Left I on the News

I wrote below about Barack Obama's speech to the Cuban-American National Foundation, the group which bankrolled and supported the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles just a decade ago, back when he was organizing the bombing of hotels in Cuba and killing Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo. The Miami Herald reports that Obama was demanding "radical change in U.S. policy" towards Cuba? "Radical change"? Like ending the blockade and allowing all Americans to travel to Cuba and all Cubans to travel to the U.S.? Not quite. No, the only concrete proposal Obama makes is to allow Cuban-Americans to travel to Cuba, returning U.S. policy all the way back to the days of the first George W. Bush administration. Not the first George (H.W.) Bush administration, mind you, the first George W. Bush administration. Man, what a radical!

But, if anything, Obama had something even stranger to say. "It is time, I believe, to pursue direct diplomacy, with friend and foe alike, without preconditions." That itself wouldn't be strange. No, it was what he said next: "And as president, I would be willing to lead that diplomacy at a time and place of my choosing, but only when we have an opportunity to advance the interests of the United States, and to advance the cause of freedom for the Cuban people."

Sure sounds like "preconditions" to me.