Jason Poblete in The DC Dispatches:
Obama’s Cuba Trip, Nothing More Than Political Voyeurism
It should have played out much differently. War criminals should be tried for crimes against humanity, not feted by the most power, and exceptional, nation on earth. President Barack Obama is engaging in political voyeurism. Yet unlike other American tourists that visit the Cuban Communist gulag, his visit has consequences that will ripple throughout Cuban society, and indeed all the Western Hemisphere. Every tin horn dictator, or future strongman will understand that, sooner or later, Americans cave. The America I know and love never surrenders. The problem now is that we have a new generation of political and business leaders who have forgotten how to win.
Absolutely nothing good will come of this almost three-day tour. The Communist Party will do what it does well, orchestrate a propagandistic journey through its Potemkin village. It will do what it can to shield the American visitors from the truth: Cuba is a crumbling state, rotten to the core after decades of socialist economic planning and East German Stasi-like rule. A system that, to this day, is stealing property from Cuban citizens, persecuting Christians who refuse to tow the party line, and cracking down hard on political dissent and opposition.
The American delegation that joins the President for this spectacle, a group of people now close to 1,000 strong if you count the media is, mostly, well-intentioned. They should keep in mind that as soon as they are gone, the Cuban people are left, alone, to deal with their Communist Party overlords. American companies may ink business deals, arrangements that raise bring legal liability issues in the U.S., but Cuba remains, and will always be under the Communists, a slave economy that also has a serious human rights problem.
Supporters of President Obama’s foreign policy toward Cuba argue, among other things, that this approach is better than the last few decades. Sanctions have failed, they declare, as if that phrase were some political talisman. Maybe it is. The regime’s. The fact is that U.S. policy has succeeded remarkably well and these people, some driven by greed, others by ideological reasons, but most out of ignorance, have put in motion a process that will most assuredly lead to a more difficult, and potentially violent transition. The thousands of Cubans fleeing the island – the migrant crisis the media is ignoring – is evidence of the deteriorating situation.
The economic embargo approach was updated in the mid- and late-1990s with a set of laws that are designed to, yes, increase sanctions against the Communist party; however, it also put in motion a very generous outreach to the people of Cuba. It is a dual-track approach of sanctions and support designed to modernize U.S. law as well as put U.S. interests in the driver’s seat. The reality is that U.S. sanctions have never been about regime change. Ever. That canard is a favorite talking point of the regime, as well as those in Washington, DC that support them.
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