Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart - Obama’s Cuba Policy Is Enabling a Dictator

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart: Obama's Cuba Policy Is Enabling a Dictator
Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart 12:57 PM ET

Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart represents Florida's 25th Congressional
District and is Chairman of the Transportation, Housing and Urban
Development Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations.

President Barack Obama continues to appease brutal dictatorships while
gaining precious little in return. He conflates the Cuban dictatorship
with the Cuban people when in reality, their interests are diametrically
opposed. With sweeping arrogance, President Obama acts as though he
stands above history with wisdom that surpasses every American president
since Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first to impose sanctions on the Fidel
Castro regime. Obama's foreign policy is radical even compared to his
own party. President John F. Kennedy imposed many of the first stringent
sanctions against the Castro regime, and President Bill Clinton signed
into law the LIBERTAD Act, which codified sanctions that Obama now opposes.

All eight Cuban-American senators and congressmen from both sides of the
aisle, strongly disagree with him. One would think that he might consult
with us.

The Cuban people simply want to gather peacefully, speak their minds,
practice their faiths, access the Internet, and enjoy the fruits of
their labor. The ailing octogenarians that run Cuba would never allow
those simple liberties. A key point often overlooked is that, under
current law, the president can lift sanctions once free, fair elections
are scheduled, political prisoners are released, and independent press,
organized labor, and political parties are legalized in Cuba. The Cuban
people deserve no less, yet Obama abandoned the U.S. commitment to those
basic goals when he abandoned his most significant leverage to advance them.

Obama's capitulation to dictators apparently has no bounds. In 2001,
five Cuban spies were convicted for conspiracy to commit espionage. One
of those five convicted spies, Gerardo Hernandez, was additionally
serving two life sentences for the murders of innocent Americans and a
legal permanent resident in the shoot-down of civilian aircraft over
international waters. Obama's State and Justice Departments arranged,
while Hernandez was in federal prison, to help him have his wife in Cuba
artificially inseminated. Shortly thereafter, in another striking
concession, Obama commuted his sentence and ordered his release. When
has any president been so embarrassingly eager to appease a brutal,
anti-American, repressive dictatorship?

Obama's policies also hurt the Cuban people by emboldening a regime
already ready to oppress them. Since the president's Dec. 17, 2014
announcement, there have been approximately 1,300 political arrests in
Cuba. During the Obama administration, five pro-democracy activists have
died – Orlando Zapata Tamayo, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, Laura Pollan,
Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero. The Castro regime exports its brand of
violence abroad to Venezuela, where it subverts democratic institutions
and helps to repress the Venezuelan people. And just recently, with the
president's implicit blessing, the Castro dictatorship brazenly flexed
its impunity at the summit in Panama by beating pro-democracy activists,
including American citizens, and ejecting an American journalist from an
international press conference. Three days later, the regime was
rewarded for those human rights abuses with another monumental
concession: removal from the state sponsors of terror list.

Removal from the terrorism list is especially disturbing when the Castro
regime continues to provide safe harbor to one of the FBI's most wanted
terrorists, Joanne Chesimard, terrorist bomb-maker William Morales, and
more than 70 other fugitives from U.S. justice. It also has ties to ETA
and FARC terrorists, supports other rogue states including Syria, Iran,
Venezuela, and North Korea, and provides support to Hamas and Hezbollah.
In July 2013, Panamanian authorities discovered that the North Korean
ship Chong Chon Gang was carrying military weapons that it had loaded
from Cuba. A UN panel of experts determined that the shipment was the
biggest violation of those international sanctions to date. Further, the
Castro regime maintains an extensive espionage network against the
United States. Ana Belen Montes (Defense Intelligence Agency analyst,
serving a 25-year sentence for conspiracy to commit espionage), the five
convicted "WASP" network spies, Walter and Gwendolyn Myers (State
Department analyst and his wife serving sentences for conspiracy to
commit espionage), Elsa and Carlos Alvarez (Florida International
University professor and his wife, serving sentences), and Marta Rita
Velazquez (USAID, indicted but fled to Sweden) are a few examples of
those who have spied on the Castros' behalf against the U.S. in the past
15 years.

Obama's strategy has been an abysmal failure wherever it has been tried.
During the horrific slaughter of Iranian protesters during the summer of
2009, President Obama was nowhere to be found throughout most of that
turmoil. When he finally decided to speak, he declared, "the United
States respects the sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and is
not interfering with Iran's affairs." Defending liberty is hardly
"interference," whether referring to the mullahs in Iran or the Castro
brothers. Instead, it is the minimum required from those of us living in
freedom. As President Obama negotiates with the murderers in Tehran and
Havana, he has excised those regimes' terrorism abroad and atrocities at
home – points any U.S. president should find salient – from the
negotiating table.

One thing is clear: The president will barrel along with his failed
foreign policy agenda regardless of the harm to American security
interests, damage to pro-democracy movements, and the diminishing trust
of our allies. Obama's foreign policy is an aberration in America's long
and proud history of supporting freedom across the globe. The U.S.
Congress continues to stand with the oppressed people of the world
struggling for freedom, and will do all it can to keep the president
from bargaining away every ounce of leverage we have to the world's
worst actors.

Source: Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart: Obama's Cuba Policy Is Enabling a
Dictator | TIME -
http://time.com/3825781/mario-diaz-balart-obamas-cuba-policy/