State Department Recommends Removing Cuba From Terrorism List

by JASmius



And O threw America's legs in the air for the Castros almost four months ago, too.  What the hell took him so long?:

The State Department has recommended that Barack Obama remove Cuba from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide said on Thursday.

Obama, speaking while on a short visit to Jamaica, said only that the State Department had completed its review but that he was waiting for a recommendation from his advisers and would not announce a decision on Thursday.

Uh-huh.  Oh, yeah, he's totally undecided on this one.

"State has recommended they be removed from the list," said the Senate aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Removing Cuba from the list would clear a major obstacle in the effort to restore diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana, paving the way for the reopening of embassies that have been shut for fifty four years, and signal momentum in ending America's isolation from the Communist island nation.

That last clause is why I get motion-sick whenever I read a newspaper.  "America's isolation from [Cuba]"?  That is 180 degrees bass-ackwards.  The whole point of the embargo for over half a century was to isolate Cuba from us and the rest of the world.  At which it had varying levels of success, admittedly, but that was due to the weakness and foolishness of other countries, including otherwise Western allies, not any fault of the policy itself.  Leave it to Reuters to take not even four paragraphs to make me have to lunge for the Dramamine.

The criteria for the disposition of Castroid Cuba vis-a-vie the Foggy Bottom terrorism sponsor list ought to be very simple: Was putting the regime in question on the list justified?  Yes.  Has that regime changed since it was put on said list thirty-three years ago?  No.  Conclusion?  They should stay on the damn list.  But then the logical conclusion from that is that the U.S. should not be embracing the Castros in the first place.  And The One couldn't let anything like that not happen.

But, in all fairness, since Iran and Hezbollah were removed from the list three weeks ago, why not Fidel and Raul?  At the rate this list-churn is going, it's going to become a guest invitation list before too much longer, leaving plenty of room on the terrorism sponsor list for Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Ukraine, Sweden, NATO.....