Tag Archives: Raul Castro

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Common sense returns to U.S.-Cuba relations

It didn’t work. The United States sought for five decades to punish Cuba because it went from being an old-fashioned autocratic dictatorship to a Marxist tyranny.

The aim was to bring Cuba to its knees and to send a message to its major benefactor — the Soviet Union — that we just wouldn’t tolerate a communist dictatorship at our doorstep.

Well, five-plus decades later, that idiotic non-relationship took a huge step toward its end. President Obama today announced that the United States is going to begin “normalizing” relations with the island nation.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/obama-us-re-establishing-relations-with-cuba/ar-BBgUJV0

It … is … about … damn … time!

An American aide worker, Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned for five years in Cuba was released today. In exchange, we sent three Cubans back to their homeland. They all had been accused of spying. Gross’s release apparently removed the final impediment to the normalization of relations.

Obama made sense on virtually every point he made this morning in a brief televised announcement.

Cuba poses zero military threat to the United States. The Soviet Union has vanished. Russia’s economy is imploding. The Cuban people remain shackled by the tyranny that governs them, but Obama today insisted today that the Cuban government start loosening the binding that keeps Cubans from expressing themselves freely.

The president noted that the United States is virtually the only nation on Earth that honors the embargo slapped on Cuba in the early 1960s. Yes, Cuba trades with the rest of the world, but its totalitarian government has impeded prosperity from flowing to the people. That, too, should change, Obama said.

The president noted today that Cuba is still governed by someone named “Castro,” but it’s Raul, not Fidel.

He said he called Raul Castro today to tell him of the impending change in the U.S.-Cuba relationship. I’ll presume Fidel’s brother agreed to it.

The question now is whether Congress will agree to legislate an end to the economic embargo. The president can establish diplomatic ties with another nation all by himself, but Congress has to agree to end the embargo, as its enactment was done legislatively.

Here’s hoping the common sense caucus of Congress will agree to what is a profoundly sensible course of action.

Continuing to do the same thing repeatedly while hoping for a different result means it’s time to change what you’re doing. We can continue to have ideological competition between the two countries, but we ought to do so face to face.

Congratulations and thanks, Mr. President, for restoring some sense to our nation’s foreign policy.

 

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Handshake should be an ice breaker

The Obama-Castro handshake at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela has drawn plenty of chattering from the left and the right.

I’ve long thought the time had come for the United States to thaw its frozen relationship with a tiny island nation that no longer poses any serious threat to this country.

President Barack Obama shook the hand of Cuba’s President Raul Castro. It was a brief, spontaneous moment at the start of ceremonies honoring the life of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. That’s all it was.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/11/the_obama-castro_handshake_dont_stop_there_120920.html

Republican pols bristled at the moment. Democratic pols loved it.

For more than five decades, American presidents starting with Dwight Eisenhower have ignored Cuba, a country taken over in a revolution led by communist despot Fidel Castro, Raul’s older brother. The Castros overthrew an equally despicable tyrant and U.S. officials thought initially life would get better for Cubans. It didn’t.

Fidel Castro cozied up to the Soviet Union, allowing the Big Bear to introduce intercontinental ballistic missiles to the island. U.S. spy planes discovered them, President John Kennedy quarantined the island and threatened to blow the place to smithereens if the Cubans and Soviets didn’t take the missiles down; the other side blinked and the crisis was over.

Then the Soviet Union disintegrated. Cuban remains a communist dictatorship. But what precisely is the threat that Cuba presents to this country? None as far as I can see.

The United States maintains diplomatic relations with nations with equally dismal human rights records as Cuba. The People’s Republic of China comes to mind; Vietnam’s human rights record is pretty abysmal. We still have relations with Zimbabwe, yes?

A fleeting handshake between two leaders doesn’t amount to anything in the context of where the greeting occurred. Nelson Mandela fostered a feeling of forgiveness and compassion when he came out of prison in 1990. He had been held captive for 27 years because he fought for the rights of the black majority in his country.

I think it’s time for the United States — which has left some travel restrictions to Cuba — to finally open the door to full relations with a country that poses no threat to the world’s greatest military and economic power.

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‘Shaking hands with Hitler’? C’mon, Sen. McCain

John McCain needs to get a grip on reality.

The Republican U.S. senator from Arizona compared President Obama’s handshake today with Cuban President Raul Castro as akin to “shaking hands with Adolf Hitler.” Good grief.

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-mandela-memorial-172822763.html?soc_src=mediacontentstory

The men met for an instant today as Obama was arriving in a section set aside for dignitaries who gathered to pay their respects to the late Nelson Mandela, who was memorialized today in a stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The meeting was unscripted. It was unplanned. It was totally spontaneous. It also was totally in keeping with the spirit of conciliation and forgiveness that speakers today honored as they spoke of Mandela’s greatness.

I also ought to point out that when President Obama spoke today in the pouring rain, he railed against government leaders who proclaim their undying support for what Mandela stood for while denying their own people the right to protest their government’s policies.

Do you think he might have had Raul Castro in mind when he said that?

John McCain has served his country with high honor. He’s paid a huge sacrifice. That shouldn’t give him license to make patently ridiculous statements on the day the president of the United States represented his country in honoring the life and times of Nelson Mandela.

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Shaking hands with a foe? Stop the presses!

I can hear it now from the conservative media.

There he goes again, shaking hands with our enemies.

President Obama today took a moment at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service to shake hands with Cuban president Raul Castro, who was among the 100 or so heads of state and government who traveled to South Africa to honor the life of one of history’s greatest liberators.

Obama took his seat among the dignitaries and shook hands with a number of them. One of them happened to be Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, the communist dictator who outlasted 10 U.S. presidents — all of whom sought to remove him from power in Cuba. The United States still has a trade embargo in place against Cuba, a nation we still regard as some kind of geopolitical threat — even though the Cold War ended more than two decades ago.

Then the commentators made an important point about Obama’s fleeting gesture of good will toward Castro: It is totally in keeping with the life of the man they all were gathered to honor.

I’ve said it here already, but it bears repeating. Nelson Mandela emerged from imprisonment in February 1990 with his head held high and his hand held out to those who held him captive. He could have fomented violence. He could have returned to freedom an angry man bent on revenge.

Instead, he reached out to his foes and said, in effect, “Let’s build a new nation together. I need you and you need me.”

No one on Earth — except Barack Obama and Raul Castro — know what they said to each other for all of about two seconds. It doesn’t matter. The nations still are at odds over a whole host of issues. The two men weren’t present in that massive Soweto stadium to argue with each other. They were there to honor a great man’s memory and his glorious life of reconciliation.