‘Cuba Expert’s’ advice to Biden on Cuba policy based on factual inaccuracies and omissions

Fidel Castro in Addis Ababa with Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1977.

There are two traits the “Cuba Experts” so often quoted by the media share: first is that their takes on Cuba ignore the brutal nature of the socialist dictatorship, and two, none of them are Cuban.

John Suarez takes one of these “experts” to task at Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter:

Look closer at Havana: Biden administration should take its time in formulating an effective Cuba policy

South Florida Sun Sentinel, February 3, 2021

William M. LeoGrande makes a number of claims that do not stand up to closer scrutiny. [”Biden should act fast on Cuba | Opinion,” Jan. 28] He called President Obama’s 2014 opening “a historic achievement.” The opening was followed by a collapse in U.S. trade with Cuba, a historic increase in repression against Cuban dissidents, and beginning in November 2016, American diplomats suffering brain injuries. The cause, according to the National Academies of Sciences, is “consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed, radiofrequency energy.”

LeoGrande’s claim that engagement with Cuba “was necessary for ending the conflict in southern Africa in the 1980s” fails to mention that the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s drove the end of conflict in southern Africa with the end of Soviet subsidies. It was not the good offices of the Castro regime.

The professor ignores the role played by the Castro brothers in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Ethiopia, sending thousands of Cuban troops to assist war criminal Mengistu Haile Mariam carry out a genocide that claimed over a million Ethiopian lives. When formulating policy it is important to provide full context. The Castro regime has been and continues to be a bad actor, and belongs on the list of state terror sponsors.

The Biden administration should take its time in formulating an effective policy.

John Suarez, executive director, Center for a Free Cuba

2 thoughts on “‘Cuba Expert’s’ advice to Biden on Cuba policy based on factual inaccuracies and omissions”

  1. Wait, what are those very European chairs doing in Africa? Isn’t that cultural appropriation? And does the Ethiopian guy look amanerado or what? As for the bearded bastard, he looks every inch the boor, like he can barely stand listening to the guy, whom he was only humoring to serve the Soviets.

    Still, you gotta love those “military” boots on FC. Just the right touch to tip off anyone with eyes to see that his whole frigging outfit was a costume and a fraud. Military my ass.

  2. As for Biden, or any Dem president, formulating an effective Cuba policy, that’s oxymoronic. It’s NOT intended to be effective in real terms, and that’s the whole point. Just ask Obama, for one.

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