Enough Smirking Hypocrisy

Eoghan O'Suilleabhain

 

George Jr. Bush, the latest recipient of the undemocratic American Electoral College award, was recently quoted in a news article by Reporter Matthew Engel (May 21st, 2002 issue of The Guardian at page 12) as saying "...normal relations (with Castro's Cuba) would be impossible until Havana introduced proper democratic reforms", otherwise according to Bush the Lesser: "Well-intentioned ideas about trade will merely prop up this
dictator, enrich his cronies and enhance the totalitarian regime."

Oh really? Then why is the US trading and having normal relations with Communist China? Has Beijing introduced proper democratic reforms? And why did the previous Reagan & Bush Sr. Administrations, who (like Dick "Screw Nelson Mandela" Cheney) are now part of Bush Jr.'s team, vehemently defy the world trade embargo of Apartheid South Africa and instead insist upon implementing a policy they liked to call "constructive engagement" (sung to their tune of "We are going to play Sun City")?

Such smirking hypocrisy has to be reproached even at the risk of appearing to defend one party politics in Castro's Cuba because previous American (Republican & Democratic) Governments have been fans of one party and one person politics in among other places Batista's Cuba, Somoza's Nicaragua, The Shah's Iran, Pinochet's Chile, Saud's Arabia, Sukarno's Indonesia, Marcos's Philippines, Duvalier's Haiti, Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, Rios-Mont's Guatemala, & Mobutu's Zaire. So why was this rogue's gallery spared democratic pre-conditions for American trade but not Castro's Cuba? And how were the Communist regimes of Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union or Mao Zedong's China or Nikolai Cecescu's Romania or Josef Tito's Yugoslavia anymore or less respectful of private property or free trade unions than Castro's Cuba? Yet the US traded with these commies too!

The only consistency in American Foreign Policy is the ease with which various influential factions, corporate or otherwise, can control it. Whether it's United Fruit in Guatemala, Anti-Castro Cubans in Miami or Anti-Palestinian Zionists in New York --- the tail can wag the dog because the business of the US State Department, like any good whore-house, just goes to the highest bidder.