Elian, now officially a Communist; and, should the embargo be lifted?

Macker tells us that Elian Gonzalez joins Cuba's Young Communists



The Clinton administration sealed Elian's fate as property of the Cuban Communist state the moment they sent him back to Cuba. Children in Cuba belong to the state. Period.

Alek Boyd has been visiting Cuba and believes that the US should lift the embargo:

Remove the embargo-rug under Castro's feet, and Cubans will start thinking "hang on a minute, how come we’ve suffered this tremendous ordeal owing to the embargo, and it turns that it has been lifted and yet we continue living in hell?" The current restlessness is likely to expand like wild fire.

Alek proposes,

The US has an historic opportunity now: call upon Raul to negotiate an end to the embargo, whereby sanctions will be lifted provided a set of conditions -- such as freeing all 300+ political prisoners, make recently signed civil and political rights treaties into law*, allow for free and transparent elections to take place, lift travel bans, etc.-- are met.

I'm cool with that.

The outcome may be predictable

The Cuban regime, still ruled by Fidelistas, is likely to refuse.

But that may depend on a large number of other variables, such as, would China try to influence the Cuban regime's decision?

Here is where Alek and I disagree:

The US should lift the embargo nonetheless,making a lot of noise about it, for it stands to regain lost leverage, respect and credibility, putting its many critics to shame.

I don't see how the US will gain credibility by lifting the embargo unconditionally.

Alek may get his wish, however. Erick Holder, who is in Barack Obama's vice-presidential candidate selection team was the Deputy Attorney General who insisted on seizing Elian without a court order:

Napolitano: Tell me, Mr. Holder, why did you not get a court order authorizing you to go in and get the boy?

Holder: Because we didn’t need a court order. INS can do this on its own.

Napolitano: You know that a court order would have given you the cloak of respectability to have seized the boy.

Holder: We didn't need an order.

Napolitano: Then why did you ask the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for such an order if you didn't need one?

Holder: [Silence]

Napolitano: The fact is, for the first time in history you have taken a child from his residence at gunpoint to enforce your custody position, even though you did not have an order authorizing it.

Of course, Holder sustains that Elian was not taken away at gunpoint, too. Tom Blumer wants to know,

Someone should ask Barack Obama if he is at all bothered by Mr. Holder's inability to even recognize when someone is being taken at gunpoint, and how, among all the possible vice-presidential selection committee candidates out there, Mr. Holder was still deemed so deserving. Don't expect that question any time soon.

The Obama team would surely consider that kind of question "a distraction." Of course, as the India Daily editors (who drink deeply from the Obasm well) will tell you, the Communist Cubans will hear Obama's miraculous voice and miraculously "realize the benefits of the free world."

Yeah, right.

UPDATE
Castro's Boy Pawn



Share on Facebook