Posted on 12/17/2014 3:08:43 PM PST by jazusamo
Former President Kennedy would approve of President Obama's decision to roll back trade and travel restrictions on Cuba, the White House argued Wednesday.
"I do think that even President Kennedy would acknowledge that after more than 50 years of a policy of isolation [which] didn't bring about the desired result … change was needed," White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.
President Obama announced earlier in the day that the administration would ease travel restrictions to the country, as well as restrictions on exports to Cuba. The government is also allowing U.S. financial and telecommunications firms to establish more of a foothold in Cuba. They are the most significant changes to U.S.-Cuba policy since 1962, when Kennedy extended a trade embargo in reaction to Fidel Castro's alignment with the Soviet Union. Kennedy extended those restrictions to include a travel ban in 1963, following the Cuban missile crisis.
Earnest said Kennedy was someone who "did believe in the value of openness and engagement and in the value of empowering local populations to take greater control over their economic and political situation."
"So, it does strike me that, while the president is changing a policy that President Kennedy originally put in place, that the philosophy that the president is pursuing and the values that the president is pursuing is entirely consistent with the kinds of values that President Kennedy championed throughout his life," Earnest said.
I agree with Carlos Munoz.
No surprise. Plenty of dead people voted for Obama.
Well, Jack seemed well assured of his orientation....
” JFK would back Obama, says White House”
Kennedy wanted to kill Castro.
Barky wants to date Castro.
I guess those are the same...
Obama and Raúl Castro thank pope for breakthrough in US-Cuba relations.
Pope Francis, before visiting The Holy Land boasted to be himself the “Che” of the Palestinian people.
A Marxist leaning Pope blessed the Marxist American president embrace of Castro's genocide communist regime condemning the Cuban enslaved people to eternal damnation. On the deal Castro liberated an American illegally imprisoned in Cuba in exchange for the freedom of three Cuban spies serving prison terms in U.S. and the normalization of relations with a country that occupied for decades a top position in the list of the State Department ‘s terrorist countries.
The Cuban regime tried to obliterate New York and Washington with a nuclear attack during the October Missile Crisis of 1962. “In November 1962, the Castro brothers’ and Che Guevara’s agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The Holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving.” (Humberto Fontova)
Castro has been a strong ally of Islamic terrorism. Cuba continues to serve as a base for coordination and mutual support among transnational terrorist organizations. At Tehran University he stated to the thunderous applause of students and faculty, "The imperialist king will finally fall,” (AFP, May 10, 2001). Immediately afterward the Iranian Press Service proudly proclaimed that "Iran and Cuba reached the conclusion that together they can tear down the United States.” (IPS, May 10, 2001).
According to World renown and highly respected American investigative journalist and author, Claire Sterling, : “All of the world’s emerging terrorist bands in the 1970’s were indebted to the Cubans and their Russian patrons for that honeycomb of camps around Havana. None could have started without rudimentary training, and those who didn’t train in Cuba were trained by others who did.” (“The Terror Network, The Secret War on International Terrorism.”)
As reported by Sterling, “Castro was training the advance guards of the coming European fright decade – Palestinians, Italians, Germans, French, Spanish Basques – and forming guerrilla nuclei in practically every Western hemisphere state south of the American border. As far back as 1962, Castro’s camps were taking in 1,500 Latin American guerrillas a year. . ‘Any revolutionary movement anywhere in the world can count on Cuba’s unconditional support,’ declared Castro at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana”. It was then and there that the international terrorism network was consolidated under Castro’s leadership.”
Fidel Castro “jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror. He murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six. He came closer than anyone in history to starting a world-wide nuclear war.” Humberto Fontova. (http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=11121)
It is suicidal turning a blind eye to Castro, a deadly enemy at 90 miles south of Key West that does not hide his hatred for U.S.
After the restoration of diplomatic relations comes the end of the embargo.
To complete Obama’s betrayal of the American people, with the normalization of relations comes the opening to Cuba of the American and International bank credits that will sustain the Cuban regimen passing to the American taxpayers the same heavy burden that helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union.
ansel12 is right. Kennedy is the President who ramped up the American presence in South Vietnam, my father being one of the 16,000.
And JFK’s little remembered scheme that resulted in the assassination of President Diem is arguably the turning point that forced the large scale commitment of American combat troops. Diem’s death left the RSVN rudderless and unable to defend itself.
I read this as back OVER obama. I was thinking of course he would, who wouldn’t! lol
Maybe with that bus obama uses so often.
Having recently read every New York Times article from 1958 to July, 1962 that was about Southeast Asia. (I’m following the Vietnam War from the beginning to end using Timesmachine.) I can assure people that JFK was a true Cold Warrior. It was a different time, even the NYT referenced the enemy as “The Reds”.
I find that story questionable because Jackie is dead. Oops, my bad... it’s a 1992 article.
Good point. I can't think of one either.
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