Conservative Refocus

By Barry Secrest

“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about” stated Senator Marco Rubio, of Sen. Rand Paul, when Rubio was challenged on his criticism of Barack Obama’s latest capitulation, this time to Cuba, and Rand Paul’s stated support of Obama’s position.

President Obama’s Cuba give away  “will significantly set back the hopes of freedom and democracy for the Cuban people,” Mr. Rubio said Wednesday.

“It is disgraceful for a president who claims to treasure human rights and human freedom. This president is the single worst negotiator we have had in the White House in my lifetime.”

After Rubio’s challenge to Rand Paul, the Kentucky Senator responded:

Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz backed Rubio with the following statements:

“This is yet another manifestation of the failures of the Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy,” the senator said on Fox News Wednesday. “This announcement today will be remembered as a tragic mistake.”

“The Castros are the ones who have decided to be brutal, repressive dictators,” Cruz said. “And we should not be taking blame for the fact that we responded to their active acts of war and hostility.”

The debate, however, is only getting started.

After Cuba’s receiving the gift that keeps on giving from fellow hard-leftist Obama, Cuba’s dictatorial leaders actually issued a demand and a warning aimed directly towards Obama and the US.

From (Reuters) : ” President Raul Castro demanded on Saturday that the United States respect Cuba’s communist rule as the two countries work to restore diplomatic ties, and warned that Cuban-American exiles might try to sabotage the rapprochement.U.S. President Barack Obama this week reset Washington’s Cold War-era policy on Cuba and the two countries swapped prisoners in a historic deal after 18 months of secret talks.

Cubans have treated the end of open U.S. hostility as a triumph, especially the release of three Cuban intelligence agents who served long U.S. prison terms for spying on Cuban exile groups in Florida.

U.S. officials will visit Havana in January to start talks on normalizing relations and Obama has said his government will push Cuba on issues of human and political rights as they negotiate over the coming months.

Castro said he is open to discussing a wide range of issues but that they should also cover the United States and he insisted Cuba would not give up its socialist principles.

“In the same way that we have never demanded that the United States change its political system, we will demand respect for ours,” Castro told the National Assembly.

He again praised Obama for the policy change in a speech that became a partly defiant, partly celebratory show of pride for resisting five decades of U.S. aggression.

Despite the markedly improved tone in relations, Castro said Cuba faces a “long and difficult struggle” before the United States removes a decades-old economic embargo against the Caribbean island, in part because influential Cuban-American exiles will attempt to “sabotage the process".

Obama has pledged to remove economic sanctions against Cuba but he still needs the Republican-controlled Congress to lift the embargo. Castro confirmed he will take part in a Summit of the Americas in Panama in April, potentially setting up a first meeting with Obama since they shook hands at Nelson Mandela’s funeral a year ago.”

Ahem…no good deed goes unpunished.

Obama has once again proven the very same lessons both he and his administration keep forgetting–appeasement towards violent authoritarian nation states , only attracts more aggression and ever less respect.

From former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, comes these highly experienced truths with regard to aggression between nations:

“There is no greater mistake than to suppose that platitudes, smooth words, and timid policies offer a path to safety. “How many wars have been averted by patience and good will? An appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile hoping it will eat him last.”

“When nations are strong, they are not always just and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong. Victory will never be found by taking the line of least resistance.”