DUMBplomacy: Obama’s Cuba Trip Showing Signs Of Imploding

Diplomacy: President Obama’s “historic” trip to communist Cuba is showing signs of falling apart. Far from the beisbol and mojitos junket that the president’s PR team is selling, disputes are all over, starting with which dissidents the regime will let the president see. It goes to show what a bad idea this was.

Making the first visit to the island since the Coolidge administration, President Obama’s public relations men are touting a host of fun-filled photo-op activities, such as a “shared love” of baseball, as well as new State Department talks with the Castroites “on cybercrime,” as Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes tweeted, apparently naive to the fact that any hackers in Cuba are agents of the Cuban government.

In reality, there are signs of trouble all over with the March 21 visit. After all, this is not a normal relationship. The Cuban government’s goodwill toward the U.S. is nil, even as Obama showers goodies on them and caves in to their every demand. A presidential visit is the last thing they deserve.

Yet the administration justifies the junket by saying the president’s trip will “advance our progress and improve the lives of the Cubans,” as White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough tweeted in Spanish. And indeed that’s an echo of President Obama’s original precondition to not visit Cuba until the Castroites improve the rights of Cuba’s citizens — who are fleeing the island in droves now, out of fear the Obama-Castro bromance will lead to an end of their migration privileges, a topic seemingly ignored. Notice the verbal sleight-of-hand: The Obama administration has subtly shifted its goal to now say the trip itself will improve the conditions of Cubans.

For Cubans, there have been nothing but problems. For one, dissident arrests have risen fivefold since Obama announced the normalization of ties in late 2014. Some “improvement.”

Read the rest of this IBD editorial HERE.

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