Barack Obama’s accommodation with Castroite Cuba is a low point in the history of American international relations. Benjamin Franklin affirmed, “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.” The Obama administration, in its attitudes on Iran, Syria, and Ukraine as well as on Cuba, appears to prefer the principle, “Where tyranny dwells, there is my country.”
About Cuba, consider historical precedents. The 1972 opening by president Richard Nixon to Communist China, then in the turmoil of the Maoist Cultural Revolution, realized a justifiable foreign policy goal—a common response to Soviet intrigues—and was cautious and narrow. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, encouraging the abandonment of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe, stayed firm in calling for genuine change before they would embrace new political authorities in the former Soviet empire. Labor rights were granted beginning in Poland, media censorship was abolished in Moscow, the Berlin Wall was torn down, and free elections were held in the former party-states. All furnished sensational evidence of an authentic transformation.
In 25 years since the Wall was demolished, new developments have been uneven in the European post-Communist states, with which Cuba shares the greatest political heritage. Some are thriving; others are bogged down and have failed to reform completely. The real success stories comprise the former East Germany, Poland, and the Baltic states. Yet from Russia to North Korea, arbitrary misrule and cronyism endure. The former Russo-Cuban puppet states in Africa—especially Angola—have advanced economically, but still deal with the abiding consequences of their past.
The rest of the European post-Communist lands have, at least, restored intellectual freedom, even when slow to restructure economically, and in certain instances, politically. In some, ex-Communist cadres have regained power by a fair vote as Socialists, or stayed inside state institutions.
The Czech Republic, long an object of great hope, suffers economically. In Hungary, prime minister Viktor Orbán has been described accurately by John McCain as a “neo-fascist dictator.” The Yugoslav successor polities must contend with the effects of the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, as well as corruption and resistance to dismantling of statist economies in Slovenia and Croatia, which have joined the European Union. Bosnia-Herzegovina is partitioned. Serbia is a black hole and will remain one, probably, for decades.
Nevertheless, cultural life has undergone an impressive rebirth in all the ex-Communist societies of Europe, including Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Moldova. If people in some of these lands are still mostly poor and ruled by venal bureaucracies, they have widespread access to the Internet and independent media, and generally free expression.
President Obama’s approval among active-duty service members has plummeted to just 15 percent, with a majority of those in the military — 55 percent — saying they disapprove of the president, according to a survey from the Military Times published Monday.
It is more or less a constant in history that soldiers know a leader (and a winner)—and can instinctively spot weakness.
Secretary of State John Kerry used the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the devastating earthquake and subsequent tsunami in the Indian Ocean region as a reminder about climate change. The earthquake released huge walls of water that inundated a number of coastal regions in both Asia and Africa just before Christmas in 2004. Kerry recalls hearing the news:
I’ll never forget hearing the news of the tsunami that struck in the Indian Ocean 10 years ago. The images were gut-wrenching: entire towns razed from Indonesia to Somalia; raging waters sweeping away people’s homes; hundreds of thousands killed and many more separated from their families.
Today of all days, we pause to remember those we lost—from farmers and fishers to travelers from our own lands. I know that there are no words to express such a horrific loss. There’s no way to wipe away the pain of parents who lost a child, or children who lost their parents and were forced to assume adult responsibilities at a tender age.
We recognize the millions of people who contributed to the recovery effort. And we honor those who have continued to work in the years since to help the victims pick up the pieces and rebuild their communities. The tsunami was one of the worst we have ever seen, but it brought out the best in all of us.
However, Kerry went on to say that the tsunami "sounded a warning" about climate change as well:
It also sounded a warning. We know that many regions are already suffering historic floods and rising sea levels. And scientists have been saying for years that climate change could mean more frequent and disastrous storms, unless we stop and reverse course. Last year I visited the Philippines and saw the devastation of Typhoon Haiyan. It is incomprehensible that that kind of storm – or worse – could become the norm. The time to act on climate change is now – before it’s too late to heed the warning.
On this day of reflection, we mourn with our friends in Asia and Africa who were affected by this terrible disaster. We commit to the hard work still ahead to help the region build safer, more resilient communities. And we pledge our best efforts to leave our children and grandchildren a safer and more sustainable planet. Future generations are counting on us.
Kerry did not indicate what kind of efforts could be taken to mitigate the effects of a similar tsunami in the future.
Having twice visited Castro's Cuba -- once during the 1970s, when Cuban troops were fighting in Angola and Mozambique, and again a dozen years ago, long after the Soviet subsidies had disappeared -- I can attest that the place is a horror.
It's a tropical police state with near-absolute income equality: Just about everybody is impoverished, neighbors inform on neighbors, and the person shining your shoes or mixing your cocktail is likely to possess a master's degree. In ramshackle Havana, if you step onto the sidewalk in coat and tie, you will be immediately surrounded by men selling women, cigars, family heirlooms. Even the famous 1950s American automobiles -- DeSotos, Nash Ramblers, Studebakers -- are held together with rusty screws and masking tape, belching smoke.
Having said that, however, I believe that President Obama has made the right decision to establish formal diplomatic relations with Cuba, and to relax (in some as-yet-unspecified form) the American embargo.
To be sure, it is a mistake to suggest, as Obama has, that the embargo has "not worked," or is misguided: In fact, as a means of isolating the Castro regime, the embargo has worked very well. It was part, although a relatively small part, of the wider American policy of containing the Soviet Union. So the embargo is not a mistake but an anachronism: Once the Soviet Union collapsed, a quarter-century ago, the rationale for the embargo ended as well.
Back to diplomatic relations. Of course, no one who has ever set foot inside the U.S. "interests section" in Havana, which is approximately the size of Madison Square Garden, could believe that we have not had some form of diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1961. "Normalizing" ties, therefore, is a purely symbolic act. Still, there should be no mistaking what this means. Diplomatic recognition does not imply approval of the government in question, nor is it inconsistent with sanctions and embargoes -- as the Russians and Venezuelans can attest. Diplomatic recognition is not a gesture of friendship but an acknowledgment of reality: The present government in Havana, for good but mostly ill, has been in power since 1959, and the United States is prepared to concede the fact.
The problem is that we have a history of withholding recognition as a sign of disapproval, and at the State Department in particular, policies have a way of settling into stasis. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the United States declined to recognize Soviet Russia until presidential candidate Franklin Roosevelt made it a campaign issue in 1932. Moreover, this tendency was codified by adoption of the Stimson Doctrine, named for President Hoover's secretary of state, Henry Stimson, who after the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria refused to recognize its puppet government. Between 1949 and 1971, the United States did not recognize the People's Republic of China; no diplomatic relations existed between Vietnam and the United States during 1975-95. The United States and Iran have not exchanged ambassadors in 35 years.
Just one week after overrunning a district in the northern province of Jawzjan, the Afghan Taliban are now touting the existence of a training camp in neighboring Faryab province.
This is not what one would expect of an enemy that is reputed to hide in the shadows and attack in the dark.
The Taliban publicized the training camp, which they claimed is in the northern province of Faryab, in an hour-long video that was released on Dec. 18 on their official propaganda website, Voice of Jihad.
The Taliban has a media arm of which it is, evidently, quite proud, saying:
… the video was produced by "The workers of Multimedia Branch of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan's Cultural Commission" and created to "notify us about the ongoing situation in Faryab province, Mujahideen military advancements and other noticeable achievements.”
And you can bet it will never be intimidated; never back down the way Sony did.
As the historically minded will recall, back in 2012 the Obama administration declared that the United States “will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific.” That was the guidance the commander in chief gave to the U.S. military, the idea being that since, the peace of Europe was eternal and self-sustaining, and the Middle East was a mess made by George Bush, that the most important mission for the 21st century was to keep an eye on the Chinese, the “rising” great power.
Our Asian allies were very pleased by this, particularly the Japanese who had become a frequent target for expressions of Chinese nationalism incited by the government in Beijing. But the South Koreans, Southeast Asians, and the Australians – who had just published a defense white paper speculating about the retreat of the United States from the region – were likewise reassured when the U.S. Navy announced that it would base 60 percent of its ships in the Pacific. There will soon be 2,500 Marines based in Darwin, in northern Australia, too.
East Asia’s enthusiasm for this “pivot” – the term initially pedaled by the White House – has subsided substantially since then. In the part of the Pacific that matters most, the waters of the western Pacific from the Sea of Japan through the South China Sea to the Malacca Strait, the U.S. military is decreasing toward a vanishing point. Budget cuts are slashing the overall size of the armed forces and the wars of the Middle East remain a giant, sucking chest wound that demands attention, exposing the Pacific Pivot as all hat, no cattle.
A good way to measure this is to chart the deployments of the five aircraft carriers that comprise the backbone of the Pacific Fleet. Looking at the official Navy information catalogued by the website STRATFOR reveals how gaping the American absence has become. In the 32 months from May of 2012 through this December, there have been 12 months where there has been no aircraft carrier – none – in the area controlled by the 7th Fleet, the command that oversees the western Pacific. In only four of those 32 months have there been two carriers in the region; in such a large area, that’s probably the absolute minimum requirement for any kind of effective presence and deterrence. The numbers would be even worse but for the fact that the USS George Washington, which is based in Yokosuka, Japan, was constantly at work; alone it accounted for more than 80 percent of the total carrier presence in this period. Alas, the George Washington is about to undergo the periodic overhaul of its nuclear powerplant, a process that will take it out of service for about two years. Today’s 10-carrier Navy can’t come up with a substitute until next summer, when the USS Ronald Reagan may begin to operate from Japan.
Having a problem with your Comcast cable? No problem--that is if you fall into the following categories: "congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians." Just talk to a Comcast lobbyist.
In a lengthy piece on how NBC's David Gregroy was fired, the Washingtonian reveals the cable company's way of "sucking up to Washington."
Comcast also had an even more personal way of sucking up to Washington. Its government-affairs team carried around “We’ll make it right” cards stamped with “priority assistance” codes for fast-tracking help and handed them out to congressional staffers, journalists, and other influential Washingtonians who complained about their service.
Comcast, however, maintains this VIP treatment is not exclusive to powerful people in Washington.
A Comcast spokeswoman says this practice isn’t exclusive to DC; every Comcast employee receives the cards, which they can distribute to any customer with cable or internet trouble. Nevertheless, efforts like this one have surely helped Comcast boost its standing inside the Beltway and improve its chances of winning regulatory approval for its next big conquest: merging with the second-largest cable provider in the country, Time Warner Cable.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who wrote an op-ed for the Miami Herald along with Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, evoked Ronald Reagan's timeless challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall in 1987, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." In reference to President Obama's recently announced policy changes toward communist Cuba, Kerry wrote, "[T]he president’s decision will support new efforts to tear down the digital wall that isolates Cubans."
Kerry is not the first administration official to draw the allusion. In October 2014, less than two months ago, U.S. Ambassador Ronald D. Godard of the U.S. mission to the U.N. used the same phrase, ironically enough, in justifying the continuation of the U.S.'s late policy toward Cuba as he explained the U.S. vote against a Cuban-backed resolution. Twenty-three times the United Nations has sided with Cuba and voted overwhelmingly to condemn the U.S. embargo of Cuba; as was the case last year when the same resolution was introduced, Israel alone sided with the United States in voting no.
Interestingly, however, Ambassador Godard called the "digital wall" a wall of "censorship," emphasizing the free speech violation imposed by the communist government of Cuba. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the Cuban government, which keeps the wall in place while "disingenuously blaming U.S. policy" for its own failures:
The Cuban government now claims to share our goal of helping the Cuban people access the Internet. Yet the Cuban government has failed to offer widespread access to the Internet through its high speed cable with Venezuela. Instead, it continues to impose barriers to information for the Cuban people while disingenuously blaming U.S. policy.
Moreover, the Cuban government continues to detain Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for facilitating Internet access for Cuba’s small Jewish community. The United States calls on Cuba to release Mr. Gross immediately, allow unrestricted access to the Internet, and tear down the digital wall of censorship it has erected around the Cuban people.
Kerry, on the other hand, spoke of a "digital wall that isolates Cubans," placing the emphasis on "isolation":
[T]he president’s decision will support new efforts to tear down the digital wall that isolates Cubans. The country has an Internet penetration rate of 5 percent, among the lowest in the world. Prices are high, and services are limited. Under the new policy, we will permit the sale of technology that will begin to unleash the transformative effects of the Internet on the island.
It's the 2000s all over again. The New York Times has an editorial this morning calling for the prosection of Vice President Dick Cheney -- and others! -- for helping to keep America safe. But for some reason the paper lets George W. Bush off the hook.
The paper writes:
The American Civil Liberties Union is to give Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. a letter Monday calling for appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate what appears increasingly to be “a vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious crimes.”
The question everyone will want answered, of course, is: Who should be held accountable? That will depend on what an investigation finds, and as hard as it is to imagine Mr. Obama having the political courage to order a new investigation, it is harder to imagine a criminal probe of the actions of a former president.
But any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.
For the Times, it's "not about payback," they claim. "Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments. Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions."
Fox News reported this morning on two brave utility workers, employed by Con Edison, who chased the New York City cop murderer from the crime scene to the subway:
"There are heroes involved in this story that we do want to tell you about this morning because there were two guys who worked for Con Edison, which is the electric company here in New York, and they witnessed this happen, they witnessed him killing the two officers working in their car working overtime, and they chased him down the street and they say that the suspect turns around and holds the gun in front of them and says, 'You want some of this?' They backed up a little bit. They watched the suspect run underground to go catch the G train in Brooklyn. And that's when they called the police.
"Police officers storm in, they go underground. And that's when the suspect turned the gun on himself. But if it weren't for these two men who work for Con Ed, or women, I'm not sure what their sexes are, but if it weren't for these two individuals that suspect may have gotten on the G train and gone somewhere into New York City, or wherever the train was going, and killed other officers. There's no telling what could have happened. These guys are heroes this morning, and we thank them," said the Fox News host.
President Obama said the hacking of Sony was an act of "cyber vandalism," and not an "act of war." He made the comments in an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley, according to a transcript provided by the network.
CROWLEY: Do you think this was an act of war by North Korea?
OBAMA: No, I don't think it was an act of war. I think it was an act of cyber vandalism that was very costly, very expensive. We take it very seriously. We will respond proportionately, as I said.
But, you know, we're going to be in an environment in this new world where so much is digitalized that both state and non-state actors are going to have the capacity to disrupt our lives in all sorts of ways. We have to do a much better job of guarding against that. We have to treat it like we would treat, you know, the incidence of crime, you know, in our countries.
When other countries are sponsoring it, we take it very seriously. But, you know, I think this is something that we can manage...
(COUGHING)
OBAMA: But that's something that I think we can manage through, as long as public-private sector is working together.
In an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley, President Obama took a shot at pundits--and Putin. He made the comments in response to a question about whether he's getting rolled in his deal with Cuba.
"So let me move you on to the other big story that we've had, and that is your reach out or Cuba's reach to you and your reach to Cuba," Crowley started, according to a transcript provided by CNN. "Listening to the critics, part of this is they wrap it up in how you dealt with other sort of bad actors. Oh, this is what he's done. He's accommodated Syria by not crossing the red line. He has accommodated Iran by talking to them on nuclear weapons. You know, and sort of down the line, Russia -- he's allowed Putin to move in and take Crimea. And here's the gist of it. The gist of it is that you're naive and they're rolling you."
Obama responded, "Yes. So this was said about Mr. Putin, for example, three or four months ago. There was a spate of stories about how he is the chess master and outmaneuvering the West and outmaneuvering Mr. Obama and this and that and the other. And right now, he's presiding over the collapse of his currency, a major financial crisis and a huge economic contraction.
"That doesn't sound like somebody who has rolled me or the United States of America.
"There is this knee-jerk sense, I think, on the part of some in the foreign policy establishment that, you know, shooting first and thinking about it second, uh, projects strength. I disagree with.
"We have been very firm with respect to those countries that we think are violating international law or are acting against our interests.
"But I have been consistent in saying that where we can solve problems diplomatically, we should do so.
"You look at an example like Iran, over the last year and a half, since we began negotiations with them, that's probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade."
CROWLEY: And we know that for sure...
OBAMA: And we know that...
CROWLEY: -- that they have not.
OBAMA: -- we -- that's not just verified by the United Nations and the IEA -- IAEA and ourselves, even critics of our policy like the Netanyahu government in Israel, their intelligence folks have acknowledged that, in fact, Iran has not made progress.
So Cuba offers us an example of an opportunity to try something different. For 50 years, we've tried to see if we can overthrow the regime through isolation. It hasn't worked. If we engage, we have the opportunity to influence the course of events at a time when there's going to be some generational change in that country. And I think we should seize it and I intend to do so.
New York Police Department chief Bill Bratton said that "some people get caught up" in the "anti-police" movement:
"Let's face it: There's been, not just in New York but throughout the country, a very strong anti-police, anti-criminal justice system, anti-societal set of initiatives underway and one of the unfortunate aspects sometimes is some people get caught up in these and go in directions they should not," said Bratton, seemingly referring to the protests in response to the killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island.
Bratton, who reporters said was "shaken up," was responding to the murder of two New York City police officers today in Brooklyn.
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