President Barack Obama gave the Cuban government "everything they ever wanted" and got very little in return in the new diplomatic policy he announced on Wednesday, Florida Republican Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart told MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
Obama said the new policy would establish diplomatic relations with Cuba and included the release of three Cuban prisoners held in the U.S. In exchange, the Cuban government released American aid worker Alan Gross, who had been imprisoned for five years, and over 50 political prisoners.
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"What the president has done is given everything that the Castro dictatorship has been asking for, begging for, pleading for, and lobbying for," Diaz-Balart said Thursday. "The president has just given the Castro regime, getting, frankly, very little in response, everything they ever wanted."
Obama had also imperiled U.S. national security by negotiating with a totalitarian regime, said Diaz-Balart, whose district represents much of Miami.
"It puts Americans at risk everywhere, because now everybody knows if you kidnap an American, or you hold them hostage, that President Obama will deal with you and will give you multiple concessions," he said.
Cuba's problem was not the U.S., Diaz-Balart maintained, but was because it's a "totalitarian Marxist regime that violates human rights, that oppresses its people, that murders its own people, particularly those who are freedom-seeking opposition leaders, dissidents." He said proponents of Obama's plan were "living in la-la land" if they viewed the policy shift as liberating Cubans.
The sanctions the U.S. imposed in 1960 offered "leverage" to encourage Cuba to move toward democracy, Diaz-Balart said, adding Congress could not lift the embargo unless certain conditions were met, none of which were addressed in the president's new policy.
"Freeing all political prisoners, not just a handful that President Obama wants to have freed. Number two is allow for basic freedoms — freedom of the press, labor unions, political parties. Number three, start the process towards election. Then all the sanctions go away," he said.
The leverage would also have been instrumental in pressuring a change in the Cuban government when President Raul Castro was no longer in power, he said.
"When Raul Castro, who is in his 80s, and Fidel, who is even older, move along, it's the pressure, the leverage, that we have to actually demand and request and pressure for a democratic transition," he said.
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