Cuba: A Thug Story
Minette Marrin writes for the Times of London on the American suckups for Cuba, who "share with the rest of us a love of the wonderful Cuban band the Buena Vista Social Club":

Perhaps they are not aware that the band had been silenced nearly 40 years earlier. When, soon after the revolution in 1959, the new government decided to close down cultural and social centres and put countless musicians and artists out of work, the Buena Vista Social Club band was closed down too, until brought back together again in the musicians' old age - by westerners.

It is a rule of thumb that anyone given to praising Cuba under Castro is a person of poor judgment. This has nothing to do with how much or how little Castro achieved; it has to do with what is necessary for good judgment. An essential part of good judgment is a respect for facts and, in the absence of many facts, a willingness to suspend judgment. It is an intellectual and a moral mistake to become cheerleaders in ignorance. It is the mark of a useful idiot, like those famous western cheerleaders for the communist USSR who were secretly despised by the Soviet leaders.

Useful idiots have always been a mystery to me. When I was an undergraduate in the late 1960s, student radicals would always proudly announce that although socialism might have failed in the USSR - it was never properly tried, they claimed - it worked in the People's Republic of China. Then I went to live for several years in Hong Kong, off the coast of mainland China, and began to learn a few facts. It wasn't easy to learn much, as China was a closed and paranoid society, difficult to visit and almost impossible for the Chinese to leave. But I couldn't help noticing that almost every day bodies were washed up, mauled by sharks, of people who were prepared to brave the shark-infested waters, tied to air beds because they could not swim, in their desperate longing to escape the repression of communist China. This was in the early 1970s in the years following the horrors of the cultural revolution.

None of this stopped useful idiots, such as Jane Fonda and many even more distinguished western commentators, from coming through Hong Kong, on their way to cheerleaders' tours of China, and announcing that China was a light unto the nations. They were absolutely deaf to any argument, including the knockdown and objective argument that the People's Republic made it difficult to know any facts. There wasn't any information.

When I went to China in 1974 we were spied on and saw nothing that was not planned, and this surveillance continued for years. When Mao Tse-tung died in 1976, large numbers of professional western "China-watchers" in Hong Kong admitted privately that they had no idea who Deng Xiaoping (his successor) was. The Chinese government's statistics - and I edited for a while something called the China Trade Report - were a joke.

Yet these unquantifiable triumphs of Maoist China were solemnly quoted by people who should have known better. China's economic triumphs were boasted among the bien pensants; they refused to discuss why other cultures in Asia, such as Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Thailand, had done much better without communism. And why didn't the cheerleaders listen to the stories of the hundreds of thousands of people in Hong Kong who had escaped from China? Coming home for holidays I found my former student friends - now in television and academe - deaf to all evidence against Maoism.

Why are people so wilfully credulous? It is one of life's many mysteries but it's clearly deeply rooted in human nature. Even Gordon Brown, even now, has his supporters, who still believe in his masterful handling of our economy. Some people seem to need heroes and fantasies so badly that they are prepared to disregard not just the evidence but also the lack of it. My new year's resolution for myself and for everybody else is to keep asking what the evidence is. And the retort to people who can't or won't produce any is: Cuba.

Speaking of "useful idiots," here's one from Humberto Fontova, going out to all you Che-lovers out there: Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.

Here's a review of the book by a Chinese guy named Joe on Amazon:

Dear Humberto,

Sorry I didn't buy your new book. Yesterday I read about half of of it sitting in the coffee shop of my local bookstore. Cheapness was instilled in me during my formative years by my chinese parents. Fortunately, their political leanings were not and I learned to read, think, and analyze for myself.

Thank You for writing the book! Even though it's about Che and Cuba, it means a lot to me as well--a Chinese-American. Any book against one dictator is a book against ALL dictators. I imagine you must feel the same rage seeing a Che T-shirt as I do seeing a Mao T-shirt. It bothers me that many people do not think twice about wearing either T shirt, but if somebody wore a T-shirt with the visage of Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden, or that Virginia Tech guy it'd be all over the news.

I don't want to be a "woe is me I'm a minority/person of color", but unfortunately part of me does feel when it's whites killing whites (ie Hitler, Stalin) then those dictators are evil. When it comes to "minority" dictators, those guys are suave, cute, cuddly, or part of "other people's" cultures. What? Dictators are dictators regardless of country, race, culture, or faith.

Keep up the good work! You've given me courage now to voice my opinion. When I see someone wearing a Mao (and Che) T-shirt I'll be sure to set them straight. Those images are just as offensive as the Confederate flag or a Nazi symbol.

I think the guy's onto something about people romancing the "exotic."

And a question for all of you: What do you think should be the U.S. position on the Cuban embargo? Here's Cato's take on it (much more at the link):

Economic sanctions have not been responsible for the region-wide shift toward liberalization, however. They have, in fact, failed to bring about democratic regimes anywhere in the hemisphere, and Cuba has been no exception. Indeed, Cuba is the one country in the hemisphere against which the U.S. government has persistently and actively used a full economic embargo as its main policy tool in an attempt to compel a democratic transformation.

The failure of sanctions against Cuba should come as no surprise since sanctions, however politically popular, are notorious for their unintended consequences--harming those they are meant to help. In Cuba, Fidel Castro is the last person to feel the pain caused by the U.S. measures. If sanctions failed to dislodge the military regime in Haiti, the poorest and most vulnerable country in the region, it is difficult to believe that they could be successful in Cuba.

UPDATE: Matt Welch (editor-in-chief of reason mag) is nothing if not responsive. When I e-mailed him after Crid mentioned in the comments below that we could use a piece by Welch on Cuba, Matt wrote back:

Hi Amy!

Here's a recent roundup of Cuba-related stuff we've done, including an interview w/ Jeff Flake about why the embargo must end: http://www.reason.com/blog/show/130815.html

I've written a few that touch on parts of the issue:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/28439.html
http://www.reason.com/news/show/33141.html

can't find the rest, but they're there somewhere...

And now he has my heads up that we'd like a piece by him on the blockade specifically. Here's hopin'...