President Barack Obama is to be commended for raising the issues of civil liberties and free elections with Raúl Castro on his Cuban trip, saying, for example, that Cubans should be free to speak their minds and protest against their government without fear of “arbitrary detentions.” It must have been difficult for someone raised and educated by Progressives who have argued for nearly six decades that Cuba is a socialist “paradise.”
But Obama did not go far enough. Here are some of the other questions he should have asked Raúl Castro:
1. When will you allow free and open elections to be held in Cuba, as promised by your brother Fidel shortly after he took command of the country in 1959? How long will the Cuban people have to wait to exercise this basic right of a democracy?
2. When will you open your government’s archives to allow historians and others to document just how many Cubans have been executed at the order of your brother and other communist officials? The figure given in “The Black Book of Communism” is between 15,000 and 17,000. Is that too high or too low an estimate?
4. When will you allow the free market to truly operate in Cuba so that the average worker will be able to earn a decent wage rather than the penurious $20 a month he presently receives? When will you allow credit cards—an essential instrument of modern commerce—to be used and accepted?
5. When will your brother Fidel admit that Che Guevara—admired by many young Americans—was not a high-minded revolutionary, but a cold-blooded murderer who functioned as Fidel’s personal executioner? Isn’t it true that he was a great admirer of China’s Cultural Revolution and that it was he, not Fidel, who invented Cuba’s first “corrective labor camp”—i.e., a gulag?
6. Isn’t it true that Cuba is not a socialist “paradise,” but a troubled third-world country ruled by a communist regime that discourages religion, denies freedom of the press and of speech, bars legitimate elections, treats the judiciary as a lapdog, and reveres the Communist Party above all things?
Any meaningful and enduring relationship between Cuba and America must be based on the truth. And the truth about what communism has done to the Cuban people for nearly sixty years has yet to be told.
Read the Original Article at Daily Signal
Obama disgusted me – while a Marine “non-combatant” dies in Iraq – he’s doing the Tango with communists!!
Non-Combatant!!?? HA!! What a joke.
And the Cuba thing is worse than we thought…
Why do you think the word was in quotations marks! Oh, I know – I only used that Tango as one example. It’s gotten so I can’t stand to hear his name.
Oh I Know GP, it is strange and desperate times we are living in my friend.
Honestly, do you think you would ever live to see a President this Bad? As you know I study history and although I despise Politics, I have read several Biographies of so called “Bad” Presidents, like Nixon for example, but IMO, BHO is in a class all by himself…Nixon did what he did because he honestly thought he was protecting America, BHO does what he does because he HATES America. Big Difference.
I don’t know if he hates the US, but he is quite delusional. Frankly he appears to have gone off the deep end – so the result is the same. I’m with you on hating politics, but I’ll tell you, Nixon was a very good president. I happened to be watching the trial when the proof was put into evidence that Kennedy and his co-horts were doing the same thing – my TV screen went black! So…does that tell you anything?
You know GP, I am glad you said that about Nixon because my brother holds to the same belief. He considers Kennedy and LBJ two of the worst Presidents and for the same reasons you stated. I have read several books on the subject and am currently slated to read a couple that will tell the stories from a different angle..one is about Allen Dulles and the other is about Helms..two Powerful CIA directors who had the goods on these men.