Lie Down With Dogs
By Mitch Berg
Mona Charen takes down the Congressional Black [Liberal] Caucus’ trip to Havana.
It’s a long, detailed beat-down, full of juxtapositions like…:
In finest useful-idiot fashion, Representative Rush said this of 77-year-old Raul Castro, who has served Fidel throughout the 50-year totalitarian siege of the island: “I think that what really surprised me, but also endeared me to him,” he told the Los Angeles Times, “was his keen sense of humor, his sense of history and his basic human qualities. I intend to do everything that I can when we get back to the States to make sure that normalization with our relationship with Cuba is given proper consideration both within the House of Representatives and the neighborhoods of America.”
Here’s the Black Book of Communism again on treatment of prisoners in Cuba:
The violence of the prison regime affected both political prisoners and common criminals. Violence began with the interrogations conducted by the Departamento Tecnico de Investigaciones (DTI). The DTI used solitary confinement and played on the phobias of the detainees: one woman who was afraid of insects was locked in a cell infested with cockroaches. The DTI also used physical violence. Prisoners were forced to climb a staircase wearing shoes filled with lead and were then thrown back down the stairs. Psychological torture was also used, often observed by a medical team. . . . The children of detainees were banned from higher education, and spouses were often fired from their jobs.
Please, Democrats. Keep these hamsters out front. Thanks.
April 10th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
It’s funny (or maybe sad) that these “African-Americans” went to the aparthied state of Cuba, meet with the white surpremist leader, to talk about how bad the US is.
Say Democrats, see any Afro-Cubans staying at that nice hotel you were at?
April 10th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I am appalled at the lack of knowledge of history demonstrated by these Black Caucus members.
Unfortunately, we will probably NOT see the end of the current regime until both of the Castro brothers die of old age. Which, given their respective years and health, may be sooner than later. However later, I hope we do not alter the status quo until they are gone.
Wouldn’t be a bad idea to use this visit to address the problems that we make for ourselves when the US government suppports foreign hugely corrupt regimes, leading to revolutions and coups that are subsequently dangerous to our own national security.
April 10th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Useful Idiots.
I wonder what AssClown and Peev have to say about this?
April 10th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Congressional Black Caucus visits largest plantation in Western Hemisphere, praises plantation owner.
Democrats are so sensitive.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
I have to say that both parties have their crosses to bear. While I recognize the Congressional Black Caucus sometimes does stupid things (to wit – this) people like you K-Rod, don’t grasp that you are the hamsters of the right.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
So things are the same on either side of the Gitmo fence.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Peev, the Castro regime has just taken liberalism to its logical conclusion. All institutions are controlled by the state to ensure they follow political directives, the state decides how much each job should pay based on ‘fairness’, everyone gets the same healthcare, nobody is allowed to own much more than anybody else.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
RickDFL – please tell me that comment was tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek. You’re not really comparing the “citizens” of Cuba to the cuddly folks behind the wire at Gitmo – are you?
Useful idiot anyone ???
April 10th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
So things are the same on either side of the Gitmo fence.
Except that American leftists are working to get the people inside the fence released, while actively preventing the Cuban people from finding freedom.
Other than that? No difference at all.
April 10th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
Except that most Cubans are only guilty of being born in Cuba, whereas most if not all those imprisonned in Gitmo are guilty of terrorism or war crimes.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:37 am
And the fine fellows inside Gitmo eat a lot better than Castro’s slaves.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I vivdly remember three older folks, friends of my parents when I was a young child, who were Protestant missionaries working for a charity that had locations in the Caribbean, including Cuba. When they were in town periodically from the Carib, visiting their family here, they would come to dinner. Always a big event at our house; my parents were deeply fond of them in addition to their being clients of my father.
The man was some kind of doctor, his wife taught school, and the sister of one of them (I was never clear which) was some kind of consultant on sanitation issues and clean water. They had been in Cuba during the Batista years, and left during the Castro take over. They were part of a lecture circuit on poverty in the Carib in general, and the revolution in Cuba in particular.
I remember very well the slide show pictures of group executions, and the even more gruesome pics of people who had been imprisoned, tortured, and then executed. I will never appreciate Che Guevara as some kind of hero after seeing those pictures. It was one of several things I remember from my childhood that caused me to have strong feelings about violence to some citizens from their fellow citizens. It saddens me to think that we have people in our government, regardless of their political persuasion, who have forgotten or never even knew about the horrors of Castro’s repression after his revolution took power. Not that the previous regime was better either.
I hope that someone reminds ALL of them. Failing to remember or know history dooms us to repitition.
Cuba, Gitmo; the island has seen a hugely disproportionate amount of brutality in its history.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:42 pm
Hey Dog, for a bit of entertainment may I recommend Cuba Libre by my all-time favorite writer Elmore Leonard? It was at the end of his western period, and takes place at the outbreak of the Spanish-American war. It does not justify what happened 50 years later, but it does paint a vivid picture of Cuba under the Dons.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
ewaters925:
“You’re not really comparing the “citizens” of Cuba to the cuddly folks behind the wire at Gitmo”.
In so far as I am saying they are both tortured.
Mitch:
“while actively preventing the Cuban people from finding freedom”. Your policy has been tried for almost 50 years. It has left the people of Cuba poor and unfree. We want a different policy that will bring them freedom and wealth.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
jpmn:
“most if not all those imprisonned in Gitmo are guilty of terrorism or war crimes”
If they were guilty they would have been tried and convicted.
April 11th, 2009 at 6:55 pm
It has left the people of Cuba poor and unfree.
Um, no Ricky. That would be the communist slavemaster Castro. Do you ever have trouble getting the correct shoes on your feet? Right and left?
April 11th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Prisoners of war can not be tried or convicted, or subjected to the Justice system in any way. If they’re covered by the Geneva convention (and they are not), they are POWs.
They are not subject to the US justice system (those that were captured overseas engaged in terrorism against the US). They are not subject to the Geneva convention, since they are neither uniformed soldiers of a sovereign nation nor un-uniformed partisans in their own country.
Military tribunals are all they’re entitled to, and that’s ‘cuz we’re charitable. International law entitles them to no more, and requires a lot less.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
In so far as I am saying they are both tortured.
As usual, the left strips existing context so they apply their own meaning.
1)The Cuban people have done nothing to deserve being the prison-state of Cuba.
2)The inmates at Guantanamo were taken under conditions where the maxim ‘innocent until proven guilty’ does not apply and never has.
3)Who in Guantanamo has been ‘tortured’? Sheik Khalid Muhamad was supposed to have been waterboarded. He is a terrorist and mass murderer. If you really want to compare his case with the plight of human rights advocates in Cuba, please do so.
April 11th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Look, RickDFL — I don’t if you have absorbed left wing ideology, or if you merely don’t care if you offend.
But if I was in prison, innocent of the crime I was accused of, and some reformer interviewed me, and afterwards said “The conditions you are held are inhuman. Regular beatings, separation from your family, no control over your own existence — just like that murderer over there” I’d think about what he said for awhile & then sock him in the nose.
April 12th, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Not every black liberal is on board with the CBC. Here’s Ta-Nehisi Coates calling out the CBC.
April 13th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Mitch:
“Prisoners of war can not be tried or convicted, or subjected to the Justice system in any way.”
The Geneva convention expressly says otherwise.
“A prisoner of war shall be subject to the laws, regulations and orders in force in the armed forces of the Detaining Power; the Detaining Power shall be justified in taking judicial or disciplinary measures in respect of any offence committed by a prisoner of war against such laws, regulations or orders.”
and
“A prisoner of war shall be tried only by a military court, unless the existing laws of the Detaining Power expressly permit the civil courts to try a member of the armed forces of the Detaining Power in respect of the particular offence alleged to have been committed by the prisoner of war.”