Yup, He Really Said That
When Stephen Harper was asked if he was going to be making a stop in Cuba on his South American/Caribbean tour he said he would not and cited Canadian “concerns about certain aspects of governance and human rights in Cuba.”
Then what the heck was he doing in Columbia? Are not right wing death squads worthy of Canadian “concerns” these days?
When I made the point over at Far and Wide that this kind of thing revealed Harper’s ideological bias (”left==bad, right==good”, ignoring the other dimension for now), rather than any principle, Olaf tried to tell me I was being to simplistic.
Yet here is more evidence of just that. Cuba and China are chided because they are “communist” and therefore left-wing, while supposedly democratic and non-communist countries like Columbia are cotled, even when their human rights abuses are arguably and provably worse.
It harkens back to the old cold war mentality of ’sure he’s a bastard, but he’s our bastard’ mentality that brought thugs like Saddam, Samosa, the Shah and Idi Amin to power…it was wrong then and its wrong now.
Whooee! Harper was yammerin’ about a “third way” an’ how we’re such a shinin’ example of independence even though we’re huggin’ the 49th.
He coulda demonstrated that independence quite nicely by payin’ a visit to Fidel. Sure, the Merkans’d growse a bit but we already got relations with Cuba an’ we ain’t forbidden to go there like most Merkans. That’d be the sorta move that might convince Steve’s new buddyboy from Colombia that he ain’t just a bootlicker fer Dubya.
I don’t really think he needs to be goin’ around kissin’ ass in dictatorville an’ spoutin’ horsepuckey on human rights.
JB
I wonder if his not going to Cuba actually has to do with the fact that such a visit would then leave him vulnerable to arrest if he ever goes to the USA, afterward. And while it might not happen, it could, if some over-zealous border guard wants to embarrass the hell out of both countries. At the very least, it would put Dubya in an interesting position…
Damn, but why doesn’t he go to Cuba?
Perhaps there are few trade prospects with Cuba worth pursuing. He can’t visit every country, and Cuba is in a political climate of difficulty all their own. Certainly it is better to avoid Cuba and maintain good relations with the U.S. than to visit Castro and listen to Marxist nonsense 40 years out of date.