The Cuban-American singer Christina Milian appeared on Brooke Baldwin's CNN show to share her reaction to President Obama's opening of relations with Cuba after fifty-five years of embargo and vitriol.  With the singer was her Cuban mother, who came to the United States as a girl when Fidel Castro came to power.  Christina Milian is thirty-three.  She spoke of the excitement she feels about her young daughter being able to visit the "motherland."  Christina's mother is also excited that things have suddenly changed. 
     Among Cuban-Americans there's a generational difference of views regarding Cuba.  Florida's concentrated Cuban population since the 1959 revolution includes old, middle-aged, and young.  The old tend to hold on to a fifty-five year old bitterness for the Brothers Castro regime.  The hatred and pain expressed by them on this subject rivals Israelis' vindictiveness towards Palestinians.  In U.S. foreign policy, Cuba is to the U.S. what the Gaza Strip is to Israel.  Relentless propaganda, economic pressure, and overall shittiness practiced by U.S. power players against ordinary Cubans who have to deal directly with the embargo is equal in immorality to U.S.-supported policy towards Israel squeezing the Palestinians and kicking the shit out of them militarily every few years. 
     Obama, to his credit, has lowered the heat on this chronic and stupid Cuban situation.  Some politicians on the right, like Florida's Marco Rubio, condemn the move.  There's a feeling Obama has appeased a left-wing dictator (described by one pundit on MSNBC as a Stalinist--absurd, considering how many millions of his own people Stalin killed).  Obama should've waited, the gripe goes, for Fidel and Raul Castro to either step down or die.
     That Obama did this while Cuba has a somewhat stable government (whatever you think of it) shows that our President wasn't willing to try to use American influence (economic especially) on an unstable future Cuba without the Castros.  Former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz grossly underestimated the financial cost of the Iraq War, concluding that Iraq's oil production would be able to foot the bill.  He failed to recognize the horrendous difficulty of attempting to put a nation in chaos
on a smooth course. 
     Obama sided with the idea that following the same old practices with Cuba (satisfactory to the bitter old guard of Cuban exiles) was not the way to go anymore.  How many times can a superpower punish a small country, and why the punishment?
     In the 1950's, Fidel Castro came across as a pro-U.S. rebel.  Cuba's leader, Fulgencio Batista, one of the many corrupt pieces of shit U.S. foreign policymakers have supported over the past century, ran a country friendly to the American Mafia, with its Havana casinos.  Castro's treacherous switch to the red side must've inspired much of the venom against him over the years.  Militant Anti-Castro Cuban exiles stirred up trouble in the early 1960's, especially after the failed attempt to retake Cuba, known as the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President Kennedy decided to not provide air cover for the invaders.  Kennedy's murder in Dallas probably had something to do with Cuba.
     Contrasting this grim stuff, I'm reminded again of the singer Christina Milian in the CNN interview.  Her perspective to the opening of relations between the U.S. and Cuba is one of beauty and family.  She and her daughter get to meet cousins they've never seen, all of them separated by political decisions made by ambitious and, perhaps, ultimately foolish men.  In the interview she spoke of Cuba's beauty, the warmth of the people, the loveliness of the beaches, the wonderful food and vibrant music.  She gets to bring her little daughter there and experience what some hard cases in America call a terrible mistake, but what Christina Milian calls life.

                                                                               Vic Neptune