Of Belgium, Ballots and Baseball

Official logo of Brussels (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In most of the world, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 was the third day of Spring, a day that already promised to be historic.  A new era of diplomatic and cultural breakthroughs were about to happen in Cuba, despite the continued presence of the leaders that made the United States turn its back on the island nation for nearly sixty years.  In Arizona, Utah and Idaho, voters and caucus-goers made their choices on who they want to see running the country for the next four years.

But before all that happened, this did:

An airport and train station in Brussels, Belgium were hit by explosions that CNN says left 31 dead and 270 injured.  This came a few days after police there arrested a suspect in the November terrorist attack on Paris.  The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for both incidents.

Brussels is the home of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  Yet like most European countries, the Belgians haven't figured out how to separate the terrorists from the migrants who have fled from war-torn regions.  How they and other countries respond to this attack has yet to be determined.

Meanwhile, back in the States, the presidential campaign rolls on in the wake of the Brussels attack.  Republican voters in Utah and Arizona had a choice between Donald Trump, who has said NATO has outlived its usefulness and that he would temporarily stop Muslims from coming into the country, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who advocates increased police surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods.  If you're a Democrat, you could choose Hillary Clinton, who has far more foreign policy experience as President Barack Obama's former Secretary of State than either Trump or Clinton, yet doubts remain about her trustworthiness.

Trump and Clinton won their respective primaries in delegate-rich Arizona.  Both of them may be inching closer to their parties' nominations, but their rivals are still doing their best to make it interesting.  Democrat Bernie Sanders won in Utah and Idaho, while Cruz benefited from an anti-Trump backlash in Utah to win there.

Obama was in Cuba, the first President to set foot in that country since Calvin Coolidge in 1928.  He didn't let the Belgian attacks get in the way of his previously announced schedule, but did make a brief mention of it during his address to the Cuban people.  Then he took in a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and a team of Cuban all-stars before departing for Argentina.

There's a small but vocal minority in South Florida and elsewhere who have built their lives in this country after fleeing the Castro regime wondering if they're being betrayed because, even if Obama succeeds in making Cuba safe for Americans again, the Castros still remain in place. We ask that small but vocal minority:  If the Castros were gone tomorrow, would you stay in this country or move back to Cuba?

What happened in Belgium on March 22, 2016 had a ripple effect on everything else going on that day.  But while people in Brussels and elsewhere were in shock and mourning, elections were held, diplomacy was conducted and ball games were played.  Life goes on.  The world doesn't stop for terrorism.