When President Barack Obama arrives in Havana next month, he will be greeted by an old-school autocrat, hungry for resources to sustain his oppressive regime. His visit will do little to improve the lives of every day Cubans, but it will significantly strengthen the regime that rules them at gunpoint. It is clear that human rights are not at the forefront of the administration’s Cuba policy, so this rapprochement will do little else than to lend unearned legitimacy to a murderous dictatorship. No sitting U.S. president has set foot on Cuban soil since Calvin Coolidge visited the democratically-elected Cuban President Gerardo Machado in 1928.
The reason: for over half a century, the island-nation has been ruled by a military dictatorship born from a bloody revolution and preserved through foreign-subsidized repression. Led by Raul Castro, the Cuban regime has murdered, imprisoned, and silenced countless of its own citizens. Internationally, it has actively worked to undermine democracy in the Americas, using its puppet in Venezuela to incubate and spread the anti-democratic disease that ails most of the Western Hemisphere. READ MORE
