On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Louis Proyect wrote:
The reason that the government has been so spineless with respect to the
kidnappers is that it is ambivalent about their role in American society.
I would agree about this in part. This view is amendable at any moment.
It needs the Miami gusanos as much as US capitalism needed (and needs) the
KKK.
Yes, but it also needed Noriega and Saddam Hussein. My sense is that in
negotiations with the Cuban exiles the INS is ambivalent, but also trying
to get the Cubans to recognise that they are expendable, just like
Noriega, Marcos...The amount of talk on TV and in the press in th last
week about normalization of US-Cuba relations as a final result of this
whole 'drama' has increased noticeably. On the other hand, that
ambivalence you note is also holding the INS back from taking any decisive
action against the defeated Batista leftovers in Miami.
BTW, the more I watch this 'drama' on TV, OJ car stuck in freeway traffic
jam shots and all, I am reminded of Trotsky's *History of the Russian
Revolution*, the discussion of the often seemingly illogical actions of
the Csar's obliviousness to the reality that his corrupt dynasty was
falling anyday. Sometimes the Miami Cubans are acting like this, unaware
of the shifts that have occurred in the ground rules of US-Cuba relations
and the implications that has on their real loss of needed support to take
back power. They are a defeated class and the Elian affair demonstrates
this all too clearly.
Steve
Instruments of terror such as these can be used to intimidate
liberation movements overseas or within our borders. It is interesting to
compare FBI collusion with the Klan murderers and CIA support for the
criminals who have set off bombs on Cuban civilian airliners, among other
things. The criminals are never apprehended for some odd reason.
Louis Proyect
(The Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org)
