An American held hostage

An American held hostage, and apparently the Castros don't need an "excuse" to be thugs.
Hillary’s attempt to ease Cuba restrictions didn’t go so well

I’ve been saying for some time now that an attractive candidate for president should be a person with a track record of successfully implementing effective policies that made a positive difference. One of the reasons I’ve written several times about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is that he has done this very thing in Wisconsin.



Then you have candidates who have track records of holding positions and doing things, but when you look at the things that were done, you find a disturbing pattern of extremely poor results. The best example here is Hillary Clinton, whose unshakeable conviction that she should be president is completely unsupported by the results she’s gotten in the positions she’s held. And to further emphasize the point that she is unfit for the presidency, the latest example of a Hillary failure actually comes from something she brags about in her own new book.

That’s right. She doesn’t even understand that the she’s telling us the story of a huge failure on her part - specifically the notion that easing restrictions on Cuba would bring about democratic reform.

The Associated Press reports that, in her new book, Clinton argues the longstanding U.S. embargo against Cuba has been counterproductive because the isolation has actually made it easier for the Castros to resist democratic reforms. She says the embargo “only succeeded in giving (Fidel Castro) a foil to blame for Cuba’s economic woes.” Now I will say you can make an argument for that point of view. But when Clinton’s State Department decided to enact policy reflecting that point of view, what happened? Not only did it result in no democratic reforms, but it helped land American aid worker Alan Gross in a Cuban prison, where he remains to this day:



“We believed that the best way to bring change to Cuba would be to expose its people to the values, information and material comforts of the outside world,” she says.

  The steps that Obama took, including allowing more travel to the island and increasing the amount of money Cuban-Americans can send back to the island, have had a positive effect, she writes.

  However, Clinton notes with disappointment that Cuba arrested and imprisoned Gross, a contractor working for the U.S. Agency for International Development, who the U.S. says was trying to help Cuba’s small Jewish community communicate with the rest of the world. Gross was convicted of trying to subvert the Cuban state and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Despite repeated appeals from the U.S., Gross remains in prison in Cuba.

  In the book, Clinton says she spoke out frequently about Gross’ imprisonment and was disappointed that “the Castros created new problems by arresting” him.

  She said Cuba has refused to consider Gross’ release until the U.S. frees all of the “Cuban Five” spies who have been imprisoned in the United States. The U.S. has rejected Cuba’s demands to link the cases.

  Clinton said she suspected that some in Cuba are using the Gross case “as an opportunity to put the brakes on any possible rapprochement with the United States and the domestic reforms that would require.”

So let’s review the results of this policy:

An American who went to Cuba, on the theory that more positive contact between the two nations would help bring about reform, has been in a Cuban prison since 2009. Not only that, but the Cubans are using his presence there to justify resistance to democratic reforms. In fact, Cuba is enacting no reforms whatsoever.

So what does that tell us about Hillary’s theory that Cuba would open up if we end the embargo? Predictably, it exposes the fundamental flaw in her thinking to begin with. Like most liberals, when bad actors on the world stage do what they do, Hillary finds a way to blame the United States. If they refuse to respect the God-given rights of their people, it must be because of something we’re doing that gives them an excuse. If we just stop being so difficult and confrontational, these thugs will stop being thugs.

How does that work out? It doesn’t. The Castros aren’t oppressive and dictatorial because of anything the United States does. They’re oppressive and dictatorial because that’s who they are.

That is no surprise. But to some degree, this is: The supposedly “shrewd” Hillary Clinton actually uses her desire to ease restrictions on Cuba as an argument in her own favor, in spite of the fact that the results of this policy represent failure in every way. Oh sure, she claims it’s had a positive effect, but everything that actually happened suggests exactly the opposite of that.

This pretty well represents the way Hillary looks at her entire tenure as Secretary of State. She claims we “did good” and “made progress” and whatever, and she brags about how many countries she visited. But where can you look in the world and claim that the U.S. is stronger, or that its relations with other nations, friend or foe, are better? Nowhere. Hillary seems to think that just because she was in a cabinet position and had some theories and tried some stuff, that alone is an argument in her favor. The fact that the stuff she tried didn’t accomplish anything positive seems entirely irrelevant to her.

So what would a Hillary presidency be like? Without a doubt, it would be a never-ending parade of policies that don’t accomplish anything good, but that Hillary nonetheless believes should reflect positively on her record.

She’s more like Obama than many people think. He had Biden out there recently bragging that his stated intention to close Gitmo represented the awesomeness of his presidency, which Rob pointed out is simply bizarre because Gitmo isn’t closed. Now Hillary brags that she tried to bring about reforms in Cuba by easing U.S. restrictions there. But there have been no reforms and an American sits in a Cuban jail.http://www.caintv.com/incoherent-vice-president-cite

Oh well. She meant to do good things! Hillary for president so we can have four years (or more) of disastrous policies we can tell ourselves were intended to work out.