Fact Checking President Obama's State of the Union Address Remarks on Cuba

"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." - President John Adams

President Barack Obama in his 2016 State of the Union Address in the space of one paragraph on Cuba uttered so many inaccuracies that a fact check is needed. Below is what he said tonight broken down sentence by sentence.

Sentence One: "Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America."

FACT: The United States did not isolate Cuba for fifty years and three administrations (Carter, Clinton and Obama) have engaged with the dictatorship and sought to normalize relations prolonging the life of the Castro regime.

First Time
The Carter Administration was the first to lift the travel ban and hold high-level negotiations with the Cuban dictatorship, and both sides opened Interest Sections in their respective capitals between 1977 and 1981. Then from 1981 to 1982, the Castro regime executed approximately 80 prisoners, which was a marked escalation when compared to 1976. Furthermore, during the Carter presidency, Fidel Castro took steps that resulted in the violent deaths of US citizens.  

Outcome
During the Mariel crisis of 1980, when over 125,000 Cubans sought to flee the island, the Cuban dictator sought to save face by selectively releasing approximately 12,000 violent criminals or individuals who were mentally ill into the exodus. This first attempt at normalizing relations saw a worsening human rights situation and migration crisis.

Second Time
The Clinton Administration in 1994 initiated regular contacts between the U.S. and Cuban military that included joint military exercises at the Guantanamo Naval base. Despite this improvement of relations, the 1990s saw some brutal massacres of Cubans that are rightly remembered such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. The shoot down involved two planes blown to bits over international airspace by Cuban MiGs killing three American citizens and a Cuban resident who were engaged in the search and rescue of Cuban rafters.   Bill Clinton on September 6, 2000 was the first sitting president to shake hands with Fidel Castro. One month later he signed the  Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TEFRA) that opened trade between the Castro regime and U.S. companies. Opposition in congress led to that trade not being subsidized by taxpayers by not providing government backed credits ensuring business would be cash and carry.
 
Outcome
The worsening human rights situation was a contributing factor in the August 1994 rafter crisis in which 35,000 Cubans fled the country. Experts have identified that this was a migration crisis engineered by the Castro regime. The Cuban dictatorship did this because it successfully reasoned that it could coerce the Clinton Administration to the negotiating table to obtain concessions, which indeed it did, and prolonged the life of the dictatorship for another twenty years.  Prior to Bill Clinton, Cubans fleeing the Castro regime were received into the United States. It was on his watch, beginning in 1995, that Cuban refugees were declared migrants and began to be seized on the high seas and deported to communist Cuba with the infamous wet foot/ dry foot policy.

Third Time
The Obama Administration beginning in 2009 loosened sanctions on the Castro regime. On his watch concluding on December 17, 2014 the Obama administration freed all five members of the WASP spy network, including Gerardo Hernandez, who was serving two life sentences, one of them for conspiracy to murder four members of Brothers to the Rescue murdered during the previous attempt at normalizing relations during the Clinton Administration. The Obama administration de-linked the pursuit of full diplomatic relations from the rise in human rights violations in Cuba and in the region by Cuban state security.  The White House has doubled down in concessions ignoring the Castro regime's continuing sponsorship of terrorism and smuggling of weapons to sanctioned countries in order to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Outcome 
Still unfolding but will be addressed in response to the additional false claims made by President Obama that his policy is succeeding in promoting democracy.

Sentence Two: "That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people."

FACT: The lives of the Cuban people has worsened during the Obama administration with a worsening economic situation; the murder of democratic opposition leaders such as Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Laura Inés Pollán and a mass exodus of Cubans. Since December 17, 2014 the White House politicized the report on human trafficking to give the Castro regime a pass; made access to the U.S. embassy much more difficult for Cuban dissidents and independent journalists; did not invite dissidents to the opening of the embassy; and the State Department threatened the daughter of a murdered dissident who was properly accredited as a member of the press from asking questions during a press conference there with the Cuban Foreign Minister. Commerce between Cuba and the United States has steadily declined during the Obama administration. In 2008 the last full year of the George W. Bush administration the United States sold $711.5 million in sales to Cuba vs 175.4 million in the first 11 months of 2015 under the Obama Administration according to the United State Census Bureau.

Sentences Three: "You want to consolidate our leadership and credibility in the hemisphere?  

FACT: The Obama State Department's politicization of the human trafficking report that watered down critiques of China, Cuba and Malaysia is costing the United States credibility on this issue leading to a backlash.  Gerardo Hernandez, convicted of conspiracy to murder Americans on orders of the Castro brothers, has announced that he is ready for his “next order” from the Castro regime after returning home to a heroes welcome and agents of the dictatorship are traveling the world declaring victory. Inviting the Cuban dictatorship to the Summit of the Americas and the violence perpetrated by Cuban state security agents combined with President Obama's embrace of Raul Castro there while at the same time ignoring violence visited on U.S. citizens damaged U.S. credibility. American disengagement from Latin America under the Obama administration has also led to a loss of leadership.

Sentence Four: "Recognize that the Cold War is over."  

FACT: The Castro regime never recognized that the "Cold War is over" and following the collapse of the Soviet bloc met in Sao Paolo, Brazil in 1990 for the totalitarian left to regroup and carry on the objectives hostile to the interest of the United States. Recent examples of this continuing "cold war" mentality can be found in the tons of weapons smuggled by Cuba under bags of sugar on a freighter, detected and intercepted in July 2013 by Panamanian officials, while on its way to North Korea in violation of international sanctions. Among the weapons found were Cuban MiGs, rockets and ballistic missile technology. In February of 2015 a shipment originating in China with final destination in Cuba was also smuggling tons of weapons and ammunition when discovered in Colombia. In the past few days it has been learned that a U.S. Hellfire missile that was supposed to be returned to the United States from Europe ended up in Cuba in 2014. The emerging information in the media is pointing to a possible espionage coup by the Cuban intelligence services. The Cuban government, despite requests by the Obama administration, has refused to return it. Ironically during the Cold War the United States did return Cuban MiGs piloted by defecting fighter pilots from Cuba.

Sentence Five: "Lift the embargo."

FACT: The Clinton administration opened up cash and carry trade with Cuba in 2000. Beginning in 2009 the Obama administration began to unilaterally further loosen and weaken economic sanctions on Cuba. The main objective of the Obama administration, the Chamber of Commerce, agribusiness and the Castro regime is to provide credits to the dictatorship. This means that if the Castro regime is granted credits but defaults in paying American creditors, the cost will be passed on to American taxpayers. 

Open Letter to President Obama with regards to his remarks on Cuba in the State of the Union Address

State of the Union 2015

Dear President Obama,

President Obama sometimes in foreign policy the options to chose from are not ideal and that is the case with Cuba. Over the past 56 years different administrations have sought to engage the Castro regime. Like North Korea it is a totalitarian communist dictatorship with a terrifyingly effective state security apparatus and unlike North Korea it has an effective propaganda apparatus both nationally and internationally. Two prior administrations in 1977 under President Carter and in 1992 under President Clinton went down this path and in both cases the end results compromised U.S. national security and people died.

This "shift in Cuba policy" will not "end a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere" because sanctions were and are not at the root of the conflict but rather a fundamental difference between a democracy that says it values human rights and freedoms and a totalitarian dictatorship that does not recognize them except in service to the aims of the regime. Furthermore the Castro regime from its days as a guerrilla movement through decades of dictatorship has defended, practiced and carried out terrorism as a legitimate tactic in revolutionary struggle.

The regime has no need of "phony excuse for restrictions in Cuba" and no further proof of this is needed than to recall how Soviet publications were banned during the Gorbachev era because perestroika and glasnost were considered subversive by Fidel Castro. The old tyrant understood that what the Russians were peddling was a threat to the dictatorship.

Mr. President extending the hand of friendship to Fidel Castro (as President Clinton did in 2000) and as you did to Raul Castro in 2013 is not extending it to Cubans but to their oppressors. Raul Castro ordered the shoot down of the Brothers to the Rescue planes on February 24, 1996 killing four humanitarians and it was on his watch that Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero died under suspicious circumstances that have all the hallmarks of an extrajudicial execution carried out by state security. This is why on February 3, 2015 Rosa María  before the Senate Subcommittee provided an indictment of the Obama administration's outreach to the dictatorship in Cuba: 

On 22 July 2012, Cuban State Security detained the car in which my father, Oswaldo Payá, and my friend Harold Cepero, along with two young European politicians, were traveling. All of them survived, but my father disappeared for hours only to reappear dead, in the hospital in which Harold would die without medical attention.

The Cuban government wouldn’t have dared to carry out its death threats against my father if the US government and the democratic world had been showing solidarity. If you turn your face, impunity rages. While you slept, the regime was conceiving their cleansing of the pro-democracy leaders to come. While you sleep, a second generation of dictators is planning with impunity their next crimes. 

Rosa María Payá Acevedo asked the question in December 2013: "Why did Barack Obama shake the hand of my father's killer, Raul Castro?" We now know that part of the answer was to free three Cuban spies, one of them Gerardo Hernandez, who was held legally responsible for ending the lives of the above mentioned four men.

Standing up for democratic values in Cuba does not mean freeing a spy serving life for killing Americans. Mr. President you recognized Alan Gross at the State of the Union Address but not the terrorist spy you freed to get him back: Gerardo Hernandez. 

Alan Gross should not have spent five years in prison but your administration's initial strategy of silence combined with US diplomats taking 25 days to see Alan Gross cost him 5 years in prison because it sent a signal of weakness and turned Mr. Gross into a hostage to be exchanged. The release of the five spies is a major propaganda victory for the dictatorship and for its hardline elements.

Appeasing tyrants and freeing murderers is a policy that is long past its expiration date of 1939 and the tragic lessons should be heeded to avoid yet another tragedy.

The small steps you are taking is filling many democrats in Cuba not with hope but with despair and the knowledge that more good people will be murdered by this regime and its tenure in power perpetuated by your policies as the dictatorship was by the Clinton administration at the end of the Cold War.

Unfortunately, the desire of agribusiness and the chamber of commerce pushing for subsidized trade with the Castro regime will as  is now the case with mainland China assist the dictatorship in modernizing without improving human rights thus endangering them for their neighbors.

Two final considerations: It has been during the Obama administration that Castro regime was caught in 2013 smuggling arms, including ballistic missile technology and dismantled MiG fighter jets to North Korea in violation of international sanctions. Secondly, once again links have been demonstrated between drug traffickers and the Castro regime. Ignoring these realities do not only endanger Cubans, other Latin Americans in the region but the American people as well.

This is a recipe for disaster.