Cuban Common Sense

An interesting take on Cuba's recent spate of repression and various responses to it from Raul Dimas at Brainwash. Here's a snippet:

Let?s retire one particularly tired and self-contradictory ?argument? against U.S. policy toward Cuba: The embargo is a convenient ?excuse? for the Castro regime?s failures.

At the minimal risk that a generalization like this creates, nobody who believes in (or at the very least understands) capitalism still holds that Cuba is an economic sinkhole because of U.S. foreign policy. As such, it is foolish to claim that the embargo is an ?excuse? for the Castro regime?s economic failure. This argument shifts blame to the Cuban people, for their implied stupidity. No ?migr? I?ve ever met believes their hardship resulted from U.S. policy. The embargo is an ?excuse? only to the Left, for whose intellectual shortcomings I make no defense.

Everyone in Havana knows they receive one bar of soap per month because of decisions made by Castro, not Washington. To argue otherwise is to deny the Cuban people an ?insight? most Americans take as common sense.

[Link via Free-Market.net]

Here's a smattering of Reason's Cuba coverage over the past decade or so:

Viva La Evolution! Does a Taste of Free Enterprise Mean the End of Fidel's Cuba?

Foul Ball: How a communist dictatorship and a U.S. embargo has silenced a Cuban historian

Northern Lites: Naively idealistic students ignore the dark side of Cuba

Orphans of Trade: How to Help All of Cuba's Children

Reading Elian: The camera doesn?t lie. But it will confess to just about anything.