Barack Obama Says Bush Blundered On Cuba

Barack Obama wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Miami Herald Tuesday that said the Bush administration’s policy on Cuba is a failure. “The primary means we have of encouraging positive change in Cuba today is to help the Cuban people become less dependent on the Castro regime in fundamental ways,” Obama wrote. He says that the Bush administration has tried to promote democracy in Cuba the wrong way. In 2004 Bush pushed through tougher restrictions on Cubans wanting to travel back and forth from Cuba. Since the 1960’s there have been travel restrictions, but since 2004 Cuban-Americans can only go back once every three years, and can only send $300 back to their families every quarter. “Unfortunately, the Bush administration has made grand gestures to that end while strategically blundering when it comes to actually advancing the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba.” Obama added that Bush’s decision to limit travel and money, “has not only had a profoundly negative impact on the welfare of the Cuban people. It has also made them more dependent on the Castro regime and isolated them from the transformative message carried there by Cuban Americans.” The Cuban embargo for the last 45 years has been a failure. We have pursued it to the appease the Cuban-Americans of Miami, but they have changed. The early Cuban immigrants were fleeing the political process with their whole families. All their wealth was stolen by Castro’s regime, and they hated him. Now they are fleeing in boats and leaving some family members back on the island. They desire more contact with their families in Cuba. According to Obama, “Cuban-American connections to family in Cuba are not only a basic right in humanitarian terms, but also our best tool for helping to foster the beginnings of grass-roots democracy on the island. Accordingly, I will grant Cuban Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send remittances to the island.” This should have been done 40 years ago. Obama also wants to, “use aggressive and principled diplomacy to send an important message: If a post-Fidel government begins opening Cuba to democratic change, the United States (the president working with Congress) is prepared to take steps to normalize relations and ease the embargo that has governed relations between our countries for the last five decades.” Up to this point our policy regarding Cuba has been a failure. If we really wanted to get back at Cuba we should have opened up trade and travel years ago. If we had flooded Cuba with what the USA has to offer Castro would have been gone long ago. But instead, we gave him an enemy, and the strength to continue his dictatorship. Obama is trying to move in the right direction on Cuba. To read Obama’s whole article in the Miami Herald click here.
Alan Cosgrove