Anti-Castro but Anti-Embargo

Couldn't let this great vignette published by cartoonist Matt Wuerker go unnoticed.

The only effect the embargo has had in Cuba is the perpetuation of the Castro regime. Fidel and Raúl use it as an excuse to justify their economic and social failures and blame it on 'American imperialism'. The Castro brothers eat lobster and drink French wines with important national and foreign guests as the Cuban people are poorer and suffer more lack of freedom than at any time in the island's history.

There are no economic embargoes against China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Mexico or Egypt, countries that overtly or tacitly violate the human rights of their own populations or exert repressive policies against other peoples and/or ethnic groups.

Why Cuba then? Very simply: the Miami so called Cuban-American vote. Rather than as a foreign policy issue, Cuba is viewed from Washington as a domestic affair that generates a certain steady stream of votes among staunch Republican Cubans in Florida. Until very recently, these conservative votes made or impeded the aspirations of many publicly elected officials involved in local and national politics.

The tide is changing, however. Younger and more pragmatic Cubans and Cuban-Americans realize that the politics of Old Miami are as obsolete and ineffective as those of the Cuban regime itself and must be revised and readdressed if there is to be any hope of change on both sides of the Strait of Florida.