On Cuba, Hillary Clinton’s not as smart as she seems

Posted on Sunday, 06.22.14

On Cuba, Hillary Clinton's not as smart as she seems
BY HUMBERTO FONTOVA
HFONTOVA@EARTHLINK.NET

"The Smartest Woman in the World" flunked her foreign-policy exam. Worse
still, she was U.S. secretary of state. Back in the '90s, when first
lady, Hillary Clinton was widely known as "The Smartest Woman in the
World." Her husband, Bill, supposedly coined the term, but Rush Limbaugh
ran with it, snarking and laughing. Soon it was a household description.

In her new book, Hard Choices, Hillary Clinton reveals that she prodded
President Obama to "lift or ease" (what's left of) the so-called Cuba
embargo. "The embargo is Castro's best friend," Clinton explained to a
delighted audience at the anti-embargo Council on Foreign Relations
recently.

But doesn't she know that what's left of the sanctions against Castro's
Stalinist regime are codified into law and can only be lifted by
Congress, obviously after a vote? In fact, this codification took place
with passage of the Helms-Burton Act in 1996.

President Obama, having already delighted Castro by loopholing the Cuba
sanctions almost to death, can't go much further. Has Clinton forgotten?
Or is this constitutional "expert" advocating even more U.S. government
by executive fiat?

And what about the $2 billion (worth $7 billion today) stolen at Soviet
gunpoint by Castro's gunmen in 1960 from U.S. businessmen and
stockholders after the torture and murder of a few Americans who
resisted? The Inter-American Law Review classifies Castro's mass
burglary of U.S. property as "the largest uncompensated taking of
American property by a foreign government in history." Rubbing his hands
and snickering in triumphant glee, Castro boasted to the entire world
that he was freeing Cuba from "Yankee economic slavery" — Che Guevara's
term, actually — and that he "would never repay a penny!"

This is the only promise Fidel Castro has ever kept in his life. Hence
the imposition of the Cuba embargo, not that you'd know any of this from
the mainstream media, much less from Hillary Clinton. Helms-Burton also
calls for a settling of that account before allowing any more loopholing
of the embargo.

Perhaps instead of attending Yale Law School and marrying her way to the
top, Clinton should have "stayed home and baked cookies," succumbing to
her own famous insult of stay-at home moms,, then sold them at a
lemonade stand. Then she'd know a little about business: When somebody
stiffs you big-time, as Castro did to the United States, you demand they
settle up the amount in arrears before extending him more credit.

"Since it has run out of doors to knock on, [the Castro regime] is now
focused on the United States," writes Cuban dissident and three-time
Amnesty International prisoner of conscience Rene Gomez Manzano in a
recent samizdat smuggled from his homeland.

"Lifting the embargo would be a mistake without Cuba first respecting
its people's fundamental human rights. … If the U.S. allows financing
towards Cuba, it will be U.S. taxpayers who would be sustaining the
Castro regime."

As for "the embargo is Castro's best friend because it provides Castro
with a foil for his failures," this meme ranks as the favorite talking
point of Castro's agents, on the payroll and off. Sadly, it's widely
believed by the superficially informed on Cuban matters.

If Castro secretly favors the embargo, then why did every one of his
secret agents campaign secretly and obsessively against it while working
as secret agents? Castro managed the deepest and most damaging
penetration of the U.S. Department of Defense in recent U.S. history.
His spy, Ana Montes, is known as "Castro's Queen Jewel" in the
intelligence community. In 2002 she was convicted of the same crimes as
Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. She is serving a 25-year sentence in federal
prison.

Montes worked tirelessly to influence U.S. foreign policy against the
embargo. The same holds for more recently arrested, convicted and
incarcerated Cuban spies Carlos and Elsa Alvarez and Kendall and
Gwendolyn Myers.

It's one thing for talking heads with their typically overworked
research staffs, to remain ignorant of these vital matters. But
shouldn't a former secretary of state be familiar with matters so vital
to U.S. security?

Source: On Cuba, Hillary Clinton's not as smart as she seems - From Our
Inbox - MiamiHerald.com -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/06/21/4194007/on-cuba-hillary-clintons-not-a.html