Obama’s post-Castro Cuban playground

Just in time for American presidential elections, Fidel Castro, who says he won’t accept another term when Cuban Parliament meets on Sunday, is resigning. The die is now cast for Communist Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, to move much closer to U.S. soil. The Democrats take a very rosy view of Cuba and it is the Democrats who control the race for president.

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a close friend of Fidel Castro who “sends me Coppelia ice cream and a lot of other things that regularly reach me from Havana”. (Miami Herald, Jan. 20, 2008). Populist Presidential candidate Barack Obama has meeting Chavez on his after election priority list. “In July, you were asked if you were willing to meet separately without pre-condition during your first year with Fidel Castro, Kim Jung Il, Hugo Chavez. You said yes. You stand by that?” (Source: Meet the Press: 2007 “Meet the Candidates” series Nov. 11, 2007). Obama’s answer: “I do. Now, I did not say that I would be meeting with all of them. I said I’d be willing to. Obviously, there is a difference between pre-conditions and preparation. Pre-conditions, which was what the question was in that debate, means that we won’t meet with people unless they’ve already agreed to the very things that we expect to be meeting with them about. And obviously, when we say to Iran, “We won’t meet with you until you’ve agreed to all the terms that we’ve laid out,” from their perspective that’s not a negotiation, that’s not a meeting. Obama was asked, “You’re not afraid of being used in a propaganda way?” “You know, strong countries and strong presidents speak with their adversaries. I always think back to JFK’s saying that we should never negotiate out of fear, but we shouldn’t fear to negotiate.” Like former presidential candidate John Kerry, who tried to leave his mark with the initials JFK, Obama tries to be all things JFK. It’s a concept that leaves them swooning and fainting in celebrity-crazed America. Citizens Energy, a charity run by Joseph P. Kennedy II, which took about $25 million of heating oil in donations from Venezuela’s state-controlled petroleum monopoly, cements the Kennedy-Chavez-Obama line. In a column published last August in The Miami Herald, Obama called for “unrestricted rights” on Cuban-American travel and remittances to the island. “The Bush administration limits Cuban Americans to visiting their relatives once every three years and sending $100 per month as part of an effort to squeeze Fidel Castro’s repressive regime. But Obama said Cuban Americans could deliver a message of freedom and help foster financial independence from Castro. He said he would continue the trade embargo. (Miami Herald August 26, 2007). “You have my word—and the government and people of Cuba should hear my call—that our cause is simple,” he said. “It’s what drew my father across an ocean, and many of you across the waters to our south. That principle is libertad. Until there is justice in Cuba, there is no justice anywhere.” Cuba’s foreign minister praised Obama’s stance, infuriating hard-line exiles, some of whom have held up signs that read “Obama—Castro’s fundraiser” when he was stumping in Little Havana. To hard-line exiles, ending the restrictions is tantamount to propping up a Communist dictator. When it comes to Cuba, Obama is in good company. The Democrats have long held a love affair for the Communist outpost. Uncle Sam officially broke off relations with Havana under the 1961 Trading with the Enemy Act. Not so for Senator John Kerry’s wife, Teresa, who in 1991, using a Canadian connection funded by the Tides Foundation, linked the communist country up to the World Internet. “The Toronto-based Web/Nirv, Canadian affiliate of the Institute for Global Communications (IGC) and its offshoot the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), used a 64 KBPS undersea cable IP link from Havana to Sprint in the United States, linking Cubans to the Information Highway.” (Canada Free Press, July 19, 2004). Meanwhile, welcome to a post-Castro Cuba, political playground of U.S. Democrats.