I was watching The Rundown with José Díaz-Balart and was simply astonished. It continues to be obvious why bad American foreign policy can continue without much public objection. What many Americans fail to see is how it hurts the country’s credibility. Many times what Americans perceive as hate, indifference, disrespect, lack of appreciation, or downright hostility is simply blowback from policies foreign to the average American citizens. Why are these policies foreign to the average American citizens? They are foreign because of bad, biased, or coerced reporting.
The media went into hyperventilating mode after the President announced the path to normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba. The reality is that while this is a big step, it was not a courageous step as Americans including Cuban Americans have long supported a more positive relation with Cuba. Many in the older exile Cuban community have long had much too much sway on the American foreign policy towards Cuba.
Chuck Todd was interviewed by José Díaz-Balart about the President’s change in Cuban policy. Instead of laying out the facts about why this change is overdue after a fifty plus year failed policy, Chuck Todd decided to discuss platitudes. He had dinner with friends while in Florida. Chuck Todd said that while these friends understood the intellectual argument for relations based on America’s relations with China and Vietnam, the tone of the President’s presentation of the new policy was not sufficiently deferential to the exile community in Florida.
Are you kidding? How deferential was Nixon to Chinese expats or any President for that matter to Vietnamese refugees?
Why is it that few ever discuss that exiles that worked with Fulgencio Batista, the ‘overthrown’ president of Cuba, were a part of a sadistic government that pilfered its people? Why is it that very few know that Fulgencio Batista and his cronies left Cuba with millions? Why is it that many are more concerned with the semblance of democracy in Cuba than real democracy? Cuba was not a democracy under Batista, under Fidel Castro, or under his brother Raúl Castro. Cubans suffered and are suffering under them all. Fifty years of bad U. S. policy simply made the pain worse for the average Cuban.
While many times American foreign policy is cloaked in the ‘glory hallelujah’ of democracy and freedom, that is seldom the case. Cuba was a playground for American business and the American mafia. Fulgencio Batista as dictator ensuring less than optimal progress of many classes of his people was in the best interest of those ‘businesses’. Castro fighting for a proletariat was not in their interest.
The America plutocracy has always supported a semblance of democracy at home and dictatorship (well, less than optimal semblances of democracy) abroad. One just need remember Philippines, Panamá, Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua, and Haiti just to name a few. Anyone wonders why America had good diplomatic relations with Apartheid South Africa, a country much more brutal than Cuba? President Reagan believed constructive engagement for South Africa was the answer – which, in effect, is the new Obama policy toward Cuba.
As Chuck Todd illustrates in his prose above, the American media seldom provides Americans with the information, the meat necessary to come to objective conclusions. Yes, America has diplomatic relations with China and Vietnam. It is an obvious inconsistency with its Cuban policy. However there are many other relations the United States have with other countries that are much more vicious to its population than Cuba. Many are nominal democracies. However because of the ineptitude or willful disengagement of the mainstream traditional media, Americans are completely oblivious to that reality.
One hopes that President Obama will use his last two years to right many of the wrongs in American foreign policy. Since the election he seems to be unshackled from the status quo sans the Omnibus bill. One hopes he will use the freedom he has chosen to exercise to become the U. S. President the rest of the world needs. In the process one hopes he is prepared to school the media and not leave it up to their willful ignorance.