The Editorial Board of the New York Times made news on Saturday, when it published a special editorial calling on President Obama to “End the U.S. Embargo on Cuba:”
Scanning a map of the world must give President Obama a sinking feeling as he contemplates the dismal state of troubled bilateral relationships his administration has sought to turn around. He would be smart to take a hard look at Cuba, where a major policy shift could yield a significant foreign policy success.
For the first time in more than 50 years, shifting politics in the United States and changing policies in Cuba make it politically feasible to re-establish formal diplomatic relations and dismantle the senseless embargo…
He must — and he should see it as an opportunity to make history.
Specifically, the Times urged Obama to seize the occasion of the Seventh Summit of the Americas, which will be held in Panama City in April 2015, not only to break the elephant-in-the-room tradition of excluding Cuba, but also to formally announce the end of the embargo.
I agree. In fact, I can probably be forgiven for thinking that this critically acclaimed editorial board is just following my lead. After all, I’ve been calling on U.S. presidents to “end the U.S. embargo on Cuba” for decades.
Except that I’ve been urging them to do so more as a moral/categorical imperative than just to have another feather in their political cap. I remember evoking utter consternation among classmates in the early 1980s, for example, when I posited immoral equivalence between America’s embargo and South Africa’s apartheid.
I first framed the issue as commentator in “President Bush, Help Fulfill the Pope’s Legacy: Lift the Embargo against Cuba,” April 11, 2005, which I published just weeks after inaugurating this weblog. Here is an excerpt:
It is doubtful that any world leader has ever given a more convincing endorsement of the Pope’s moral authority. Therefore, one might expect Bush to be inspired to help fulfill the Pope’s legacy by honoring the clear moral tone he set for dealing with Cuba.
Long before he actually visited Cuba in 1998, the Pope decried America’s policy towards Cuba as ‘oppressive, unjust, and ethically unacceptable.’ During that historic visit he reiterated that:
‘…imposed isolation strikes the people indiscriminately, making it ever more difficult for the weakest to enjoy the bare essentials of decent living, things such as food, health and education….’
It is noteworthy, however, that the Pope never granted Castro absolution for his dictatorship. Because he was equally unrelenting in his condemnation of Cuba’s human rights abuses, imprisonment of political dissidents, and stifling of religious freedom…
But, demonstrating that he was not entirely averse to politics, the Pope also admonished Cuban Americans to seek reconciliation. He was clearly aware that these exiles, most of whom live in Miami, are primarily responsible for the irrational and uncompromising policy the U.S. has maintained towards Cuba for all these years…
Therefore, instead of merely extolling the Pope’s moral authority, President Bush should rise above political pandering and heed his call to end America’s inhumane and immoral embargo against Cuba. After all, when a communist dictator can claim papal sanction to dismiss the president of the United States as a hypocrite, this alone should cause a God-fearing president like George W. Bush to reexamine his policies, if not his soul.
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Truth be told, though, I harbored no hope that, despite his public adoration, Bush would heed the Pope’s admonition. Not least because he was clearly more concerned about his political legacy – which, ironically, compelled him to strengthen the embargo – than he was about his everlasting soul.
By contrast, I not only harbored this hope when Obama was elected, but was sufficiently mindful of the politics that would militate against him ending the embargo that I noted he could do so only in his second term … when he had “nothing” to lose.
Specifically, here is the prescient call I made on the occasion of the Fifth Summit of the Americas in 2009:
I am convinced that, if re-elected, Obama will seal his legacy by lifting the embargo and normalizing relations with Cuba….
(“Fifth Summit of the Americas: Managing Expectations,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 17, 2009)
Of course, Obama was duly re-elected. Accordingly, I remain, well, hopeful that he will heed my call – with all due respect to the Editorial Board of the New York Times and other Johnnies-come-lately.
Related commentaries:
President Bush…Pope…
Fifth summit…