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

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