Chicago Boyz

Paul Marks at Samizdata speculates about the end of Castro. It’s a familiar discussion. Predictably, the reader comments are full of jabs about the U.S. embargo, with one or two blame-the-U.S. assertions thrown in. Most of these arguments are beside the point.

One of the U.S. govt’s bigger blunders in recent decades was not overthrowing the Castro regime when it would have been relatively easy to do so. Instead we played around with tepid subversion and lost our nerve after a half-assed invasion which we allowed to fail.

Since then we haven’t had the will to do anything serious, and the result has been the transformation of the most advanced country in Latin America into a festering dung heap, and the destruction of the dreams, freedom and life potential (and in many cases the lives) of several generations of its citizens. The embargo is a sideshow that won’t change any of this.

Yet God forbid anyone suggests we deal with the root of the problem by overthrowing the Cuban regime. No, can’t have that — we must have stability. (Where else have we heard that recently?) Never mind that the vast majority of Cuban immigrants from the supposedly disastrous 1980 Mariel boat lift have been successfully integrated into U.S. society. Never mind that the Cuban populace is increasingly unhappy. Never mind that Cuba is militarily weak. No, we must take no risks. We must wait Castro out, even though doing so may consign more generations of Cubans to wasted lives; and even though it’s conceivable that, absent external pressure, the communist regime will survive Castro.

If we can consider destabilizing Iran, we should consider destabilizing Cuba. The risks of not acting may not be as great in the case of Cuba as for Iran or Iraq, but neither are the risks of taking action. Cuba is a damaged society and would take years to recover to a point where it would contribute more than emigrants to the Caribbean region, but that’s a reason to start the process ASAP. Just as the Middle East will be a better place with a democratic Iraq and Iran, so the Americas would be better without a dysfunctional communist kleptocracy led by a senile thug. Bush may have more important things on his mind, and our foreign-policy bureaucracy and think tanks may have given up on Cuba long ago, but perhaps it’s time to reconsider our tacit policy of non-intervention.

One of the more satisfying scenes from this year’s Tour de France was Armstrong on the winner’s podium in Paris with the rousing strains of the The Star Spangled Banner reverberating from the Arc de Triomphe. Yet somehow the moment was incomplete, not quite perfect. It was missing only a certain small gesture on Lance’s part, a mere bagatelle. Ah, yes:

I wish

Lex claims to be too busy to blog, but he threw me a scrap in the form of this Ralph Peters column. It’s one of the best pieces on the subject so far.

Senator Clinton said this yesterday about the assassination of a distinguished NYC Councilman: “a tragic, terrible irony.”

Notice the cognitive dissonance. She can’t call it an actual tragedy — something shared. The situation here is something she observes as an outsider looking in, like reading a book — the situation is ironic or tragically ironic. Literature can be ironic, but an assassination? And even if in some abstract sense her analysis is correct, aren’t her words shameful? Her words don’t comfort the grieving — they just rub in the waste as useless. The proper words at such a moment would be: “A good man was wrongly struck down, we share in his family’s and friends’ grief. It is a tragedy of the first order.” Her commenting about the situation’s irony shows a real disconnect from the common fate of her constituents.

The Left’s problem is not that they see the world differently or in a socially constructed way at odds with facts. But rather that they think they are observers to a reality that mere plebeians (like you and me and the person next door) are content to live in. We are mice in a maze and they are the social scientist running some experiment. But when the mice don’t cooperate, they are exasperated because we don’t notice that they are our social betters.

And they wonder why they lose elections.

The Iron Law:

Female correspondents will be competent in inverse relationship to how good-looking they are.