Apologize For What?

President Obama's latest Apology Tour is winding down. Earlier in the week, he allowed himself to be photographed beneath a gigantic image of the Butcher of La Cabana, Ernesto "Che" Guevara. The Cuban regime has never been held to account for their human rights abuses under the Castro brothers.

But they did extract an admission of guilt from President Obama. Raul Castro and Obama had a joint press conference, and Raul went first. Castro chided Obama, saying he found it "inconceivable that a government does not defend and insure the right to health care, education, Social Security with provision and development, equal pay and the rights of children."

After Castro spoke, President Obama delivered his prepared remarks. Raul Castro, Obama said, "addressed what he views as short comings in the United States around basic needs for people and poverty and inequality and race relations, and we welcome that constructive dialogue."

The President of the United States allowed himself to be lectured by a communist dictator. Then they went to a baseball game together, ate hot dogs, and did the wave, while bodies and body parts were being carried out of Brussels metro.

Raul Castro made other risible statements, such as expressing his "concern over the destabilization some are trying to promote in Venezuela." The presence of Cuban advisers as overwatch in the Venezuelan security apparatus is a very poorly kept secret.

Obama and his policy flacks like to say that, "if you keep on doing something over and over again for 50 years and it doesn’t work, it might make sense to do something new." Cuba has been free to trade with every other country in the world. Whatever is keeping the Cuban people from realizing their human potential has very little to do with whether the U.S. does or doesn't lift its embargo.

Maybe Obama's apology tour could be considered something that has been done over and over and hasn't worked. The Obama Doctrine of extending an open hand for nothing in return hasn't improved our standing or our security.

Obama continued to share his personal regret for America's actions when he made his next stop, in Argentina. "Democracies have to have the courage to acknowledge when we don't live up to the ideals that we stand for. And we've been slow to speak out for human rights and that was the case here."

We didn't support the military junta that took power 40 years ago, but we didn't openly oppose it either.

That won't satisfy anyone. People who suspect the CIA had a hand in disappearing people now have a tacit admission of guilt. Saying that things were different back then seems trite and hackneyed, but in this case, it's true. Forty years ago was the height of international communist Soviet intervention. There is no question that the moral imperative has always been to oppose communism.

Anyone who thinks differently ought to become familiar with the Monroe Doctrine and the Reagan Doctrine. Kennedy especially understood the danger inherent with allowing communism a foothold in the hemisphere. Kennedy paid for that with his life. Perhaps a condition of lifting the Cuban embargo should be their opening all their files on Oswald's movements and contacts in Cuba. The Cuban government must be held accountable for their complicity in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.