Do I have a problem with Obama without any input from congress undoing a longstanding Cuba policy for no apparently good reason? I think so. Is it going to help the Cuban people and lead to more freedoms for them? Seems unlikely - in fact this may guarantee that another generation of socialist pricks is motivated to keep the abuse in place after the Castros soon depart. Obama claims he is now well sutuated to influence that next generation because his largesse has bought good will which strikes one as remarkably naive - reality seems to be rather you've surrendered your main leverage for bringing about such change and in doing so generated optics that say to all our enemies out there that under Obama American will remain weak, pliable, ingratiating and apologetic.
In short Obama's rationale for this gesture doesn't make much sense - unless of course the whole point of it is to keep the socialist loving base happy and related to that but of more significance possibly pave the way for getting rid of Gitmo - and my guess is, since the move is hard to justify otherwise, that's exactly what's going on here.
People who defend the action by saying the embargo etc. hasn't worked are missing the point - a statement has been made regarding what kind of regimes America will tolerate at its borders, if you back away from that statement without getting anything in return that is a capitulation that sends a message that is quite different. Yes Nixon went to China but we got something strategically in return that was valuable - yes we normalized relations with another questionable regime in Vietnam but again strategically we get something out of them - what does Obama's capitulation get us strategically? Nothing good or worth the bad optics that I can see. The only person's interests served by this action seem to be Obama's and his progressive acolytes - but then again I guess we should not be surprised by this.
People who defend the action by saying the embargo etc. hasn't worked are missing the point - a statement has been made regarding what kind of regimes America will tolerate at its borders, if you back away from that statement without getting anything in return that is a capitulation that sends a message that is quite different. Yes Nixon went to China but we got something strategically in return that was valuable - yes we normalized relations with another questionable regime in Vietnam but again strategically we get something out of them - what does Obama's capitulation get us strategically? Nothing good or worth the bad optics that I can see. The only person's interests served by this action seem to be Obama's and his progressive acolytes - but then again I guess we should not be surprised by this.