Chimp Records wrote:US can't normalize it right now. They should just try invading Cuba again. Cold War's over. The Russians aren't in Cuba to make something like the Bay of Pigs or a missile crisis to happen again. I don't care about those anti-war liberals. They can all burn in hell for all I care. It's sad, but war seems to be the only answer to solve things nowadays.
OK. There is a basic law in physics. It's called Newton's Third Law of Motion. "For every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction."
To put this into terms you will hopefully understand, when you do something, something else happens back. When you push a swing, it goes forward. And then it swings backwards. And forward again. And so on. Exciting, no?
Now lets move into the realm that you are talking about, the sphere of international relations and geopolitics. Things are complex. Because we aren't actually dealing with abstract concepts, at the end of the day you are talking about acts which could involve actual human beings actually dying. Because real-life is a
little bit different from video games: we only get one life. Die and that is it, in a nutshell. Ending the life of even one person is quite a big deal, which is why murder tends to be dealt with either life imprisonment or the death penalty. It's one of those really big taboos that kind of pervades throughout every single country & culture in the world: life is sacred.
OK, so now I've tried explai some of the basic facts of life for you. So try this. "US can't normalize it [relations] now" says you. Says I: "Why not?" OK, dwell on that for a while and then answer me.
"They should just try invading Cuba again." This is the point where I found it hard to take you seriously. In that I laughed. Loudly. But you seem pretty ignorant of reality so I guess it would be unfair of me to just point and laugh at the ignorant, so I'll try make you think a little about what you've said. Why exactly would the United States of America invade Cuba? Generally in the past 1000 years or so, before going to war with another state there tends to be a casss belli. It's a Latin phrase that works out as the case for war, essentially it means the justification for going to war. Eg in 1990 the United States casus belli against Iraq was that they invaded a friendly nation, Kuwait, and so they declared war on Iraq to defend their ally. In 2003, the Coalition of the Willing invaded Iraq with the justification of stopping Iraq from stockpiling large amounts of WMDs that they could then sell on to Islamic fundamentalists (this obviously ignores the sectarian conflicts within Islam, ie the relatively secular Ba'ath Party and the militant Islamists of Al Qaeda who had little love lost between them). This changed after time to, at various points in time, installing a democratic regime, and stopping terrorism in Iraq. And then there was the unsaid justification of protecting or taking control of the Iraqi oil fields.
I fail to see where the casus belli is for Cuba. Introducing democracy? Well, in theory, but really they are 10 years too late. Essentially since Fidel Castro stepped down there has been a slow and gradual liberalisation of Cuba, & I imagine in a few years time (a decade or so), Cuba will be heading the same sort of direction as China, a mix of laizee-faire economics and one-party state. The worst of both worlds (capitalist & socialist respectively) as I like to call it. It could even end up going the root that the Soviet Union took, with a period of perestroika before you have genuine free elections. But yeah, I'm fascinated as to what the justification for going to war with Cuba is right now. The political justification is feeble at best, there will be no great economic rewards, and it will have horrendous harm towards relations with many other Latin American nations.
That doesn't even begin to deal with the cold-hard fact that for the unrivalled military might of the United States armed forces, a large part their forces are the best in the world is because they are a volunteer service. And the down-side with a volunteer military is numbers. With troops stationed in Iraq, Afgahnistan and bugger knows where else in the globe right now, the US military is at stretching point, especially the Army. They just do not have the numbers to effectively deal with another conflict. They could bring back conscription, but then the worlds greatest and most advanced army was beaten the last time it's troops fought a war as a conscript army.
I don't think they would lose in Cuba. But in this age of the 24 hour news cycle I don't think they would actually "win" either, the numbers of dead soldiers would be far too high to be acceptable to the American public.
