who's side was Lincoln on anyway?

It's come to something when you have to hold up a copy of the day's newspaper and be photographed to prove that you are still alive. Certainly things are not looking good for Cuba's leader Fidel Castro. On his 80th birthday on Sunday he was pictured holding up a copy of Saturday's Granma (The Communist Party newspaper.) These pictures were the first to be taken of him since his stomach surgery and despite his defiance even he seems resigned to the fact that he will never again lead his country.

Have you ever seen the death of someone so eagerly awaited by another country? Both George Bush and Condoleezza Rice have held press conferences on the future of Cuba and the american government has adjusted policy to make it easier for Cubans to defect to the US. Why are they getting so excited by the prospect of someone dying?

I am no Castro apologist. I occasionally see myself as an almost socialist when it suits me, and every so often I am taken in by the romance of Che and Fidel leading their socialist paradises in America's back yard. I am a great admirer of the Cuban health care system and, indeed, their education system; we have a lot to learn from this regime. However, I know I disagree with the vast majority of his policies, his views on religion don't greatly appeal to me, I dislike the fact that there is no free press or free elections, and I find the way his friends live lavish lifestyles while most of his people live in poverty hard to justify (although a suffocating forty five year US trade embargo may have played a small part in those levels of poverty as well.)

I can't help thinking that the US - or should I say a tiny, but noisy lobby in the US, believe that Cuba is their rightful property - it is the state that got away. In fairness Cuba has never been US property, the British briefly controlled the Island (rather unsuccessfully) but the United States of America has never occupied their little neighbours. Its relationship with Cuba, while never comfortable, wasn't always so acrimonious. The top photo shows Fidel Castro on a state visit to the US visiting, and laying a wreath at, the memorial to Abe Lincoln, the great emanicipator, in 1959 before the US embargo. The second photo was taken only two years later and shows a line of Anti-Castro Cuban exiles marching in support of President Kennedy's hardline policy on Cuba. What a difference 700 odd days make. But times have changed and, despite the fact that those same exiles continue to rant against Castro (I'm not blaming them - but would you really expect someone who ran away from a country to promote it) the larger part of the US administration and population have little appetite for a fight.

So, no matter how loud the ex-pat Miami inhabitants shout it is surely unlikely that America will launch any kind of military bid for regime change. After hundreds of CIA assassination plots and attempts it looks like that is about to happen all by itself. And the powers that be in Washington still imagine that when Castro goes the people will demand what they really want - a US style democratic regime with close trade links with America. It may happen or they may be disappointed. Maybe by then all the Cubans who favour that course of action will have already defected to Florida. Still we all know hoe important Florida is in presidential elections - better keep them happy.