The Sirens of Cuba Call - By Jimmy Petrol

Cuba...like the mythic island of Atlantis, lies somewhere in the seas just off the south-eastern coast of America, cloaked in mystery borne of an American embargo and buried under the shadow of presumed “socialist” evil.

Now, with the help of a film-maker, a little window into the island nation has been opened. Michael Moore, in his illegal tour of Cuba’s hospitals and hospitality has thrown a brick through the looking glass.

Even the daring Mr. Moore may have found entry into the former Caribbean shangri-la heavy going if not for the recent change in Cuban presidents. Fidel, ill and ageing, has named a brother to the presidency, in the long tradition of rulers who feel ownership in their countries. The brother, whose name is as unimportant as his presidency, provides an opportunity for the United States to change it’s stance against the island nation. The new president and the Cuban people are anxious for the U.S. to recognize the end of the Castro era and move away from the near total embargo the U.S. has held against Cuba for half a century.

The embargo has been the U.S. effort to ensure the failure of the Cuban Socialist Experiment. While the Great Experiment in Democracy has been often trumpeted in America, the U.S. government has put every effort behind making sure the Socialist Equivalent fails.

To be sure, the U.S. has often taken the high moral ground and pointed to the political abuses that Castro has been undoubtably guilty of; he has long practiced the torture, imprisonment without trial, wiretapping and the lot against his enemies. While the U.S. abstained from similar behavior, it could afford to point to Castro as an example of what America stood against.

Now that the United States has joined the world’s more “conservative” governments in the practice of torture, un-lawful imprisonment, un-lawful extradition and the like, it has had to become more circumspect in its criticisms. This apparent change in American diplomacy must rankle American diplomats; no longer can they take the secure, smug stand against the dictatorial governments of the world. Rather, America has been reduced to rationalizing and justifying activities that formerly were branded un-American.

America, as a debutante into the society of repression, can at least use it’s new posture to establish a closer relationship with regimes it formerly could not publicly countenance. Where once we were forced, by our high moral values, to condemn the Cuban government, now we can embrace it and excuse it.

With this new embrasure of common “tools” of government, our two countries can move away from the embargo and into a future of economic cooperation.

Cuba though, will need to come into line with American standards in several key areas before it can hope for a full integration into the American economic fold.
For example, Cuba has long produced too many doctors. According to the BBC, The Cubans have currently around 70,000 doctors. In all of Africa there are only 50,000. Accordingly, Cuban doctors are in demand and are allowed to travel to many parts of the world where medical care is lacking; Venezuela enjoys hosting many Cuban doctors, to the delight of an otherwise under-served population.

This surprise benefit of the long and difficult Castro government goes counter to American medical philosophy, which dictates that the supply of doctors remain low so that the demand for medical care supports a high cost ratio. Which means that most of the people that build the houses in America are without medical care as long as they are working; to qualify for medical care in America the working class must either become wealthy or indigent; otherwise, the American practice of severely limiting the number of doctors forces the cost of medical care beyond the reach of the carpenter, plumber, builder and mechanic.

There can be no doubt that this surplus of doctors will be one of the things the Cubans will want to export if and when the embargo is lifted; what president Obama stands to gain from lifting the ill-conceived embargo is access to tens of thousands of doctors, all of whom could go a long way towards providing the medical care that Obama-Clinton finally wield the political clout to provide to working Americans.

It is poetic that the means to relieve the American’s medical nightmare, where they are tasked to build the country, but left to die when they become ill, comes from the little island nation, where the Socialist Experiment has borne at least the fruit of compassion.