Cuban President Raul Castro: US Must Lift Embargo And Give Back Guantanamo To Normalize Relations

[freshwest]

23. Why not? The base was created in what has since been discredited, a war years ago.

Obama has always wanted to have GITMO closed. We don't need that piece of real estate, it's been bizarre that we held onto the land during the Cold War, and so on and on. Think of the boondoggle and cash that has been wasted there, along with our stature in the world.

After all the hysterical opposition to Obama closing the place down, it will finally occur without the approval of the RWNJs in Congress. They can't stop him doing it, they are outmanuevered.

I call this a win-win for this hemisphere to get this albratross from around our necks. The place isn't a money maker, it's a big sinkhole of taxpayer dollars. ICBMs and other weaponry make location not as important as it once was.

I don't think it takes any prestige from the USA to close the place down or give the land back. It doesn't set much of precedent, either, as we've given back military bases on foreign soil for some time. What disadvantage would keep it from ever happening?

I'd like to know, as I was informed by someone (maybe MADem, DevonRex or Hekate, but I may be in error) said our problem with Cuba sprang from the Cold War era and the nuke they planted on their soil to tareget the USA.

It was said to be an act of national suicide, thus proving the insanity and unreliability of the Castro regime. For we could have nuked them, but they insisted on keeping it until their sponsors, the USSR, took the thing away. They are still close with the Russians, no harm with that, quite normal, really.

But they pose no threat to the USA mainland, so if the objection is that closing the base would be bad for our security, I'd say our security against any return to insanity is the same as it was then, nukes and the capacity to deliver them. Some may have a visceral dislike of Cuba for that event so many years ago, but I don't think the younger folks care about it at all.

I'm not baiting or disagreeing, but looking to see your take on why it will never happen. We are living in a different era than the one I grew up in, and in an area very afraid of that nuke. But I never had anything against Cubans. I felt ALL 'the adults in the room' were crazy.

Disclaimer: Not a military person nor a world traveller.