Bernie has an important point to make regarding Cuba. I hope he makes it strongly

[Tom Rinaldo]

Bernie has been opposing U.S. adventurist military interventions for his entire career. It constitutes an unbroken consistent stance over multiple decades and multiple U.S. Administrations. Those comments of his from the 80's were made within the context of Reagan's thinly veiled clandestine military support for the Contras in Nicaragua. Bernie had a point to make, and it was as important then as it is now. It is that the U.S., through a combination of military might and wishful thinking, can not impose regimes to our liking on the people of other nations.

The example he used regarding Castro, and he used it in his full interview, was that it was arrogant and foolish to have believed that the entire Cuban people were going to rise up and overthrow Castro when the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred. They didn't, and it is as important to recognize the reasons for that failed military policy objective then as it is to recognize the failure of the U.S. military policy objective behind Bush/Cheney's invasion of Iraq. Cheney, in particular, promised that a U.S. invasion of Iraq would be a short lived cake walk, with the mass of Iraq's citizens waving American flags and cheering us on as "Liberators". They didn't. Just like the people of Nicaragua did not openly embrace the Contra forces as their liberators either and quickly overthrow the Sandinistas, just because Reagan wanted them to.

Circumstances throughout much of the world where people are not free to Democratically choose their own governments are complex. Castro may have been brutal, but he overthrew an at least equally brutal right wing dictator in Batista. Ortega's government was no ideal bastion of democracy and civil rights, but he overthrew a brutal right wing dictator in Somoza. Many people suffered horribly under Castro, and many people suffered horribly under Batista before him. When true freedom is not an option many people chose to support one of their lesser options, which of two sides is more likely to ensure that their own families are fed, educated and housed?

America has zilch credibility for supporting the democratic aspirations of the people of other nations around the world. We helped overthrow a democratically elected government in Guatemala which has been followed by decades of chaos. We backed a coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran and subsequently helped install the Shah, which led us down a road of conflict that continues today. We supported the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile, which led to the horror of the tens of thousands of "disappeared".

Even today, Trump has wet dreams of "regime change in Iran" as we hover on the knife's edge of military conflict with that nation. We need to recognize that given no viable "good choice", and unfortunately that is true for the people in dozens of nations around the world today, they will give their support instead to the perceived "lesser evil" choice, the one that will give them at least the greatest degree of basic economic survival assurance. Sometimes that will be a right wing dictator. Sometimes that will be a left wing dictator. But it usually isn't whoever Washington DC wants to install for them through direct or indirect military means. Our track record is pretty damn poor in that regard. THAT is the point that Sanders has to make. He was right then, and he is right now

[DanTex]

1. K&R. Great post giving background to all the knee-jerk responses.

[Tom Rinaldo]

24. Many around here are too attached to their anti-Bernie talking points

to seriously consider what the OP is about. Yet we have complete consensus that it was a huge mistake to go into Iraq, and beyond foolish to believe our troops would be treated as heroes for doing so.

[jalan48]

2. K & R

[cannabis_flower]

3. Exactly

I had a teacher in middle school who told us that even though the communist government in the USSR was a authoritarian regime, the people supported it because they were so much better off than they were as serfs under the Tsarist regime.

[Perseus]

4. There are cases when the USA MUST act, when military intervention is the only recourse.

For example, Venezuela.

Venezuela is a very strategic country for the USA and the World. Its geographic location makes it ideal, the fact that it has incredible oil reserves and other natural resources also makes it a very important country in the hemisphere. Venezuela has also proven to have a high number of well prepared people who can and have made great contributions to mankind.

Venezuela has been taken by the Cuban regime, and now Putin is sending troops, weapons and wants Venezuela as a base. This is very dangerous, not only for the USA but for all America (Norths, Central & South), and of course to the entire World.

Anyone who doubts that Putin wants to be talked about, written about as "Vladimir The Great", trying to follow in "Peter The Great" is not following Putin. He wants to be "Great" and for that he must conquer the USA, a goal he is slowly achieving through trump.

Now, having said that, if Sanders doubts that Venezuela should not be saved through military intervention for his allergy towards military intervention then we have a huge problem. This is not about Venezuela only, this is about the American continent and the World because to allow Putin to take charge of a country like Venezuela is to hand the World to Putin who will have trump in power for as long as he needs him.

I need to add this to your comment "Circumstances throughout much of the world where people are not free to Democratically choose their own governments are complex."

In the case of Venezuela it is not complex, it is actually very easy. The Chavez regime, and now Maduro bought the military, the high level military have also become multi-millionaires, some of them may have reached the billionaire level and they will not allow the citizens to bring the regime down because they would fall with it. When you have the military at your side it is very difficult for regular unarmed citizens to fight back, and that is why we must be very weary in the USA of all the money trump is giving to the military, he is trying to buy them, and at this point I don't believe in patriotism from the high ranking, Flynn and Petreus as exhibit "A".

[uponit7771]

5. Sanders praised the person Castro ... I don't do dictators

[uponit7771]

9. WOW ... so he's done this before?!

[Perseus]

11. Many people fail to see that all those you list are the same, some hide behind "communism" and some

don't, they are just plain evil dictators, but at the end of the day they are all the same.

In that comment that is attributed to Sanders, I don't see a special message that he is pro-Castro, or pro-Communism, where do you see that? And I won't try to define what Sanders meant, I could come up with so many assumptions that it would be ludicrous.

The same that the GOP and Evangelists to name a couple, hide behind the flag and religion to support an unpatriotic, anti-religion, amoral creature like trump, that is what "communists" and dictators do. Communism and Dictatorship are one and the same. Socialism is just a rhetoric use to recruit people to later subject them to communism/dictatorship.

And lets be real, Sanders does not, and has not ever expressed a wanting to take the USA into regimes such as the one in Cuba or anywhere else where communism/dictatorship is the regime, he talks constantly about Denmark and other Scandinavian countries with a "Democratic Social" government where people are free from the anxieties of Healthcare, Education, abuse of power, abuse of corporations, where capitalism is the norm, but it is wisely regulated.

We must recognize that our country is highly ignorant when it comes to politics, we seem to be very naive in believing the TV, the internet, religious cults (all religion is a cult) and the many corrupt politicians, so we tend to believe without doing our due diligence to find out if its true or not. Lies should be punished, misinformation should be punished, there has to be a law where intended lies have negative consequences to the messenger. I still believe that trump and the GOP cheated in 2016 through hacking a voter suppression, I don't think he won the votes necessary to give him the "Electoral College", but the lies and disinformation did contribute with people staying home and not taking advantage of the benefit of voting, and that is why lies and misinformation must be stopped. Facebook should have to pay enormous fees for allowing the misinformation and lies to be distributed as they allow it to do...charge Facebook $1.00 for each person they reach, if they reach $20 million, then that should be the fee. We must combat ignorance and that is why Sanders "Free Education" agenda must happen, it is no coincidence republicans love their uneducated.

[Perseus]

16. Yes, indoctrination is a problem, but that would happen if he taught them to read or not

It is part of the process in communist and dictatorships regimes.[ The one thing about teaching them to read is that when they mature they can realize there are better things in life than a communist regime, than the lack of freedom, or they become revolutionary fanatics of the regime, but at least they have education and the hope is they will later realize the regime they live under is not good.

I am not trying to justify any of it, what I am saying is that indoctrination is going to happen no matter what, do you prefer people who cannot read, who will never learn to think for themselves, or have people who can read and may be able to get hold of information that can open their eyes to help defeat the regime eventually? I think I rather have them learn to read.

[Tom Rinaldo]

17. Medical care for most Cubans also improved dramatically under Castro

I suppose one could also argue that healthy Cubans make better laborers of the State.

Acknowledging a fact does not equate with being a Castro cheerleader.

[Perseus]

15. Here is Biden praising dictators, all these is Biden saying he did that, some have been denied

1. Russian President Vladimir Putin
While introducing Biden at a press conference during the visit, Putin described him as “distinguished Mr. Vice President, such an important person in the U.S. administration with clout.” Biden returned the compliment, saying, “I want to publicly, as well, thank President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin for their hospitality. We have very good meetings, very long meetings, and, I hope, productive.”

“In the second decade of this new century, the United States and Russia no longer have good reason not to trust one another,” Biden said. One month after the trip, Biden called Putin and invited him to visit Washington. "The vice president said he would welcome seeing Prime Minister Putin in the U.S.,” said a Biden representative at the time.

2. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević
Biden said he called Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević a “damn war criminal.”

According to Biden’s memoir, Promises to Keep, he met with Milošević in 1993 and told him, “I think you’re a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one." In 2008, Biden aide John Ritch said he did not remember such a blunt statement but instead that Biden made the case more gently: "The legend grows. But Biden certainly introduced into the conversation the concept that Milosevic was a war criminal. Milosevic reacted with aplomb."

3. President George W. Bush

Biden claimed that he questioned President George W. Bush’s leadership abilities during the Iraq War.

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden said in 2009. "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one is following.’”

The account was denied by Bush aides, who said the president did not hold one-on-one meetings with Biden. "I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer told Fox News, adding that the statement did not appear among direct quotes from Biden included in meeting minutes.

"I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval [Office]," Candida Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Congress, said at the time. "He was such a blowhard on all that stuff — there wasn't a reason to bring him in."

--- Let us not forget that Biden voted for the Iraq War

4. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela
Biden said he confronted the Venezuelan socialist leader Nicolás Maduro. In fact, it seems he complimented his hair.

Anyway, got to the link and continue reading...The moral of the story is that they all meet with dictators, communists, etc. For one or another reason. The only disconcerting thing about the recounts in the article is that on most it is only Biden who recalls doing what he said.

[link:https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/eight-times-joe-biden-says-he-privately-confronted-strongmen|

Whether these things are true or not, I don't know, I have not tried to verify them, I believe most of these are irrelevant, I am more interested in what they offer, knowing that not all will be feasible, and I am also interested in the things I can verify, records on votes, on video, etc.

[uponit7771]

20. No, those people are being situational congenial

[George II]

6. These comments weren't from the '80s, and they express how he felt in 1960:

"President Kennedy was elected while I was at the University of Chicago, that was 1960. I remember being physically nauseated by his speech and that doesn't happen very often. He debated Nixon on Cuba. And their hatred for the Cuban Revolution, both of them was so strong. Kennedy was young and appealing and ostensibly liberal, but I think at that point, seeing through Kennedy, and what liberalism was, was probably a significant step for me to understand that conventional politics or liberalism was not what was relevant."

[Tom Rinaldo]

18. The closer in time to the overthrow of Batista's regime the easier it was to overestimate Castro

and to be more disgusted instead by the nature of the brutal regime that our government was all too happy to prop up for so many decades, Cuban people be damned.

I look back now at the things I said and believed in my twenties (I'm 70 now) and there are core truths and commonalities to my beliefs that continue strongly to this day. But I also can recall some positions that I took that made sense to me then that I sure would not argue for today.

[rampartc]

7. great post, tom

the cubo-floridians that are whining the most are of families who were doing well on the dystopian gangster island of battista. peons were killed or displaced in mass for American owned agribusiness to consolidate their small farms.

neither castro nor lenin nor mao were operating in a vacuum. they displaced the most murderous kleptocratic regimes imaginable.

[Uncle Joe]

10. An excellent post!

Thanks for the thread Tom Rinaldo.

[HarlanPepper]

12. That issue has already been framed by the media. Spoiler alert: Bernie lost.

[Tom Rinaldo]

19. There's a rather high profile public event tonight

I suspect this matter will still be under discussion with a lot of people interested in what Bernie might have to say about it.

[David__77]

14. This Cold War stuff is pretty unreal to many people.

It just may do a good job convincing people that Sanders must be on to something good.

[Tom Rinaldo]

23. By and large (with exceptions) the Old Guard trends toward...

...being old. Not many folks under 30 firmly established in it

[Tom Rinaldo]

22. And you know what I didn't mention in this OP?

The U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. Over 58,000 American lives lost trying to save the Vietnamese "from Communism". We inserted half a million troops into a Civil War, and lost.

[Gothmog]

25. No, Bernie Sanders' Discussion of Cuba's Castro is Nothing Like Obama's

Link to tweet

Eric Levitz in New York Magazine on Monday makes the case that Bernie Sanders’ 1985 interview admiring some aspects of Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba was roughly the same as Barack Obama’s 2016 discussion of Castro. This is in large part just an amplification of ideas flying around Twitter this week, as in the tweet pictured above. A quick look at Sanders’ and Obama’s statements shows why this analysis is entirely incorrect.

In 2016, Obama was addressing hundreds of young business and social entrepreneurs from across Latin America in Buenos Aires, Argentina. If you read the transcript of his talk, you see immediately that Obama, in his signature style, was reinforcing the message of pragmatism and evidence-based decision making — as he puts it “be[ing] practical and just choos[ing] from what works.” He was in fact arguing against ideology, at a time when he must have been watching the destabilizing effects the surge in ideological politics was causing not just in the United States but in other countries long considered staid and practical.

In discussing Cuba, Obama relayed direct conversations he had with the Castros, insight into the diplomacy of highlighting policy areas where there might be more agreement in order to create common ground with space to push for change in other areas. I doubt many would think it rational to approach a nascent foreign relationship with a guns blazing, take no prisoners attitude, especially when any agreement depended on the other country’s support. Obama was relaying one relatively high stakes conversation with foreign leaders to another unaligned audience in a foreign venue. I expect it does not take an expert in international relations to see the U.S. interest in pitching this information a certain way for both of these audiences.

In contrast, Bernie Sanders’ 1985 interview was not conducted for foreign consumption or to support U.S. national interests, and it did not come at a time of opening up in the U.S.-Cuba relationship. Instead, it was given for a local public access TV show. It was effectively a vanity project giving Sanders a platform to expound his views of politics and the world. Because of this, the messaging here is all Sanders. Further contrasting Obama, it was rooted in ideology, with Sanders opening, “As a socialist, the word socialism doesn’t frighten me,” before launching into his discussion of self-described socialist regimes. While you could argue the interview might not be a perfect snapshot of today’s presidential candidate’s innermost thoughts, it was a clear statement of what Sanders believed at the time and unfiltered by the degree of drafting and review Obama’s messaging on this topic would have undergone....

From this brief look, we can see that Obama’s talk involved a little flattery, a little spin, and a good deal of appealing to an audience that he saw as future leaders. In contrast, Sanders’ words were simply praise without an intentional objective towards a defined audience. Conflating these two discussions is flimsy, misleading, and indicative of the pro-regime propaganda captured in Sanders’ own sentiment.

[Tom Rinaldo]

26. I didn't claim that it was. I was making a different point

about the wisdom of selectively intervening in foreign nations, through invasions or through Coups, that has run through U.S. foreign policy for decades. Sanders addressed that almost 30 years before the Iraq war.

[Gothmog]

30. you can always count on @JoeBiden to defend @BarackObama 's record and legacy.

Link to tweet

[myohmy2]

27. excellent post...

...Trump loves Kimmy, Bernie never loved Fidel...

...but then again, if you're under 65, you probably don't give a rat's ass...

...what many care about today are the policies and programs that Bernie offers which most of the world has adopted and implemented and considers normal and acceptable...

...it's good that Bernie responds, but the Cold War is meaningless and ancient history to most people...

...today what people want is a normal country with normal benefits and normal protections so they can lead normal meaningful productive lives...

...we've been kept 'abnormal' far too long by Right-wing polices and thinking...

...time to set ourselves free of the 1%...

[Tom Rinaldo]

28. Thank you. I know that most have moved well past the Cold War

but even for those who chose to dwell on it, for whatever reason, the wrong lessons too frequently are drawn from it. Meanwhile some in this nation are always hard at work planning the next military intervention, supposedly to liberate someone from something, though it never works out that way.

I will soon move off this latest distraction, but felt the need to respond today.

[myohmy2]

29. +1

...

[Gothmog]

31. the sanders talking point on President Obama is simply false

Link to tweet

[myohmy2]

32. did...

...hear what President Obama said?

...listen again...