Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Obama Earns Himself Some Mojo
Last Wednesday, I blogged about the futility and ridiculousness of our Cuban policy. Our sanctions policy has been ineffective for forty-five years and it's time to make a change.
Today, Barack Obama comes out in favor of repealing the Bush administration's latest sanctions that prevents ccomes out in favoruban-americans from visiting their relatives in Cuba other than once every three years, and tightened gift restrictions.
The policy is a failure. It was blue jeans, mcdonalds, and rock & roll that helped forment change in the Soviet Union. We should expose Cubans to the free market and let them choose a system on their own. The crazy Cuban exile community is starting to lose power. The hardliners are often people who came to the US over thirty years ago, and alot of the new immigrants are not so stubborn.
Mauricio Claver-Carone, head of the U.S.-Cuba Democracy PAC, which supports full sanctions, said Obama’s statement could hurt U.S.-Cuban relations at a crucial time.
“I’m sure he’s well intentioned,” Claver-Carone said, but he added that with the death of Castro possibly approaching and the potential for change on the island, such a statement could send the wrong message.
“It entrenches the regime at this historic time,” Claver-Carone said.
This man is an idiot. Just give the sanctions a surge and they will produce results any day now. Whatever.
The other democratic candidates could look in the mirror and decide if they want to continue being cowards, fearful of angering the dwindling angry block of those who were fans of the dictatorship of Batista in Cuba.
Obama has decided to jump on the third rail of Florida politics and should be commended for going first.
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