Obama Cuba Policy Fails Accumulating

 Segregation Cruise and Cuba's 401 Kilo Cocaine Shipment

Carnival CEO on the right signs agreement with Castro regime

Carnival Cruise Line reached an agreement with the Castro regime on March 21, 2016 to sail to Cuba from the United States, but in order to conduct their core mission they had to agree to a policy of the Cuban dictatorship that bans all Cubans from traveling into the island by boat. This systematically discriminates against all Cubans born on the island whether or not they are citizens of another country. However some Cubans can fly into and out of Cuba on a plane. This updated version of separate but equal was approved by the Obama Treasury Department on July 7, 2015.

On December 17, 2014 President Obama announced that he was charting a new course on Cuba in a little over a year it has led to a return of 1890s style segregation but based on national origin not race. This is doubly ironic: First this step back to the 1890s has happened on the watch of the first African American President of the United States. Furthermore that Arnold Donald, the CEO of Carnival Corporation who signed this separate and unequal arrangement is also African American. This is the stuff of a Monty Python sketch. Secondly that legal segregation established as the law of the land in 1896 with Plessy vs Ferguson and ended in 1954 with Brown vs the Board of Education. would now return to the United States in 2016.

However the other Cuba policy failure is no laughing matter. The Obama administration has expanded collaboration with the Castro regime in sharing drug intelligence information that can have deadly consequences while disregarding the Cuban dictatorships long drug trafficking history.

DEA and U.S. partners this week hosted senior Cuban Government officials to discuss efforts to combat drug trafficking to and from Cuba

— DEA HQ (@DEAHQ) December 2, 2015

EFE news agency reported this afternoon:

Police officers, in coordination with anti-drug authorities in Panama, seized 401 kilos of cocaine from Cuba, in an action carried out in the Caribbean city of Colón, 80 kilometers north of the capital, said an official source. The illicit substance that was found in a container in a port town, camouflaged between tanks of molasses, came from Cuba and was bound for Belgium, reported the National Police of Panama (PN). The drug was seized under the so-called operation "Caña Brava" by agents of the Colón area police zone of the Directorate of Police Intelligence.

This is also reminiscent of the tactics used by the Cuban government in covering up tons of weapons in 2013 under bags of sugar that were bound for North Korea in violation of international sanctions.

401 kilos cocaine from Cuba being smuggled to Belgium

Meanwhile the State Department released its human rights report on Cuba, that although omitting particularly brutal acts by the regime in 2015, showed things had gotten worse.

Will this lead the United States to change policy or will the White House only double down on this failed policy as the disasters continue to pile up and diminish President Obama's legacy? This is what happens when you normalize relations and go into business with an abnormal regime.