!
"Find the missing close parenthesis in the previous!" -- paraphrasing Lowell George.
Really, I meant to close it. I did. Really.
the Church Committee, while exposing a bit of the sordid, illegal, bizarre and downright evil doings of our government's agancies failed in halting them. I love the moral and legal evasiveness that comes with power. "Let's kill a few dozen elected officials and upper level government officials in Nicaragua. Since we don't recognize the governement it's not illegal. We'll also send former U.S. soldiers who we are paying now as contractors to work with committing genocide and mass killings throughout the region; we will think up even more methods of genocide of Mayans by bowmbing and burning their villages and putting them in camps where they will starve b/c hell, it worked in the U.S. Of course this is just what we will accomplish in one small region..."
I mean honestly, following the Church Committee hearings it was like the party was just starting. If Castro as a single person was "the problem" he would have been dead.
I didn't address anything but the issue of killing Castro.
That the US Government had tried unsuccessfully to surreptitiously kill Castro was taken as an embarrassment by many, even many right wingers, when the news came out. (This was during a time that didn't inspire much in the way of confindence in the US Government's being able to complete missions successfully.) I think that news had an impact on the ability of the US Government to even dream of trying such again.
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Ahhh. Very good point. The whole exploding cigars, poisoned sea shells, etc. is better left for certain crazy local residents, ahem, who when not bazooka-ing ships in the port of Miami and blowing up planes with children, are plenty busy killing Cuban officials, (as well as tourists, bystanders, etc.) Wasn't the latest an attempt to blow up some trade officials in Panama and take a crack at Castro with the old camera/gun? That ought to get a street named after 'em in Miami and some State Department and USAID money...
LOL. Point well made and taken...
Giant robots. More specifically, giant Soviet-era robots copied from Japanese blueprints the KGB lifted in the late 60s. Of course the sophisticated transistor electronics had to be replaced with more easily manufactured vaccum tubes, and the crew quarters have few amenities, but I mean c'mon, giant robots wading across the straits and wreaking havoc in Miami! Would you mess with that?
Dude, I would totally pay to see that! And these days you could probably buy a remote control that would override them at Radio Shack, and send them toward Washington!
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