Can Americans Finally Trust Communist Cuba?

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Can Americans Finally Trust Communist Cuba?

Before Americans ‘leave behind the ideological battles of the past,’ it might be prudent to ask whether the Castro regime has changed its stripes.

United States President Barack Obama made history on March 20 by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge in 1928. During his two-day trip, Mr. Obama met with Cuban dictator Raúl Castro and gave a televised speech to the Cuban people. Both gestures were meant to symbolize the normalization of relations between America and Cuba.

Likening the United States and Cuba to long-estranged brothers struggling to reconnect, President Obama said in his televised address: “I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people.”

President Obama affirmed throughout his speech that the U.S. and Cuba have nothing to fear from each other! He said:

Cuba has a one-party system; the United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model; the United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual. Despite these differences, on Dec. 17, 2014, President Castro and I announced that the United States and Cuba would begin a process to normalize relations between our countries. … From the beginning of my time in office, I’ve urged the people of the Americas to leave behind the ideological battles of the past. We are in a new era.

Before Americans “leave behind the ideological battles of the past,” however, it might be prudent to ask whether the Cuban regime has actually changed.

Humanity came as close as it ever has to the horrors of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Ninety miles from the U.S. border, Fidel and Raúl Castro, the same two men who lead Cuba today, were stockpiling ballistic missiles equipped to carry Soviet nuclear warheads. For those like President Obama who believe this is ancient history with no bearing on the present, it might be necessary to highlight more recent events.

  • In 2011, Cuban officials allowed the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah to set up an operational base in Cuba, according to intelligence reports received by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
  • In 2013, Panama authorities seized a ship carrying “undeclared weapons of war” from Cuba to the North Korean dictatorship of Kim Jong-un in violation of a United Nations resolution against arms trafficking.
  • In 2014, Fox News reported: “Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S.”
  • To this day, convicted police killer and militant Black Panther activist Assata Shakur receives political asylum in Communist Cuba despite being on the fbi most-wanted list.
  • President Obama hasn’t demanded that Cuba abandon communism, terrorism or dictatorial government. Instead he has asked the peoples of America and Cuba to abandon the ideological battles of the past and accept that we have entered a new era. Cuban dissidents are furious with him for betraying their fight to free their homeland from totalitarian communism. American citizens should be deeply concerned that an unrepentant, terrorists-sponsoring Communist regime now has normalized relations with their country.

    Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in a recent editorial:

    You need to beware of what is happening in Cuba. This is a dangerous world. America is like a silly dove walking right into a deadly trap. Cuba isn’t dead. Communism isn’t dead. And Cuba is reemerging as a clear and present danger to the very existence of the United States.

    The Castro regime in Cuba has a half century of history of collaborating with Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea and a myriad of authoritarian regimes that seek the downfall of America. Along with President Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran, the thawing of relations with Cuba will likely be remembered as one of the premiere diplomatic feats of his presidency!