United States President Barack Obama Legitimizes, Rewards and Props Up the Cuban Castro Communist Dictatorship

           The Cuban Communist dictatorship of Fidel and Raul Castro has been legitimatized and will be propped up by United States President Barack Obama after policy changes Obama announced yesterday after a deal to free an American who was imprisoned by Cuba in exchanged for three Cuban spies.

            The Obama Administration secretly negotiated with terrorists to secure the release of the American.  The Cuban Communist regime is listed by the State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism.  Cuba harbors Puerto Rican terrorists.  An additional reason Cuba should be listed as a terrorism sponsor is that it aids Venezuela’s Marxist anti-American dictatorship, which, in turn, aids Marxist narco-terrorist rebels in Colombia.  Indeed, Cuba is a part of the Axis of Rogues, through which Venezuela, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria and other terrorist-sponsoring regimes states operate against the interests of the U.S. and the free world.  Obama  seeks to remove Cuba from the State Department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism, despite a lack of change in Cuban policy, as required by U.S. law.

            The American who was released was an aid worker who was a subcontractor of the United States Agency for International Development, a federal agency, providing computers to Jewish Cubans in order for them to obtain Internet access, as a way to avoid the censorship of the totalitarian Cuban regime.  The Cuban Communists arrested and convicted him of trumped up charges of espionage.  In the deal with the Obama Administration, the aid worker was released by Cuba on “humanitarian grounds.”  Dictatorships typically release political prisoners or hostages on such grounds as to appear magnanimous instead of ever admitting the confinement was unjustified or appearing to have released the prisoner out of weakness.  Prisoners are used as bargaining chips by dictators.  By exchanging the innocent aid worker for Cuban spies, the Obama Administration tacitly implies the aid worker’s deeds were the equivalent of those of the spies, one of whom was convicted of murder charges because he tipped off the Cuban dictatorship about the plans of a Cuban-American dissident organization’s flights to drop leaflets in Cuba; their plane was shot down over international waters by the Cuban Communists, killing four American citizens.  Thus, by rewarding Cuba’s dictatorship for imprisoning an innocent American, the trading of a hostage for spies incentivizes dictatorships around the world to kidnap more Americans for the release of agents of their regimes or to extract concessions from the U.S.

            Obama announced the easing of financial and travel restrictions on Cuba, despite having dubious legal authority.  These moves will prop up the Cuban economy at its weakest point and, therefore, the Castro regime that promised “Socialist paradise,” but, like every other Communist state, has left its people impoverished while the Party leaders enjoy wealth.  The Communist dictatorship has blamed the embargo for its economic failures.

            Obama also announced the normalization of relations with Cuba through diplomatic recognition of the Castro dictatorship as the legitimate government of Cuba and by seeking to end the American embargo on the Cuban socialist state. The Castros seized power in a revolution in 1959 against a dictatorship under the pretense of liberating Cuba and of not making it into a Marxist-Leninist state.  Instead, they established a brutal Communist dictatorship with a human rights record worse than the regime they replaced.  The Castro regime has slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Cubans, tortured and imprisoned countless others and keeps 11 million people in bondage.  In addition to legitimatizing the Castro regime through its negotiations, the Obama Administration’s normalization of relations with Cuba grants the Communist dictatorship diplomatic recognition as the legitimate government of Cuba, which provides a public relations bonanza for the tyrannical regime, as well as undermines the morale of freedom-loving Cuban dissidents.  The totalitarian Castro regime has made no structural liberalization to allow any freedoms or opposition political parties or free and fair elections whatsoever in exchange for the concessions from the Obama Administration.  Obama’s Cuban policy change is part of a pattern in his negotiation with anti-American terrorist dictatorships.  As I have posted previously, he similarly granted concessions to Iran before the Iranian regime has given up its nuclear weapons program.

            Obama declared the longstanding American policy toward Cuba as “outdated,” but the only thing outdated is the historical anachronism of the Communist Castro regime, as people around the world have rejected Communism.  The argument that the embargo “has not worked” and that trade and other concessions will expose the Cuban people to other ideas and increase their demand for liberty ignores the fact that the rest of the world’s policy of trading with Cuban for many years has not worked in the least to liberalize politically the Communist dictatorship, just as trade by the U.S. and many foreign states with Communist China and Vietnam have not liberalized those two tyrannical regimes politically to any degree.  Moreover, the American policy on Cuba is not only intended to be efficacious in weakening the Castro regime, but in making a clear moral and political stand against tyranny and in support of the Cuban people’s aspirations for liberty.  In this respect, the old American policy has clearly worked and the new policy of the Obama Administration has demonstrably failed. 

           The Castro regime has long been admired by the Left for its anti-American vitriol and its unabashed socialism.  The Leftists and certain selfish business interests often dismiss Cuban-American dissidents as a kind of biased special interest that is preventing normal relations between the U.S. and Cuba through their political influence.  However, the Cuban-Americans are victims and witnesses to the tyranny of the Castro regime.  

           Much of the world would like to turn a blind eye to Castros’ tyranny of the Cuban people, and to excuse its worldly ulterior motivations, but the United States of America must never forget the eleven million oppressed people ninety miles from its shores.  I call upon Congress to block the end of the embargo and the funding of diplomatic relations with the Castro Communist dictatorship.  Cuba libre!