But, give President Obama his due. Did he stand silently by as Cuban leader Raul Castro blasted the American blockade and embargo of Cuba and our allegedly “illegal” possession of Guantanamo Bay (by the way, terrorists in detention at Guantanamo have more legal rights than the average person does in Cuba - in jail or not.) and claimed that America falls short of Cuban standards of compassion and welfare. No, the President did worse than stand by silently – he essentially agreed with Castro: “President Castro, I think, has pointed out that in his view making sure that everybody is getting a decent education or health care, has basic security in old age, that those things are human rights as well. I personally would not disagree with him.” Where to begin? Well, in the first place – there is no freedom in Cuba. Several hundred dissidents who had been released from incarceration over the past year have been rearrested and reimprisoned, and several dozen were rounded up in the week before the President dropped by. The President has not mentioned the several billions of dollars of wealth that the Castro government expropriated from American citizens or companies, to say nothing if the even greater wealth that it expropriated from Cuban citizens. President Castro’s assertion that Cuba provides health care and welfare and full larders of groceries is a sick lie. Even in the very week the President visited Cuba, boatloads of Cubans died trying to escape to America.
Let us not forget that despite its flaws America is a free society, with a Bill of Rights that guarantees those freedoms and protects us from the excesses of government. Our people can live their own lives; do as they please; go where they want to go; live where they want to live; worship as they choose; work where they want to work; read what they want to read; say what they want to say; and vote for whomever they want. None of those things apply to Cuba. The Castro regime has by its brutality and oppression forced nearly 20% of its population to flee; and keeps the remainder in a state of grinding poverty, material want, and government dependency. Cuban education is little more than Communist indoctrination, and woe be to anyone who deviates from the government line.
By his visit to Cuba, President Obama has provided cover for one of the most odious and destructive regimes in the world.