In announcing
a new détente with Cuba, President Barack Obama has made the Communist island sound ideal, instead of the brutal dictatorship it is, says Bill Kristol, founder and editor of The Weekly Standard.
"He made it sound like [the embargo has] always been a mistake. Cuba was always a great place, we're just doing something nice for the people of Cuba, he said," Kristol told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV Wednesday.
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"What about the government of Cuba? Aren't we giving them kind of a shot in the arm? Isn't it still a pretty brutal dictatorship?"
Kristol, also an ABC News contributor, called Obama's announcement part of his "foreign policy" to embrace the enemy.
"People say Obama is sort of incompetent.... There's some truth to all that. But he knows what he wants and he wants to recast our relationship with our opponents and enemies," Kristol said.
"He wants to be nice to them. This Cuba thing is a model for what he hopes to do with Iran and of course, he doesn't want to be very accommodating to our traditional allies and friends and democracies.
"As someone pointed out to me, we're going to have an embassy in Havana before we have an embassy in Jerusalem."