Monica Showalter in Investors Business Daily:
After Kissing The Cuban Snake, Much To His Surprise, Obama Gets Bit
It was all so choreographed. President Obama’s “historic” trip to Cuba was prepped and re-prepped so that nothing would go off with a glitch. Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes jetted into Havana for the preparations; and, depending on the news report, Secretary of State John Kerry might have made an appearance there, too.
President Obama spouted his treacly niceties, drew his moral equivalences and blended it all out with a sea of banalities about “the future” in a not-so-disguised effort to create his own Nixon In China legacy thing. Never mind that dissidents were being beaten by Cuban security organs and that “President” Raul Castro offered no concessions toward human rights. Obama’s was laser-focused on sending the message of “fun” for the trip. As a major terror attack engulfed Brussels, Obama did the “wave” with the Cuban dictator.
It was all good, historic legacy fun until the rattling from the attic from Cuba’s out-to-pasture Maximo Lider, Fidel Castro, loudly put a stop to the festivities. Castro blasted Obama for his “syrupy” words and made a lunatic’s effort to relive the communist glory days of fighting Uncle Sam. It would support the theory that there’s a rift between Fidel, who remains ever the brittle revolutionary desperate to preserve his own legacy of defying Uncle Sam, and brother Raul, who sees Obama as a Useful Fool, well suited for squeezing out U.S. benefits while offering nothing in return.
Hard to say which one is worse.
What’s clear enough is that deference after deference to the Castro brothers and their legacy, the Castros continue to show nothing but contempt. Kiss a snake, and don’t be surprised if you get bit.
First of all, anyone who takes it for granted that this latest “reflection” was actually written by Fidel himself is seriously naïve. It’s not impossible that he wrote it, or more or less inspired it in general terms, but nobody should automatically take it at face value (which applies to ANYTHING put forth by the Castro regime). Regardless of who composed it, it is clearly being officially published by Castro, Inc. to serve its purposes, so it might as well have been signed by Raul. It may be a bad-cop/worse-cop ploy, but it is definitely a ploy. The Castro people can’t resist this kind of behavior because they get to show off, it plays beautifully to their target audience, and the US is practically begging for it, so there’s not only a motive but also no serious risk. In other words, a very old story, especially with a Dem POTUS.