President Obama extends Cuban embargo

From this article:

" President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of the law used to impose the trade embargo on Cuba, disappointing those who favored allowing the law to expire as a friendly nod to Havana while reassuring others who oppose easing the sanctions.

The extension of the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWTEA) was largely symbolic. While it was used by President John F. Kennedy as the legal basis for slapping the embargo on Havana, another law would have kept those sanctions in place even if Obama had not signed the extension."

I debated posting this in MPSIMS instead of here, but this seems to be the forum to discuss politics.

From my perspective this is a good political move for the President, he does not need to be seen getting closer to communists just at the time when he is being accused of being a socialist.

And there may be more to this than meets the eye, just last month Bill Richardson was in Cuba on a free trade mission, calling for more open trade between the US and Cuba. This move by the President is strictly symbolic and does not affect the current trade situation. The Cuban embargo is governed by the Helms Burton act, and removing it would require Congress to change the law. So maybe this signing is Obama’s way to having his cake and eating it too. He can say he upheld the embargo, and at the same time if Congress modifies the embargo or removes he can sign that into law and not be seen as supporting a communist government.

However I hope that any change in the embargo takes into account some reciprocity from the Cuban government. Just a few days ago from the following article:

" The Cuban government has denied exit permits to about 30 Cuban college students who had been offered U.S. government-funded scholarships for academic programs at American academic institutions.

Not only did the students lose the chance to attend classes for free in the United States, but some were accused of ideologically losing their way and were expelled from their colleges in Cuba. Those who were members of the Communist Youth Union were booted out, several students said.

``I’ve been told that I have been expelled from the university and that I have a hearing pending with the Communist Youth, where I am to receive a temporary sanction due to the fact that, in self-criticism, I acknowledged having applied for the scholarship,‘’ wrote a student selected for a leadership program in the United States. "

And from last week:

" HAVANA, Sept 10 (Reuters) - A Cuban appeals court on Thursday upheld a two-year prison sentence for a Havana man who was jailed last month after he appeared in a widely viewed YouTube video shouting there was hunger in Cuba.

In a hearing closed to the press, Juan Carlos Gonzalez Marcos, known as “Panfilo,” asked that his sentence for the crime of “dangerousness” be reduced, but a panel of judges refused the request, said Richard Rosello of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights."

Read that again, sentenced to two years in prison for saying he was hungry. This is called “dangerousness” in Cuba. (They would have been better off sentencing for something like public drunkenness because, if you see video, Panfilo was wasted!)

:mad: Then he was a liar when he said he was hungry! (Alcohol is a food, you know.)

I thought the consensus on the SDMB was that the embargo was a stupid idea. What is the point of Obama extending the law if it doesn’t extend the embargo?

Running in two directions at once doesn’t make any sense. If the embargo is dumb, lift it. If it is needed, leave it.

But this kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth (if that is what he wants) doesn’t gain him any credit - be fish or fowl, for heaven’s sake.

Regards,
Shodan

It does. Read the OP. Or even the thread title.

I was talking about this part -

So, Obama is making a symbolic gesture in exactly the opposite direction that the guy he wanted as Commerce Secretary (only, oops) just finished pushing. Is it a good idea to open up trade with Cuba, or not? It seemed to be such a great idea a few years back. :wink: Now - not so much.

Regards,
Shodan

So what if Richardson has different ideas from Obama. That’s actually healthy. Besides, Richardson isn’t the Commerce Secretary. If he were, they would have a healthy debate, reach a conclusion, and Richardson would execute. But it would ultimately be Obama’s decision. There’s no “gotcha” here, so let it go.

I don’t know about a consensus, but I certainly believe that extending the embargo past the end of the Cold War was stupid, and every Congress and every President that has contributed to extending the embargo since then is contributing to stupidity.

Yes, that includes St. Obama. He is, by this action, in my opinion, contributing to stupidity, and I am disappointed.

Obama is a bit of a disapointment isn’t he? From the start I knew he was far to right-leaning for me, but I still thought he had real character and some balls. Looks like he’s just a black Clinton.

You’re right, he is not the Commerce Secretary. However he was the President’s first choice for the post, and it would be naive to think that he was acting completely on his own during his trip to Cuba.

Not if extending the embargo is stupid. Then it’s not healthy, it’s dumb.

Of course it is. So why did he decide to sign the bill extending the embargo?

The OP is suggesting that perhaps Obama is trying to have it both ways. That isn’t going to work.

If extending the embargo is a good idea, because of human rights violations in Cuba as mentioned, then Obama will look stupid if he later tries to lift the embargo. If extending the embargo is a bad idea, the way Richardson (and the SDMB) suggest, then Obama looks stupid now for this symbolic gesture.

Obama says he wants to ease the embargo. He wants to ease travel restrictions to Cuba. He says the embargo hasn’t worked the way we wanted, but he wants to maintain it.

Maybe we need to re-debate it -

Resolved: the trade embargo on Cuba is a good idea, and should be maintained.

Discuss.

Regards,
Shodan

Of course it’s going to work and the OP explained why quite completely and satisfactorily.

Jesus fucking christ, just drop the embargo and travel restrictions already.

When I was visiting a buddy in Germany and the weather was sucky he suggested we hit Cuba for a long weekend, would have cost me $250 euros, included airfare. He was amazed when I told him if I did I would have to move in with him as I would have serious passport re-entry issues if customs saw a cuban stamp on my passport. We didn’t go. [the only place I could legally go in Cuba is Gitmo, since at the time I was a military dependant]

What damage could going for Mojitos in Havana do to our country?

Christ on a crutch, I could go to Peking, Moscow, Hanoi or Pyongyang if I really wanted [well actually Id rather go to Ulan Bator for the Khan festival and see the Great Wall more than Peking, but that is a different story]

Won’t the Cubans put your stamp on a separate sheet of paper? Going in to Israel, they had big stacks of pre-printed sheets for that exact purpose for those of us who needed to be able to travel elsewhere in the Middle East.

It really takes some extreme and blind partisanship to write that Obama looks stupid for a fairly mundane political symbolic act. Look mate it’s pretty clearly a placeholder as LAlenin cogently analysed. All political figures engage in such, and it really is without substance or thought to claim such an act is “stupid.” It’s banal.

If by this you mean that the Obamaniacs will not call him on it, that is true. If you mean everyone else will roll over and pretend, this is not true.

The OP states -

If he signs a bill into law modifying or removing the embargo, then it is double think to believe that he is upholding the embargo.

No, just a willingness to admit a flaw in the Perfect One.

Also wrong. It is only not stupid to uphold the embargo, even symbolically, if the embargo is stupid.

Is that what you are arguing? Is the embargo a good idea?

Regards,
Shodan

:rolleyes:

So what? At present he is simply leaving things as they are, i.e., at the default setting, a form of mere inaction, at a moment where there is no action he lawfully could take that would make a change (since, as pointed out in the OP, the Helms-Burton Act would remain in effect); therefore, if he later signs legislation lifting the embargo, he has not today provided one eentsy bit of traction to anyone who might say, “Obama has reversed himself on the embargo!” Such a person would embarrass only himself.

Everyone in this thread but you seems to understand this perfectly well; you could be right and the rest of us wrong, but bear in mind that there are usually at least a thousand Timecube Guys for every Galileo or Darwin.

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Go talk to Carol Stream.

BTW, the “embargo” – actually a series of various trade and travel restrictions – is not absolute. There are a range of exceptions, exemptions, dispensations and special provisions available, for instance in terms of agricultural products, which are and have been very popular with governors for a while. A very cursory Google search gives me past governors from Arkansas, Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska and South Carolina traveling to Cuba on trade missions over the past 8 years. Richardson thus is inventing nothing new.

Obama loosened restrictions on family visits and reunions and remittances earlier. So the administration is maintaining the legal restrictions, but adopting a less rigid execution of policy where the laws allow the executive the discretion to do so. So I’m OK with that.
And as for personal opinion… we have normal political and business relations with Vietnam. “Stading firm” vs. Cuba is about the Florida electoral votes, and I understand it as such; don’t try to sell it to me as anything beyond that.

Except for sugar, I am quite certain (living as I do in a state where the sugar growers are a mighty and formidable lobby). And tobacco, as we all know, especially the cigar afficionados.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Obama just did nothing.

:confused: I think everyone knows that there are countless circumstances in life (and not only for public officials) where nothing is far and away the best thing to do.