TOP 10 LIES IN OBAMA’S CUBA SPEECH

TOP 10 LIES IN OBAMA'S CUBA SPEECH
by JOEL B. POLLAK 18 Dec 2014

President Barack Obama unveiled a new U.S. policy toward Cuba on
Wednesday as part of a deal that brought American Alan Gross home in
exchange for three convicted Cuban spies. As he has done so often in the
past, Obama tried to channel the perspective of America's enemies and
critics, as if his job were to act as a neutral mediator instead of
defending U.S. interests and values. In the course of his address, Obama
told American ten major lies, both of omission and commission.

Here they are, in order of appearance:

1. No mention of the Cuban missile crisis. "I was born in 1961 just over
two years after Fidel Castro took power in Cuba….Over the next several
decades, the relationship between our countries played out against the
backdrop of the Cold War and America's steadfast opposition to
communism." Cuba's role in helping the Soviet Union project a direct
threat to the U.S. mainland is carefully elided (though Obama, as he has
done before, refers to his own birth as a kind of watershed.)

2. Suggesting that the president can establish a U.S. embassy on his
own. "Going forward, the United States will reestablish an embassy in
Havana and high ranking officials will visit Cuba." An embassy needs to
be funded by Congress, and needs an ambassador to be approved by the
Senate. None of that is going to happen–nor should it, especially after
the disastrous experiment in re-establishing an embassy in Syria, which
Obama did in 2009, to no good effect whatsoever.

3. No mention of Cuba's role in repressing democracy abroad. "Cuba has
sent hundreds of healthcare workers to Africa to fight Ebola." Yes, and
Cuba has also sent experts in repression to Venezuela, Bolivia and
Ecuador. Cuban agents also allegedly beat and raped Venezuelan
protestors earlier this year. For decades, Cuba assisted guerrilla
armies abroad, fomenting bloody revolution in some countries and
propping up communist regimes elsewhere. It continues to do so.

4. Suggesting that Cuba does not support terrorism. "At a time when we
are focused on threats from al Qaeda to ISIL, a nation that meets our
conditions and renounces the use of terrorism should not face this
sanction." Yet Cuba was caught, only last year, smuggling "missile
equipment" to North Korea, the dictatorship that targeted America with a
cyber-terror attack on the day Obama announced the new Cuba policy. Cuba
continues to offer other kinds of support to terrorists.

5. False claim that the U.S. is to blame for lack of information in
Cuba. "I believe in the free flow of information. Unfortunately, our
sanctions on Cuba have denied Cubans access to technology that has
empowered individuals around the globe." This is perhaps the most
offensive lie of all, since Gross was detained for trying to help Cubans
access technology. The reason Cubans lack news and communication is
because the regime censors them brutally, not because of the U.S. embargo.

6. False promise to consult Congress on Cuba, when his administration
broke that promise. "As these changes unfold, I look forward to engaging
Congress in an honest and serious debate about lifting the embargo." And
yet when Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) asked White House official Tony Blinken
whether the administration planned any major Cuba policy changes,
Blinken (now Deputy Secretary of State) lied and said any change would
come in consultation with Congress.

7. False claim that Cuba agreed to release political prisoners as part
of a deal with the U.S. "In addition to the return of Alan Gross and the
release of our intelligence agent, we welcome Cuba's decision to release
a substantial number of prisoners whose cases were directly raised with
the Cuban government by my team." As the Washington Post noted, these
political prisoners were already set to be released as the result of
negotiations four years ago with the Vatican and Spain.

8. False commitment to principle of changing policies that do not work.
"I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades
and expect a different result." If that were really what Obama believed,
we would not see the administration pursuing policies whose failure is
already evident as a matter of historical record: high taxes, economic
redistribution, socialized medicine, union-dominated schools,
restrictive labor and environmental regulations, and so on.

9. Conflating the collapse of the Castro regime with the collapse of
Cuba. "Moreover, it does not serve America's interests or the Cuban
people to try to push Cuba towards collapse." A false "binary choice."
By failing to differentiate between the regime and the country, Obama
signaled his intention to allow the Castros and their heirs to entrench
their power–abandoning the cause of freedom and reform, just as he did
with the mullahs in Iran during the 2009 uprising.

10. Falsely identifying the U.S. as a colonial power. "Others have seen
us as a form of colonizer intent on controlling your future..…Let us
leave behind the legacy of both colonization and communism, the tyranny
of drug cartels, dictators and sham election." America actually
liberated Cuba from Spanish colonialism, and though the U.S. influenced
the island heavily for decades afterward, Obama's attempted moral
equivalence between "colonization" and communist tyranny is a false one.

Obama borrowed a quote from the Cuban literary giant José Martí:
"liberty is the right of every man to be honest." Yet as my colleague
Frances Martel has pointed out, Obama shortened that quote, leaving out
the phrase " and to think and to speak without hypocrisy." Obama's
speech was both dishonest and hypocritical. It was an ominous
introduction to a new policy that might have deserved a chance, were it
not based on such evident disregard for American interests and Cuban
freedom.

For more on the dishonesty of Obama's speech, see Martel's "Line by
Line: Every Empty Promise in Obama's Cuba Speech."

Senior Editor-at-Large Joel B. Pollak edits Breitbart California and is
the author of the new ebook, Wacko Birds: The Fall (and Rise) of the Tea
Party, available for Amazon Kindle.

Follow Joel on Twitter: @joelpollak

Source: Top 10 Lies in Obama's Cuba Speech - Breitbart -
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2014/12/18/top-10-lies-in-obamas-cuba-speech/