John Kerry Tries to Channel Reagan: 'Tear Down the Digital Wall' in Cuba

    Secretary of State John Kerry, who wrote an op-ed for the Miami Herald along with Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew, evoked Ronald Reagan's timeless challenge to Mikhail Gorbachev at the Berlin Wall in 1987, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." In reference to President Obama's recently announced policy changes toward communist Cuba, Kerry wrote, "[T]he president’s decision will support new efforts to tear down the digital wall that isolates Cubans."
    Kerry is not the first administration official to draw the allusion. In October 2014, less than two months ago, U.S. Ambassador Ronald D. Godard of the U.S. Mission to the UN used the same phrase, ironically enough, in justifying the continuation of the US's late policy towards Cuba as he explained the US vote against a Cuban-backed resolution. Twenty-three times the United Nations has sided with Cuba and voted overwhelmingly to condemn the US embargo of Cuba; as was the case last year when the same resolution was introduced, Israel alone sided with the United States in voting no.
    Interestingly, however, Ambassador Godard called the "digital wall" a wall of "censorship", emphasizing the free speech violation imposed by the communist government of Cuba. He pointed out the hypocrisy of the Cuban government, which keeps the wall in place while "disingenuously blaming U.S. policy" for its own failures:

The Cuban government now claims to share our goal of helping the Cuban people access the Internet. Yet the Cuban government has failed to offer widespread access to the Internet through its high speed cable with Venezuela.  Instead, it continues to impose barriers to information for the Cuban people while disingenuously blaming U.S. policy. 

Moreover, the Cuban government continues to detain Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for facilitating Internet access for Cuba’s small Jewish community. The United States calls on Cuba to release Mr. Gross immediately, allow unrestricted access to the Internet, and tear down the digital wall of censorship it has erected around the Cuban people.

    Kerry, on the other hand, spoke of a "digital wall that isolates Cubans", placing the emphasis on "isolation":

[T]he president’s decision will support new efforts to tear down the digital wall that isolates Cubans. The country has an Internet penetration rate of 5 percent, among the lowest in the world. Prices are high, and services are limited. Under the new policy, we will permit the sale of technology that will begin to unleash the transformative effects of the Internet on the island.

    The Obama administration argues the policy of isolation has been a failure, and Kerry himself recently said it has isolated the United States instead of Cuba. Kerry addressed the low internet penetration rate, high prices and limited service, but did not mention the limitations on access to the internet that originally led to the imprisonment of Alan Gross who was freed the same day the new Cuba policy was announced. In Kerry's view, Cuban's have been "isolated" by the US's refusal to sell certain technology rather than made victims by a wall of censorship erected by an oppressive regime.
    The two versions of the "digital wall" are not the only disparities in Ambassador Godard's remarks in October and the new Obama administration line. Godard placed the blame for the continued restrictions on US interaction with Cuba squarely at the door of the communist government of Cuba, which he said had even recently acknowledged its own culpability:

Mr. President, the Cuban government uses this annual resolution in an attempt to shift blame for the island’s economic problems away from its own policy failures. The Cuban government now publicly recognizes that its economic woes are caused by the economic policies it has pursued for the last, past half-century. We note and welcome recent changes that reflect this acknowledgement, such as those that allow greater self-employment and liberalization of the real estate market. But the Cuban economy will not thrive until the Cuban government permits a free and fair labor market, fully empowers Cuban independent entrepreneurs, respects intellectual property rights, allows unfettered access to information via the Internet, opens its state monopolies to private competition and adopts the sound macro-economic policies that have contributed to the success of Cuba’s neighbors in Latin America.

    Godard also pointed out the embargo was far from absolute, noting that "[b]y the Cuban government’s own account, the United States is one of Cuba’s principal trading partners":

The Cuban people continue to receive as much as $2 billion per year in remittances and other private contributions from the United States. This support has made possible - was made possible - by U.S. policy choices. By the Cuban government’s own account, the United States is one of Cuba’s principal trading partners. In 2013, the United States exported approximately $359 million in agricultural products, medical devices, medicine and humanitarian items to Cuba.

    Despite giving credit to Cuba for some changes, Godard closed his remarks by reiterating that the "real problems" facing the Cuban people were the responsibility of the "regime":

Mr. President, this resolution only serves to distract from the real problems facing the Cuban people, and therefore my delegation will oppose it. Though Cuba’s contributions to the fight against Ebola are laudable, they do not excuse or diminish the regime’s treatment of its own people.

    On the other hand, Secretary Kerry emphasized the negative effects of US Cuba policy and how those policies handed the Cuban government a justification to continue restrictive policies:

As Albert Einstein said long ago, it’s just not rational to continue doing the same thing in the expectation of obtaining a different result. Since U.S.-Cuban relations were frozen, the world has been transformed; the Cold War ended a quarter century ago. Over time the U.S. effort to isolate Cuba began to have the reverse effect of isolating the United States especially in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, Cuban leaders used our stance as a source of propaganda, to justify policies that have no place in the 21st century. It has been an open secret that the relationship has been in a rut that benefits no one on either side. The time has come to cease looking backward and to begin to move forward in the interests of both freedom-loving Cubans and the United States.

    In spite of Kerry's appropriation of Reagan's cold war challenge, its application in Cuba is markedly different. With his "tear down this wall" speech, Reagan threw down the gauntlet, and in the face of resolute strength by America and her allies, the Soviet Union and its most visible icon, the Berlin wall, crumbled from within. With Cuba, less than two months after reaffirming the legitimacy of current policy before the UN and placing the blame for the status quo on Cuba for its "own policy failures," the Obama administration capitulated to a still defiant Cuban government, whose leader Raul Castro declared this week, "We won the war."
    The "digital wall" of isolation Kerry spoke of may indeed be breached in the coming years as technology expands into Cuba. But the Berlin Wall was never intended primarily to keep out the West, but rather to keep East Berliners in. And unless the communist Cuban government takes uncharacteristic steps to extend unprecedented freedoms to the "freedom-loving Cubans" of whom Kerry spoke, the "digital wall" of censorship is likely to remain in place for years to come.

Note: A version of this post first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

Democrats Misquote President Obama on Minimum Wage: "Reagan was in Congress"

    President Obama spoke to the Democrat National Committee's Winter Meeting in Washington DC on Friday and addressed the minimum wage increase that he recently proposed, comparing it to the minimum wage in Ronald Reagan's time.  According to the White House transcript, and the C-Span video, the president said:

So it’s time to raise a minimum wage that is worth less than it was when Ronald Reagan was in office.

    In what turned out to be a less than successful attempt to quote the president, the DNC quickly tweeted the president's remark, but with one key difference:

"It's time to raise a minimum wage that's worth less than it was when Ronald Reagan was in Congress" #RaiseTheWage #DNC14
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) February 28, 2014

    Reagan, of course, never served in Congress.  A day later, the DNC tweet with the erroneous quote is still posted, and no correction has been issued.

UPDATE: The tweet was deleted sometime Sunday morning after The Weekly Standard published this post.


Note: A version of this post (before the update) first appeared at The Weekly Standard.

The Danger of America's Endless "National Emergencies"

    On March 12, the White House issued a press release that began with what have become rather familiar words: "Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to..."  In this case, it is Iran, an emergency first declared on March 15, 1995, when President Bill Clinton imposed sanctions on Iran in response to concern over the regime's nuclear ambitions. This is not to be confused with the state of emergency with respect to Iran declared by President Jimmy Carter in 1979 during the Iranian hostage crisis. The hostages were released in 1980, but 33 years later, President Obama continues to renew the national emergency declaration just as Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan did year after year.

    These continuations are the product of the 1976 National Emergencies Act, which, ironically, was intended in part to prevent such declarations from being open-ended.  Per the Act, if not terminated by Congress or the President, National Emergency declarations automatically expire after a year unless the president issues a continuance, and these continuances have become a matter of course.

   In the past year, President Obama has signed continuations of National Emergency declarations for Zimbabwe, Cuba, Libya, Ivory Coast, the Middle East Peace Process, Sudan, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Lebanon, Significant Transnational Criminal Organizations, the Former Liberian Regime of Charles Taylor, the Western Balkans, the Risk of Nuclear Proliferation Created by the Accumulation of Weapons-Usable Fissile Material in the Territory of the Russian Federation, Belarus, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, and Iran (2); nineteen in all.  Nineteen concurrent "national emergencies."  Most Americans, and perhaps most politicians, would be hard pressed to explain the circumstances surrounding one-third of these emergencies, let alone all nineteen.  The mere existence of some of these declarations would doubtless be a surprise to many.

    The nature of most national emergency declarations is not a sweeping omnipotence granted to the Commander in Chief. The National Emergencies Act requires the president to specify the provisions in the law upon which his actions under each declaration are authorized.  Many of the current declarations involve only economic measures and sanctions that are being imposed in a targeted and limited context.  But presidents seem loath to yield back even these limited powers granted by the declarations.  So the "emergencies" go on... and on.

    The world is surely a dangerous place, and responsible governance requires not only vigilance, but the ability to exercise a variety of powers.  But perhaps nothing illustrates the problem with the perpetual "emergency" as well as the following.  Last year, President Obama extended the National Emergency with respect to terrorism that President Bush signed after the devastating attacks on America by al-Qaeda on September 11, 2001.  In his notice to Congress, President Obama wrote:

CONTINUATION OF THE NATIONAL EMERGENCY WITH RESPECT TO PERSONS WHO COMMIT, THREATEN TO COMMIT, OR SUPPORT TERRORISM

On September 23, 2001, by Executive Order 13224, the President declared a national emergency with respect to persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism, pursuant to the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701-1706).  The President took this action to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States constituted by the grave acts of terrorism and threats of terrorism committed by foreign terrorists, including the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York and Pennsylvania and against the Pentagon, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals or the United States.  Because the actions of these persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States... I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency[.]

    The date the president signed and issued this notice warning of the "immediate threat of further attacks"?  September 11, 2012, the very day of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  While the ink was still drying on the words "continuing and immediate threat of further attacks against United States nationals" and "an unusual and extraordinary threat," the assault was underway.  Because the readiness that a "national emergency" implies was just a facade (at least in Benghazi,) the United States was caught flatfooted, unable to adequately respond in time.  Four Americans were killed and the consulate was burned.

    We will never stop every attack. The enemies of the United States are legion and seemingly tireless.  Yet the principle at work here is at least as old as Aesop and the boy watching the sheep.  When everything is an emergency, nothing is. While these declarations are not false alarms, neither do they reflect the imminence and urgency normally associated with a true emergency.  Rather, they tend to obscure actual immediate threats.  Therefore, as nineteen echoes of "national emergency!" rang in the air, the wolf struck in Benghazi.  Unless our leaders learn to resist the profligate invocation of "emergency," the wolves simply have to wait until overuse once again breeds complacency before they strike.  But then, the emergency will be all too real.

Precedent for the Unprecedented

    Sam Donaldson commented over the weekend on the incident in which The Daily Caller's Neil Munro interrupted President Obama's prepared remarks with a question.  Examiner.com reports:

"Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American," Donaldson told the Huffington Post in an email.
"These people and perhaps even certain news organizations (certainly the right wing talkers like Limbaugh) encourage disrespect for this president. That is both regrettable and adds, in this case, to the general dislike of the press on the part of the general public," he added.

On November 25, 1986, President Ronald Reagan made some prepared remarks to the press regarding events surrounding Iran-Contra.  And guess who was there, presumably shushing Helen Thomas and the other impertinent reporters who were interrupting Reagan, no doubt on account of his race?

    Note that Reagan is interrupted after the words "to brief you..."  After momentarily addressing the reporters, he returns to his prepared remarks before Meese takes the podium.

    Also note the expressions of Donaldson and Thomas around the 1:10 mark of the clip as Reagan leaves, and then the question that Donaldson asks Meese.  The respect is simply palpable.