What's Happening With Cuba?
Biden's Afghanistan Debacle Has Superceded Events from July 11 in Cuba. What's Happening?
President Biden may have made the worst foreign policy blunder of a generation (or two, or three) with how he directed America’s withdrawal from a NATO mission. Still, there’s a good chance he’s blundering his way through other ongoing policy crises as well. After all, he’s been consistently wrong for 40 years.
But maybe not. It was just 42 or so days ago that we talked about the protests and uprisings in Cuba. Thousands of frustrated and desperate Cubans took the streets to protest their lack of food, adequate health care, and freedom. Cuba’s totalitarian communist government promptly cracked down, taking away internet access for the Island and sending thugs into streets to beat and torture residents.
Whatever happened to efforts to restore internet access for Cubans? What happened to suggestions from US Senators such as Florida’s Marco Rubio of using the Organization of Americans States (OAS) to intervene with Cuba’s repression and never-ending human rights violations? Not much, apparently.
While Cuba’s dictator brags to a Russian propaganda outlet about how the protests have stopped, nothing has gotten better on the impoverished Island. COVID has strained their nation to a breaking point, and they continue to point fingers at a US embargo that doesn’t restrict food and medicine.
Cuban Americans in Miami are still protesting against the oppressive Cuban government.
Cuba continues to develop and peddle their own vaccines to stop COVID spread. How’s that working out? Cuba’s doctors are now protesting.
Meanwhile, the Cuban-American official behind America’s immigration breakdown at the southern US border takes time for “listening sessions” with Cuban Americans. Why is the Biden Administration continuing their allegedly “hard-line” approach with Cuba while recklessly abandoning Afghanistan? Domestic politics, more than likely. Britain's former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, said as much about Afghanistan. Given Democratic Party concerns about the Cuban American vote and, of course, the potential 2024 presidential candidacy of Florida’s popular Governor, Ron DeSantis, it is fair to assume that politics is the guiding force behind Biden’s foreign policy activities, as poorly thought out at they it may seem.
We used to have a saying on Capitol Hill; good policy makes good politics. It seems the Biden crowd has turned that bass-ackwards and thinks what it considers good politics (how’s that working out?) will result in good policy.
And while Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Anthony Mayorkis have opened the border to immigrants risking their lives to cross our border with the help of Mexican drug cartels, The Biden Administration is turning away Cubans fleeing their island workers’ paradise.
Meanwhile, too little is being paid to the disastrous consequences of the latest devastating earthquake in Haiti. Please support US aid efforts from organizations like Food for the Poor, Samaritan’s Purse, and others to rescue lives?
It seems odd, even inconsistent that we are turning away a few Cubans fleeing for freedom while keeping our southern border wide open and commandeering airlines to shuttle Afghan refugees. But Cuba has a history of opening its jails and shipping “undesirables” to our shores.
The crisis in Cuba continues and appears to be getting worse, and we have more questions than answers. It remains worthy of our time and attention, while Biden’s Afghanistan disaster continues.