Dear America,
Marco Rubio's self-serving, sanctimonious hand wringing over the change in American foreign policy toward Cuba is despicable. It isn't despicable because Rubio lied to his constituents about his parents fleeing Cuba to escape Castro's repressive government. It isn't despicable because his parents and the rest of his family have been harboring that convenient, ultra-conservative myth about heroically standing for democracy by fleeing Castro's regime when they actually were fleeing from the repression of the Batista regime that Castro overthrew. It isn't even despicable because of the knee-jerk aversion of Cuban refugees to communism in Cuba that has inspired it despite the fact that everyone in Cuba now gets certain minimum benefits that they had no access to under Batista--universal health care, schooling, respite for the elderly when the time comes--thanks to Castro and his brand of communism, which supplanted the destitution of the many on account of the social Darwinism, corruption and mindless avarice of his Batista's few. And Rubio's misguided fear that somehow the now defunct policy of ostracization and economic embargo against Cuba that has failed to achieve the purportedly desired end of inspiring democracy there for more than fifty years would have ceased to be a failure if only it had another year...or fifty...to succeed isn't even as dastardly as the real reason that Rubio's grandstanding is so despicable. The real reason is that he is preaching the opposite of the truth: what devastated the Cuban people in the first place was the fascist regimes that preceded Castro's, and what ensured that Castro could not fully actuate the potential of Cuba was the misguided policy of thwarting him at every turn that the United States...and only the United States...saw fit to impose. Rubio isn't a misguided liar. He is a dogmatist who refuses to see the error of his ways and doesn't care who has to pay for his self-vindication even though it will never come.
Don't misunderstand me. I am no Pollyanna when it comes to Cuba, but I was no Pollyanna when it came to Cuba when Fulgencio Batista was in power either. Like Castro, he ascended to power through a movement against the dictator who preceded him, and through political machinations and outright tyranny, he managed to cement himself into control of the country for two decades until, just as was the case with his ascendancy, it ended at the hands of another rabble led by another purported reformer, Fidel Castro, who overthrew him and forced him into sybaritic exile where he eventually died. That, of course is where he and Castro are no longer analogous. Castro is still in Cuba, having ceded his political power to his brother, Raul, and it is there that he will die, in a future not too distant it would seem. But unlike Batista, he will not die in ignominy and opprobrium. His people will not deplore him even though there is no mistaking the fact that he used repression to ensure that his communist revolution succeeded. But though unlike in the case of Castro, there is also no mistaking American foreign policy's role in supporting other autocrats as they did the same things. We propped up Anastasio Samoza in Nicaragua for decades, and he was no less a dictator than Fidel Castro. And though Augusto Pinochet of Chile became a brutal embarrassment, his tenure as dictator in that country was a veritable invention of the American CIA, which facilitated, and perhaps even inspired the assassination of Pinochet's predecessor, Salvatore Alliende, and the overthrow of his democratically elected government along with the "disappearance" of thousands. So, if we are going to assess the motivations of political leaders, including our own, we should be willing to admit our own tyrannies in the form of the tyrannies we made possible and the romanticized versions of them that were sold to the public here in the United States. Time has demonstrated that communism isn't the political problem in repressive nations. Malevolent and greedy men are, regardless of their political philosophies, and our foreign policy has buoyed them just because they weren't communists, and in spite of what they actually were. In fact, I wonder if there but for fortune would go Marco Rubio. He certainly is willing to say anything to attain and maintain power. He certainly has only a casual acquaintance with intellectual honesty. And as for ambition, he certainly is not lacking in that regard.
But underneath it all is this. Rubio has been confronted with his embroidered ancestral heritage, and he has excused himself for the embroidery by blaming it on his family, which according to him told him the story of his parents' emigration from Cuba and the love of freedom that precipitated their immigration to the United States...as illegal aliens for the first four years or more, I might add. As to his loathing for Castro, he has used the fable of his parents indomitable love of freedom to vilify a straw dog, Fidel Castro, instead of Batista, the real villain of his parents piece, just because that was the politically correct thing to do. No one gets elected in little Havana for opposing capitalist dictators. It takes a communist foe to unify support in Miami. And Marco Rubio is just the man to undertake the task: all talk and no honesty.
Your friend,
Mike
Leave a comment