Obama’s Cuban vacation

(Photo: Andrew Harnik – AP)

Many of us generally support President Barack Obama’s decision to re-establish relations with Cuba, but his upcoming trip to the island, including possible attendance at a U.S-Cuba baseball game alongside Cuban dictator Gen. Raúl Castro, is premature, poorly planned and wrong.

You may be asking yourself what’s the big deal about Obama’s plan to watch the Tampa Bay Rays’ exhibition game against the Cuban national team on March 22, during the president’s three-day trip to the island in the first such visit by a U.S. president to Cuba in 88 years. Well, there’s a lot that’s wrong with it.

Even human rights leaders who support Obama’s re-establishment of diplomatic ties with Cuba and oppose the U.S. trade embargo on the island say the idea of Obama happily watching a baseball game in Cuba with Castro at his side, as if the Cuban general were the queen of England, is a blow to the victims of Cuba’s human rights abuses.

Obama should engage Cuba, not befriend Cuba. It’s OK for Obama to go to Cuba and improve political and economic ties, much like the United States has done with China’s dictatorship, but it shouldn’t look like a love fest, they say.

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