It's a bold strategy—ignoring constitutional checks and balances to start an unauthorized war in the Middle East, and then threatening another regime change just 90 miles off our coast. Between the endless Defense Department spending and Senate Republicans finally pushing back with War Powers Resolutions, we're watching taxpayer money get incinerated before sunrise. A masterclass in destroying a country. Maybe that is actually Trump’s intent.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated the date for Cuban Independence Day. It is May 20. The story originally referred to it as "yesterday" when it should have said "today." Unless you are reading the earlier version tomorrow, in which case it will be correct. My apologies.
Sure. Because 68 years under the Castro family regime has really done Cuba a world of good. No electricity, food shortages, collective appropriation of all farmland, abject poverty. Sounds like a real Paradise. If you are against the liberation of an oppressed people who would welcome it, you are definitely on the wrong side of History. Check yourself.
Please! Stop with the anti-communist nostrums. If you look at all the socialist revolutions that have occurred, every one has vastly improved the lives of their people. In the case of Cuba, the country has done remarkably well under socialism, but she has been viciously hampered by the bully to the North. And no amount of whining will refute that fact. In point of fact, during COVID Cuba created five vaccines and inoculated 90% of the population—all without the side effects and complaints seen in the capitalist world.
I'm not really sure which parallel universe you're living in, but you're not really dealing with the reality of the socialist / communist economic system.
The claim ignores a great deal of historical reality. Some socialist revolutions did improve literacy, sanitation, or access to basic healthcare in their early years, but many also produced authoritarian governments, economic stagnation, food shortages, mass emigration, and political repression. Cuba is not an exception. Before the revolution, Cuba was one of the more prosperous countries in Latin America by several economic and social indicators. Today, after more than six decades of one-party rule, Cubans face chronic shortages of food, medicine, fuel, and electricity, while hundreds of thousands have fled the island in recent years alone.
As for COVID, Cuba did develop domestic vaccines, which was a scientific achievement given its limited resources. But the claim that they had “no side effects or complaints” is simply untrue. No vaccine anywhere in the world is entirely free of side effects, including Cuba’s Abdala and Soberana vaccines. Moreover, Cuba’s official statistics are difficult to independently verify because the state controls media, scientific reporting, and public dissent. It is also worth noting that Cuba’s healthcare system struggled badly during the pandemic, with medicine shortages, overwhelmed hospitals, and widespread protests in 2021 — the largest anti-government demonstrations on the island in decades. Blaming every failure solely on the United States embargo overlooks the profound impact of Cuba’s own centralized economic policies and political system.
To be fair, the 1902 Cuban Independence did end Spanish rule, but it also established American behind-the-scenes rule and Cuba simply became an unrecognized American colony—perhaps it is cheaper that way, less responsibility for the inhabitants. The colony grew in wealth and importance and its property and enterprises were either in hands of Cuban compradors, Cuban latifundistas (often the same people) and Americans. Most notable is how the American Mafia took over Havana and turned it into a remarkable bordello of sin and corruption.
Cuban President Batista oversaw this operation and maintained order with ruthless efficiency, using beatings, jails, and torture, as well as executions to thwart opposition.
Fidel Castro and his revolutionists turned this American mess back to the Cuban people, and the Revolution sent the considerable quantity of parasites packing, most of whom went to Miami.
Not willing to give up their top tier lifestyles, the Miami Cubans, including the man affectionally known as Gusano Rúbio, dedicated their lives to restoring their former wealth and status, including the ones who carried off as much loot as they could hold when they fled the Revolution. These revanchists had one organization called Brothers to the Rescue, and it did much more than monitoring boats leaving Cuba. It carried out insurrectionary activities, the least of which were dropping anti-Castro leaflets on Havana, the worst were dropping bombs. In general, the entire anti-revolution crowd in Miami were morally bankrupt people who did not stint at blowing up a Cuban airliner killing all onboard and many other terrorist actions.
Maduro shooting down a Brothers to the Rescue airplane was a mitzvah. Those aboard had long ago given up their humanity and if not stopped, would have killed more Cubans. I am sure this argument would not please the Court!
In the long view, ever since the Cuban Revolution, the US has worked 'six ways from Sunday' to destroy it, first by sanctions, then by armed invasion, and back to sanctions. As a "threat of a good example", Cuban socialism must be stopped or Empire might disappear. Trump cannot stand that, so he might just enter into another quagmire. I predict if he invades, no American on that island will be safe. Remember Vietnam when men in sandals defeated men in Army boots.
There’s a lot packed into that comment, and some of it reflects real history — Batista was authoritarian, American business interests absolutely had outsized influence in pre-revolutionary Cuba, and organized crime did operate casinos in Havana in the 1950s. But the post crosses the line from history into mythology by portraying Castro’s revolution as a liberation that “returned Cuba to the Cuban people.” The actual historical record after 1959 tells a very different story.
Fidel Castro promised democratic elections after overthrowing Batista in January 1959. Those elections never happened. Instead, Cuba became a one-party communist state that has now lasted 67 years without free national elections. Independent newspapers were shut down in 1960. Opposition parties were outlawed. Tens of thousands of political dissidents were imprisoned during the 1960s alone, including liberals, Catholics, labor organizers, and former anti-Batista revolutionaries who objected to Castro’s consolidation of power. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even former left-wing supporters of the revolution have documented decades of political imprisonment and suppression of dissent. Whatever Batista’s abuses were — and they were real — replacing one authoritarian system with another is not “giving Cuba back to the people.”
The economic argument is even weaker. Before Castro, Cuba was imperfect and unequal, but by Latin American standards it was one of the more prosperous countries in the region. In the 1950s Cuba ranked near the top in Latin America in literacy, physician-to-population ratio, calorie consumption, and per-capita income. Havana had severe corruption problems, but Cuba was not some feudal wasteland. After collectivization and state seizure of private property in the early 1960s, productivity cratered. The government nationalized farms, businesses, banks, utilities — essentially the entire economy. Cuba then survived largely through Soviet subsidies estimated at billions annually until the USSR collapsed in 1991. Once Soviet support disappeared, Cuba entered the “Special Period,” marked by mass shortages, blackouts, rationing, and malnutrition. That wasn’t caused by Batista. Batista had been gone for over 30 years by then.
And while sanctions unquestionably hurt Cuba’s economy, blaming everything on the embargo ignores the internal dysfunction of the Cuban system itself. Cuba trades with dozens of countries, including Canada, Spain, Mexico, China, and until recently Venezuela. The U.S. embargo also specifically exempts food and medicine exports. In fact, since 2000, the United States has often been one of Cuba’s largest food suppliers under humanitarian exemptions. The Cuban government’s inability to generate sufficient domestic agricultural output despite controlling virtually all farmland is a governance failure, not merely an American plot.
The “Brothers to the Rescue” point is also deeply misleading. The group was founded in the early 1990s primarily to spot rafters fleeing Cuba after thousands tried escaping the island on makeshift boats. Did some anti-Castro exile groups commit terrorism historically? Yes. The 1976 Cubana Flight 455 bombing was a horrific act of terrorism that killed 73 people and deserves unequivocal condemnation. But conflating all Cuban exiles or all anti-Castro activists with terrorists is dishonest. Brothers to the Rescue itself was not legally flying combat missions when two of its civilian planes were shot down by Cuban MiGs on February 24, 1996, killing four men. Even the Clinton administration — hardly pro-Batista hardliners — condemned the shootdown as an unlawful use of force. The perpetrator was Fidel Castro’s government, not “Maduro,” who was not even president of Venezuela at the time.
The romanticized “David versus Goliath” framing also leaves out a basic reality: millions of Cubans have voted with their feet. Since 1959, well over two million Cubans have emigrated, many risking death crossing the Florida Straits. The Mariel Boatlift in 1980, the balsero crisis in 1994, and the enormous migration wave since 2021 are not the behavior of people fleeing a liberated workers’ paradise. They are the actions of people escaping economic collapse and political repression. If the revolution truly “returned Cuba to the people,” the government would not need state security services, censorship, exit controls, and mass arrests — including the crackdown after the July 11, 2021 protests — to keep the system intact.
Finally, criticism of Castroism is not the same thing as advocating invasion or colonialism. One can oppose military intervention while also recognizing that the Cuban regime has failed economically and politically for decades. Cuba’s current crisis — rolling blackouts, fuel shortages, collapsing infrastructure, food scarcity, and an exodus of young people — is happening under the descendants of the revolution, not under Batista, not under Meyer Lansky, and not under American mobsters from 1958.
Again, this tyrant is doing whatever he damn well wants and our Congress sits by and takes no action. They must be too busy dreaming about the growth in their investments to be involved in protecting their constituents' constitutional rights. After all, they have another $1.8 billion of OUR money to help out the poor felons of January 6th just in case they need it to compensate them for the actions of the evil Democrats!
The big smile of the day for me is that Trump's boy friend Xi, ran right home to "daddy" Putin to tell him all about his meeting with the idiot (and I'm sure he also wanted to make sure their split was 50/50 when they start moving on America). Rumor has it that they are both still laughing!
JC-my impression of you has always been an intelligent man. Unfortunately, lately you seem to be devolving into the rhetoric of inflammatory prose.
The article presents itself as informed geopolitical commentary, but it repeatedly blurs the line between verified fact, political interpretation, and outright speculation. Its central implication—that criminal charges against Raúl Castro are part of a coordinated effort to justify an American “hostile takeover” of Cuba—is asserted without meaningful evidence. The piece relies heavily on emotionally loaded phrasing such as “Trump’s minions,” “kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro,” and “towering eyesore,” substituting rhetoric for substantiation. Several claims are either unsupported or misleading. The statement that the United States “kidnapped” Maduro is presented as fact despite no such event having occurred publicly or being established by credible evidence. Likewise, the reference to Trump supposedly saying the United States would be “taking over Cuba” is offered without context, quotation details, or clarification as to whether the remark was literal, rhetorical, or taken from a broader discussion. Serious allegations involving Cuban drone capabilities and military intentions are also introduced without sourcing, leaving readers unable to distinguish intelligence reporting from conjecture.
The article further undermines its credibility through selective historical framing and internal inconsistency. While correctly acknowledging that the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown violated international law, it immediately pivots into a broader accusation of American hypocrisy without demonstrating how current legal action against Raúl Castro is illegitimate or politically manufactured. Its portrayal of early twentieth-century Cuba as merely emerging from “American military occupation” omits the broader historical context of the Spanish-American War and Cuba’s transition to independence, reducing a complex history into an ideologically convenient narrative. More broadly, you repeatedly assume motives that are never proven: that indictments are designed to “rationalize” intervention, that military action is being prepared, and that Cuban-American officials are predisposed to support aggression. The result is less a disciplined analysis than an advocacy piece driven by insinuation, where inflammatory tone and speculative leaps overwhelm factual rigor.
Stop right there. No one doubts that the indictment of Raul Castro is nothing more than a ploy to do to Cuba what Trump did to Venezuela. The trouble with your ilk is you pick and choose from history meanings and events that suit your narrative (but your narrative is false). There is nothing wrong with Mr Bruce's narrative except that it stops short of indicting the criminal enterprise of Yanqui Imperialism.
Oh, Tedders. Sure Mr Bruce is a big boy and can fight his own battles without any assistance from you. But since you decided to wade into this conversation, let me respond to your unsupported contentions one by one. Unlike yourself, I will provide some evidence.
You’re entitled to oppose U.S. policy toward Cuba and to criticize what you call “Yanqui imperialism,” but dismissing the indictment outright as a mere “ploy” ignores the actual facts of the case. The charges against Raúl Castro are tied to the 1996 shootdown of two unarmed civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an incident that killed four men, including three U.S. citizens. The International Civil Aviation Organization concluded the planes were shot down in international airspace, not over Cuban territory as Havana claimed. That incident was internationally condemned at the time, including by governments that were hardly aligned with Washington’s hardline Cuba policy.
You also accuse others of “picking and choosing history,” but history cuts both ways. Yes, the United States has a long and often troubling record in Latin America — coups, sanctions, covert operations, and support for authoritarian regimes are all legitimate subjects for criticism. But acknowledging that history does not magically erase the Cuban government’s own actions or place its leaders beyond accountability. One can oppose U.S. interventionism while also recognizing that shooting down civilian aircraft and killing noncombatants is indefensible. Those are not mutually exclusive positions.
The argument also falls into a familiar rhetorical trap: if the United States prosecutes a foreign leader, then the prosecution must automatically be illegitimate because the U.S. itself has committed wrongs. That is not a legal or moral defense; it is whataboutism. If a government commits an unlawful act, the fact that another government has also committed unlawful acts does not negate responsibility. By that logic, no state actor anywhere could ever be held accountable.
And finally, calling critics “your ilk” does not strengthen the argument. It substitutes ideological labeling for evidence. There is a serious debate to be had about whether the timing of this indictment is politically motivated, especially given the Trump administration’s broader pressure campaign against Cuba and comparisons being made to Venezuela. Even mainstream reporting has acknowledged that context. But political timing and legal merit are not the same thing. A prosecution can be politically useful and still rest on a real event involving real deaths and longstanding evidence.
Trump has concluded he can replace lack of competence with $ power of the Presidency. His money impressed enough voters to choose him so competency no longer matters. He creates his own narrative. There are educated leaders in our military (McRaven, Petraeus, Mad Dog Maddox ,several others) who have courage and experience to make better decisions on a world stage. America is lacking a courageous visionary who wants the job or the accompanying abuse of politics. America must admit we are victims of the system we created and Washington, Franklin, Adams, or Patrick Henry cannot rescue us. If I were not 83 yo I would attempt to run for office. I would love to vote for a proven leader.
It's a bold strategy—ignoring constitutional checks and balances to start an unauthorized war in the Middle East, and then threatening another regime change just 90 miles off our coast. Between the endless Defense Department spending and Senate Republicans finally pushing back with War Powers Resolutions, we're watching taxpayer money get incinerated before sunrise. A masterclass in destroying a country. Maybe that is actually Trump’s intent.
83 years old. You're almost the same age as Joe Biden. You might as well run.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post misstated the date for Cuban Independence Day. It is May 20. The story originally referred to it as "yesterday" when it should have said "today." Unless you are reading the earlier version tomorrow, in which case it will be correct. My apologies.
Trump, and his criminals allies, want to return Cuba to the Batista era when Wealthy criminals, like Trump, ran the country for their own profit.
Conservatives years long attacks on Cuba were never about politics but was solely about lost profits.
Sure. Because 68 years under the Castro family regime has really done Cuba a world of good. No electricity, food shortages, collective appropriation of all farmland, abject poverty. Sounds like a real Paradise. If you are against the liberation of an oppressed people who would welcome it, you are definitely on the wrong side of History. Check yourself.
Please! Stop with the anti-communist nostrums. If you look at all the socialist revolutions that have occurred, every one has vastly improved the lives of their people. In the case of Cuba, the country has done remarkably well under socialism, but she has been viciously hampered by the bully to the North. And no amount of whining will refute that fact. In point of fact, during COVID Cuba created five vaccines and inoculated 90% of the population—all without the side effects and complaints seen in the capitalist world.
I'm not really sure which parallel universe you're living in, but you're not really dealing with the reality of the socialist / communist economic system.
The claim ignores a great deal of historical reality. Some socialist revolutions did improve literacy, sanitation, or access to basic healthcare in their early years, but many also produced authoritarian governments, economic stagnation, food shortages, mass emigration, and political repression. Cuba is not an exception. Before the revolution, Cuba was one of the more prosperous countries in Latin America by several economic and social indicators. Today, after more than six decades of one-party rule, Cubans face chronic shortages of food, medicine, fuel, and electricity, while hundreds of thousands have fled the island in recent years alone.
As for COVID, Cuba did develop domestic vaccines, which was a scientific achievement given its limited resources. But the claim that they had “no side effects or complaints” is simply untrue. No vaccine anywhere in the world is entirely free of side effects, including Cuba’s Abdala and Soberana vaccines. Moreover, Cuba’s official statistics are difficult to independently verify because the state controls media, scientific reporting, and public dissent. It is also worth noting that Cuba’s healthcare system struggled badly during the pandemic, with medicine shortages, overwhelmed hospitals, and widespread protests in 2021 — the largest anti-government demonstrations on the island in decades. Blaming every failure solely on the United States embargo overlooks the profound impact of Cuba’s own centralized economic policies and political system.
Makes me wonder whether Trump wants to build his resort and palace in Cuba instead of on the Wet Bank?
To be fair, the 1902 Cuban Independence did end Spanish rule, but it also established American behind-the-scenes rule and Cuba simply became an unrecognized American colony—perhaps it is cheaper that way, less responsibility for the inhabitants. The colony grew in wealth and importance and its property and enterprises were either in hands of Cuban compradors, Cuban latifundistas (often the same people) and Americans. Most notable is how the American Mafia took over Havana and turned it into a remarkable bordello of sin and corruption.
Cuban President Batista oversaw this operation and maintained order with ruthless efficiency, using beatings, jails, and torture, as well as executions to thwart opposition.
Fidel Castro and his revolutionists turned this American mess back to the Cuban people, and the Revolution sent the considerable quantity of parasites packing, most of whom went to Miami.
Not willing to give up their top tier lifestyles, the Miami Cubans, including the man affectionally known as Gusano Rúbio, dedicated their lives to restoring their former wealth and status, including the ones who carried off as much loot as they could hold when they fled the Revolution. These revanchists had one organization called Brothers to the Rescue, and it did much more than monitoring boats leaving Cuba. It carried out insurrectionary activities, the least of which were dropping anti-Castro leaflets on Havana, the worst were dropping bombs. In general, the entire anti-revolution crowd in Miami were morally bankrupt people who did not stint at blowing up a Cuban airliner killing all onboard and many other terrorist actions.
Maduro shooting down a Brothers to the Rescue airplane was a mitzvah. Those aboard had long ago given up their humanity and if not stopped, would have killed more Cubans. I am sure this argument would not please the Court!
In the long view, ever since the Cuban Revolution, the US has worked 'six ways from Sunday' to destroy it, first by sanctions, then by armed invasion, and back to sanctions. As a "threat of a good example", Cuban socialism must be stopped or Empire might disappear. Trump cannot stand that, so he might just enter into another quagmire. I predict if he invades, no American on that island will be safe. Remember Vietnam when men in sandals defeated men in Army boots.
There’s a lot packed into that comment, and some of it reflects real history — Batista was authoritarian, American business interests absolutely had outsized influence in pre-revolutionary Cuba, and organized crime did operate casinos in Havana in the 1950s. But the post crosses the line from history into mythology by portraying Castro’s revolution as a liberation that “returned Cuba to the Cuban people.” The actual historical record after 1959 tells a very different story.
Fidel Castro promised democratic elections after overthrowing Batista in January 1959. Those elections never happened. Instead, Cuba became a one-party communist state that has now lasted 67 years without free national elections. Independent newspapers were shut down in 1960. Opposition parties were outlawed. Tens of thousands of political dissidents were imprisoned during the 1960s alone, including liberals, Catholics, labor organizers, and former anti-Batista revolutionaries who objected to Castro’s consolidation of power. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and even former left-wing supporters of the revolution have documented decades of political imprisonment and suppression of dissent. Whatever Batista’s abuses were — and they were real — replacing one authoritarian system with another is not “giving Cuba back to the people.”
The economic argument is even weaker. Before Castro, Cuba was imperfect and unequal, but by Latin American standards it was one of the more prosperous countries in the region. In the 1950s Cuba ranked near the top in Latin America in literacy, physician-to-population ratio, calorie consumption, and per-capita income. Havana had severe corruption problems, but Cuba was not some feudal wasteland. After collectivization and state seizure of private property in the early 1960s, productivity cratered. The government nationalized farms, businesses, banks, utilities — essentially the entire economy. Cuba then survived largely through Soviet subsidies estimated at billions annually until the USSR collapsed in 1991. Once Soviet support disappeared, Cuba entered the “Special Period,” marked by mass shortages, blackouts, rationing, and malnutrition. That wasn’t caused by Batista. Batista had been gone for over 30 years by then.
And while sanctions unquestionably hurt Cuba’s economy, blaming everything on the embargo ignores the internal dysfunction of the Cuban system itself. Cuba trades with dozens of countries, including Canada, Spain, Mexico, China, and until recently Venezuela. The U.S. embargo also specifically exempts food and medicine exports. In fact, since 2000, the United States has often been one of Cuba’s largest food suppliers under humanitarian exemptions. The Cuban government’s inability to generate sufficient domestic agricultural output despite controlling virtually all farmland is a governance failure, not merely an American plot.
The “Brothers to the Rescue” point is also deeply misleading. The group was founded in the early 1990s primarily to spot rafters fleeing Cuba after thousands tried escaping the island on makeshift boats. Did some anti-Castro exile groups commit terrorism historically? Yes. The 1976 Cubana Flight 455 bombing was a horrific act of terrorism that killed 73 people and deserves unequivocal condemnation. But conflating all Cuban exiles or all anti-Castro activists with terrorists is dishonest. Brothers to the Rescue itself was not legally flying combat missions when two of its civilian planes were shot down by Cuban MiGs on February 24, 1996, killing four men. Even the Clinton administration — hardly pro-Batista hardliners — condemned the shootdown as an unlawful use of force. The perpetrator was Fidel Castro’s government, not “Maduro,” who was not even president of Venezuela at the time.
The romanticized “David versus Goliath” framing also leaves out a basic reality: millions of Cubans have voted with their feet. Since 1959, well over two million Cubans have emigrated, many risking death crossing the Florida Straits. The Mariel Boatlift in 1980, the balsero crisis in 1994, and the enormous migration wave since 2021 are not the behavior of people fleeing a liberated workers’ paradise. They are the actions of people escaping economic collapse and political repression. If the revolution truly “returned Cuba to the people,” the government would not need state security services, censorship, exit controls, and mass arrests — including the crackdown after the July 11, 2021 protests — to keep the system intact.
Finally, criticism of Castroism is not the same thing as advocating invasion or colonialism. One can oppose military intervention while also recognizing that the Cuban regime has failed economically and politically for decades. Cuba’s current crisis — rolling blackouts, fuel shortages, collapsing infrastructure, food scarcity, and an exodus of young people — is happening under the descendants of the revolution, not under Batista, not under Meyer Lansky, and not under American mobsters from 1958.
Again, this tyrant is doing whatever he damn well wants and our Congress sits by and takes no action. They must be too busy dreaming about the growth in their investments to be involved in protecting their constituents' constitutional rights. After all, they have another $1.8 billion of OUR money to help out the poor felons of January 6th just in case they need it to compensate them for the actions of the evil Democrats!
The big smile of the day for me is that Trump's boy friend Xi, ran right home to "daddy" Putin to tell him all about his meeting with the idiot (and I'm sure he also wanted to make sure their split was 50/50 when they start moving on America). Rumor has it that they are both still laughing!
JC-my impression of you has always been an intelligent man. Unfortunately, lately you seem to be devolving into the rhetoric of inflammatory prose.
The article presents itself as informed geopolitical commentary, but it repeatedly blurs the line between verified fact, political interpretation, and outright speculation. Its central implication—that criminal charges against Raúl Castro are part of a coordinated effort to justify an American “hostile takeover” of Cuba—is asserted without meaningful evidence. The piece relies heavily on emotionally loaded phrasing such as “Trump’s minions,” “kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro,” and “towering eyesore,” substituting rhetoric for substantiation. Several claims are either unsupported or misleading. The statement that the United States “kidnapped” Maduro is presented as fact despite no such event having occurred publicly or being established by credible evidence. Likewise, the reference to Trump supposedly saying the United States would be “taking over Cuba” is offered without context, quotation details, or clarification as to whether the remark was literal, rhetorical, or taken from a broader discussion. Serious allegations involving Cuban drone capabilities and military intentions are also introduced without sourcing, leaving readers unable to distinguish intelligence reporting from conjecture.
The article further undermines its credibility through selective historical framing and internal inconsistency. While correctly acknowledging that the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown violated international law, it immediately pivots into a broader accusation of American hypocrisy without demonstrating how current legal action against Raúl Castro is illegitimate or politically manufactured. Its portrayal of early twentieth-century Cuba as merely emerging from “American military occupation” omits the broader historical context of the Spanish-American War and Cuba’s transition to independence, reducing a complex history into an ideologically convenient narrative. More broadly, you repeatedly assume motives that are never proven: that indictments are designed to “rationalize” intervention, that military action is being prepared, and that Cuban-American officials are predisposed to support aggression. The result is less a disciplined analysis than an advocacy piece driven by insinuation, where inflammatory tone and speculative leaps overwhelm factual rigor.
Stop right there. No one doubts that the indictment of Raul Castro is nothing more than a ploy to do to Cuba what Trump did to Venezuela. The trouble with your ilk is you pick and choose from history meanings and events that suit your narrative (but your narrative is false). There is nothing wrong with Mr Bruce's narrative except that it stops short of indicting the criminal enterprise of Yanqui Imperialism.
Oh, Tedders. Sure Mr Bruce is a big boy and can fight his own battles without any assistance from you. But since you decided to wade into this conversation, let me respond to your unsupported contentions one by one. Unlike yourself, I will provide some evidence.
You’re entitled to oppose U.S. policy toward Cuba and to criticize what you call “Yanqui imperialism,” but dismissing the indictment outright as a mere “ploy” ignores the actual facts of the case. The charges against Raúl Castro are tied to the 1996 shootdown of two unarmed civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an incident that killed four men, including three U.S. citizens. The International Civil Aviation Organization concluded the planes were shot down in international airspace, not over Cuban territory as Havana claimed. That incident was internationally condemned at the time, including by governments that were hardly aligned with Washington’s hardline Cuba policy.
You also accuse others of “picking and choosing history,” but history cuts both ways. Yes, the United States has a long and often troubling record in Latin America — coups, sanctions, covert operations, and support for authoritarian regimes are all legitimate subjects for criticism. But acknowledging that history does not magically erase the Cuban government’s own actions or place its leaders beyond accountability. One can oppose U.S. interventionism while also recognizing that shooting down civilian aircraft and killing noncombatants is indefensible. Those are not mutually exclusive positions.
The argument also falls into a familiar rhetorical trap: if the United States prosecutes a foreign leader, then the prosecution must automatically be illegitimate because the U.S. itself has committed wrongs. That is not a legal or moral defense; it is whataboutism. If a government commits an unlawful act, the fact that another government has also committed unlawful acts does not negate responsibility. By that logic, no state actor anywhere could ever be held accountable.
And finally, calling critics “your ilk” does not strengthen the argument. It substitutes ideological labeling for evidence. There is a serious debate to be had about whether the timing of this indictment is politically motivated, especially given the Trump administration’s broader pressure campaign against Cuba and comparisons being made to Venezuela. Even mainstream reporting has acknowledged that context. But political timing and legal merit are not the same thing. A prosecution can be politically useful and still rest on a real event involving real deaths and longstanding evidence.
Trump has concluded he can replace lack of competence with $ power of the Presidency. His money impressed enough voters to choose him so competency no longer matters. He creates his own narrative. There are educated leaders in our military (McRaven, Petraeus, Mad Dog Maddox ,several others) who have courage and experience to make better decisions on a world stage. America is lacking a courageous visionary who wants the job or the accompanying abuse of politics. America must admit we are victims of the system we created and Washington, Franklin, Adams, or Patrick Henry cannot rescue us. If I were not 83 yo I would attempt to run for office. I would love to vote for a proven leader.
Hasn't the statute of limitations run out on that? Cuba is allowed to defend itself.
Good luck with that