Discussion for article #231279
Oh my Lord, the right is going to split a gut over this one! We should see them spontaneously passing out all over Washington and mass exoduses to Idaho and NH. Love it.
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What’s the opposite of lame? Able Duck?
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“We fully expect that we’ll continue to have strong differences, particularly on democracy and human rights”.
Ha Ha. Yeah but maybe now they’ll forgive us for running Black Site torture chambers in their country. Oh wait we paid them to do that.
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What’s the opposite of lame duck?
Honey Badger.
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Watch the heads of all the Gusanos in Miami explode, followed by the rest of the Moron Party, er, I mean the Republicans.
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Agile Duck?
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I learned a useful new word today. Thanks.
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Actually, closing Guantanamo and giving it back to the Cubans would be the icing on the cake.
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It’s about fucking time!
Ever other nation has full relations with Cuba but the USA.
It’s just plain STUPID what we have been doing (at the behest of Old Cuban Mobsters in Miami.)
Now that they have all pretty much died off it’s LONG past time to do this.
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Is this 3-D chess again? Why did Obama wait on this until after Congress was entirely in Republican hands? To make Republicans the face of continuing a 50-year-old embargo against an Hispanic country… one that didn’t work?
Democrats already handily win South Florida, so I’m unclear on what the big gain is here.
We pay them good money for that lease. No reason to lose an outpost in the Caribbean just because Bush decided that it was a good place to house prisoners without a trial.
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Marco Rubio already has “the vapors” over this and is clutching at his pearls as we write.
Expect Ted “Hey, what about ME!” Cruz to chime in, along with the usual dumb-shits in the Tea Party: Bachmann, King, Gohmert, etc.
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Maybe it’s the right thing to do
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What?! But isolation was working so well. If we could just hold out fifty more years, I think we’ll have them right where we want them.
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Thanks, Obama. Just when we were within 30 or 40 years of finally bringing Castro to his knees!
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Oh noes!! What Would Saint Ronnie Do? (Ans: NOTHING!)
That’s right, gang, the POTUS is a leader, and he is leading!
Cuban cigar, anyone?
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Good lord - how many US presidents came and went and Fidel Castro was STILL in power??
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Well, it’s a remnant from a sordid colonial past. From Wikipedia:
¨In 1934 the Avery Porko Treaty reaffirming the lease granted Cuba and its trading partners free access through the bay, modified the lease payment from $2,000 in U.S. gold coins per year to the 1934 equivalent value of $4,085 in U.S. dollars, and made the lease permanent unless both governments agreed to break it or until the U.S. abandoned the base property.[8][not in citation given]
After the Cuban Revolution, Dwight D. Eisenhower insisted the status of the base remained unchanged, despite Fidel Castro’s objections. Since then, the Cuban government has cashed only one of the rent checks from the U.S. government, and even then only because of “confusion” in the early days of the leftist revolution, according to Castro. The remaining un-cashed checks made out to “Treasurer General of the Republic” (a title that ceased to exist after the revolution) are kept in Castro’s office stuffed into a desk drawer.[9]
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas has argued that the 1903 lease agreement was imposed on Cuba under duress and was an treaty between unequals, no longer compatible with modern international law, and voidable ex nunc. He makes six suggestions for a peaceful settlement, including following the procedure outlined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.[10]¨
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I am not American so my views are colored by that fact.
But America does not pay Cuba good money for Guantanamo. The amount of money paid by the American government for the lease is laughable. Furthermore that lease was negotiated by Cuban’s first president under the duress of having American soldiers stationed in his country. The treaty that resulted in the lease gave America almost everything it wanted in that lease with little consideration for the Cuban people’s best interests. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban–American_Treaty
I am thrilled with today’s announcement and would love for Guantanamo to be transferred back to the Cuban people. But I dont expect Obama or any US president to do that for the foreseeable future.
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