Walter Russell Mead: Castrodaemmerung ... The Twilight of the Bros
[Walter Russell Mead is Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Special Providence: American Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. He blogs at The-American-Interest.com.]
As an old Cuba hand, I have no desire to defend the island’s communist government or make excuses for its dismal failures in the area of human rights and economic development, but with the news that Cuba is considering the release of yet another tranche of political prisoners, it’s increasingly clear something important is happening down there.
As usual, the media is missing the boat, and both the Castro apologists and the Castro haters mostly don’t get what the wily (and sometimes wacky) brothers are trying to do.
In interviews with Jeff Goldberg and my old CFR colleague Julia Sweig, as well as on other occasions, Fidel Castro has been sending up smoke signals. The Holocaust was both a real thing and a bad thing; homosexuals should not be treated brutally; the Cuban model is not working. Taken together with the policy changes on the island as the government tries to shift state employees into self employment and a larger private sector and releases political prisoners, something big is clearly going on — but what?
So far, American commentary seems to be running in the usual tired circles. The professional Castro haters see all this as yet another disingenuous attempt by the Bros to play the liberal card in American politics. By making a few fatuous remarks and token gestures, the Castros send their soft-headed liberal supporters in the West swooning for joy, rehabilitating the Cuban Revolution in liberal eyes and continuing the deceptive policies that have allowed them to get away with five decades of brutal tyranny on an island ninety miles from their shores. This time, they note, darkly, Castro is zeroing in on a very important liberal subgroup: American Jews.
The liberal Cuba sympathizers are too busy swooning with joy to pay much attention to the criticism of the Castro haters. Long ago most liberals (wrongly and unfairly) dismissed anti-Castro activists as a bunch of angry, revenge seeking pro-Batista oligarchs. Too often, the American left has overlooked the faults of Cuba’s revolution and made heroes out of the architects of Cuba’s disaster.
As usual, I’ve got a foot in both camps...
Read entire article at National Interest (blog)
As an old Cuba hand, I have no desire to defend the island’s communist government or make excuses for its dismal failures in the area of human rights and economic development, but with the news that Cuba is considering the release of yet another tranche of political prisoners, it’s increasingly clear something important is happening down there.
As usual, the media is missing the boat, and both the Castro apologists and the Castro haters mostly don’t get what the wily (and sometimes wacky) brothers are trying to do.
In interviews with Jeff Goldberg and my old CFR colleague Julia Sweig, as well as on other occasions, Fidel Castro has been sending up smoke signals. The Holocaust was both a real thing and a bad thing; homosexuals should not be treated brutally; the Cuban model is not working. Taken together with the policy changes on the island as the government tries to shift state employees into self employment and a larger private sector and releases political prisoners, something big is clearly going on — but what?
So far, American commentary seems to be running in the usual tired circles. The professional Castro haters see all this as yet another disingenuous attempt by the Bros to play the liberal card in American politics. By making a few fatuous remarks and token gestures, the Castros send their soft-headed liberal supporters in the West swooning for joy, rehabilitating the Cuban Revolution in liberal eyes and continuing the deceptive policies that have allowed them to get away with five decades of brutal tyranny on an island ninety miles from their shores. This time, they note, darkly, Castro is zeroing in on a very important liberal subgroup: American Jews.
The liberal Cuba sympathizers are too busy swooning with joy to pay much attention to the criticism of the Castro haters. Long ago most liberals (wrongly and unfairly) dismissed anti-Castro activists as a bunch of angry, revenge seeking pro-Batista oligarchs. Too often, the American left has overlooked the faults of Cuba’s revolution and made heroes out of the architects of Cuba’s disaster.
As usual, I’ve got a foot in both camps...