As the administration's human rights point-man Tomasz Malinowski - born in Communist Poland - said in his Senate testimony, U.S. policy isn't about waiting on the whims of the Castro government anymore:
"[The] Cuban government has succeeded in making our embargo and its isolation from the United States a bigger issue than its own repression, making it difficult to mobilize international pressure to improve respect for human rights on the island. To its own people, the government has justified Cuba's isolation, poverty and lack of democracy as being a result of American hostility. These were bad excuses; they justified none of what the Cuban people have suffered all these years. But we have to acknowledge that, over the years, shifting the blame to America has worked for the Castro government.
It is not going to work any more.
Now, every country in Latin America and the Caribbean, and indeed around the world, knows that the United States is not the obstacle to Cuba's integration with the hemisphere and its prospects for economic development. Cuban policies are the obstacle. Now every citizen of Cuba knows that the U.S. is willing to have improved relations with their country, to support private business on the island and to help connect them to the world. These steps have raised the Cuban people's expectations, and shifted the burden of meeting those expectations back upon the Cuban state."
H/T @Cuba_Now #Cuba_Now
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