President Obama's remarks on the action to lift sanctions on Cuba provide an example of doublespeak. They contain an outright lie embedded in emotional phrasing. President Obama states that the reason for "normalizing" relations between the countries is to help the Cuban people, because the embargo has been ineffective. Specifically regarding the embargo Obama says:

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His 'solution' to normalize has the following goal:

These two quotes back-to-back unravel the logic behind his proposed solution (i.e. normalization), and falsify his claimed problem (sanctions hurting the Cuban people). If part of the inefficacy of the embargo is due to the fact that "no other nations joins us in imposing these sanctions and it has had little effect," then why would lifting the embargo have a positive effect? The double speak at play is the suggestion that an embargo is designed to "help" the people of the targeted nation. This is false. An embargo is a hostile action enacted to hasten capitulation. The embargo has not helped the Cuban people, but a one-party regime with total control of property has also apparently not helped the people of Cuba, given that the United States is the only nation embargoing Cuba. If, according to President Obama, our embargo has had no effect in improving the lives in the freedom of the Cuban people, then he must also admit that trade between other countries and Cuba has also not helped the Cuban people. The real harm to the Cuban people comes from their inability to own private property. It comes from the fact that the unelected Castro regime has total control over all property (to be fair, it's the Communist Party of Cuba, over which the Castro family has totalitarian control): Trade with Cuba doesn't bring money and prosperity to the people of Cuba, it brings money and prosperity to the leadership of Cuba. Senator Marco Rubio, whose parents fled Cuba, understands this truth:

Just like the thermonuclear bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima were not intended to 'help the people of Japan' but rather to help the totalitarian leader of Japan capitulate, embargoes are intended to help a totalitarian leader capitulate by removing its source of income. This can come about in two ways: the people can starve and revolt or the leader, recognizing the inability to help the people of his nation prosper can abdicate power. An embargo is not intended to directly improve the quality of live, but to indirectly improve the quality of life by taking away the resources from a totalitarian leader. The fact is, Cuba is the only nation in the Western Hemisphere that hasn't democratically elected it's leader in over 50 years. A second fact is, life for the Cuban people has worsened, not improved under a Communist dictatorship. This is evidenced both by the flight of Cubans to America and by President Obama's assertion that the Cuban people need help. The concurrent fact that a totalitarian communist dictatorship still exists in Cuba also shows that trade with that dictatorship only helps that dictatorship.

Regardless of one's opinion on the necessity for embargo, one must accept that Obama's statement saying that the embargo doesn't help the Cuban people, is a coded lie. What doesn't help the Cuban people is their lack of individual freedom.

 

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