Plenty has already been said about Obama’s disastrous trip to Cuba. From covering up atrocities to Michelle flaunting her wealth, his little vacation has been a massive comedy of errors. The fact that an American president would give legitimacy to a communist, dictatorial regime is bad enough, but Obama being Obama, he went and made it worse (because of course he did). He actually compared the American revolution to Fidel Castro’s brutal takeover of Cuba, calling both a “liberation movement”.

“Here’s my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people,” Obama said.”The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution, America’s revolution, Cuba’s revolution, the liberation movements around the world, these ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy.”

… The bearded Castroite revolutionaries were a different beast altogether. They claimed to favor democracy as part of their Orwellian Newspeak, making use of willing media toadies such as New York Times correspondent Herbert Matthews to fool U.S. policymakers. But for those on the ground, the Castroite takeover was nothing but a brutal leftist oligarchy intent on installing a communist agenda and turning Cuba into a Soviet satellite. From the very beginning, the Castroites and their so-called revolution had absolutely no democratic ideals. None.

Raul himself was a leading communist party member from the very start, and his brother Fidel ripped the false mask of democracy off to reveal his true communist face once he entrenched himself as the Maximo Lider and couldn’t be thrown out. The Castroites, including the dictator who stood at Obama’s elbow as he spoke, shot their way to power and have since turned Cuba into a totalitarian hellhole.

You can see his full speech in the video here:

To call Obama’s remarks offensive would be a massive understatement. The American revolution was started because the colonies were at the mercy of a tyrant and it gave birth to the greatest nation this world has ever known. The founding fathers created a country where men could be truly free, where its citizens could freely practice their beliefs, could protest without fear of reprisal, could speak freely without worrying that they would be thrown in jail — or worse.

Cuba before Castro was not perfect, but it was much better than it is now. The standard of living was higher. Food was readily available. Decent health care was provided for Cubans. And there were multiple newspapers and television stations, all of which were allowed to criticize the Cuban government. Cuba wasn’t perfect, and there were plenty of improvements that needed to be made. But the difference between Cuba before Castro, and Cuba after, couldn’t be more striking.

Fidel Castro came to power with the help of mercenaries like Che Guevara, who murdered thousands of innocent people whose only crime was opposing Castro. Thousands more were imprisoned. Cubans had their property taken from them and weren’t free to leave the country. They aren’t free to assemble or criticize the government. Newspapers are government-run and contain only propaganda. Guevara committed genocide against almost 20,000 Cubans — the equivalent of the United States government murdering 1 million Americans — for “crimes” such as being Catholic, gay, the wrong ethnicity, or deemed a dissident. On top of all of that, Cubans have an abysmal health care system, and live in abject poverty. There is no access to clean or hot water. Food is scarce, and things like cheese and meat are considered luxuries, as are household necessities like soap and toilet paper. The people who are more “well-off” have the privilege of living in crumbling, rotted buildings that they fear will collapse on them; the truly poor live in shacks and slums. People frequently resort to prostitution to survive. Cuba has become so bad, that millions of Cubans would rather risk death by setting out for the United States on makeshift rafts and leaky boats than stay.

The only people to benefit from this? Castro and his cronies. The people of Cuba weren’t liberated, and it’s insulting to say this communist takeover was a “liberation”. A liberation from what? Freedom?

There is certainly room to argue that the travel and trade embargo is bad policy, and that as president, Obama should work to bring about change to Cuba. But Obama took the opposite approach that Reagan did in dealing with the Soviet Union and its many atrocities. Whereas Reagan did not mince his words, called the Soviet Union what it was, and demanded that Gorbachev tear down the Berlin Wall, Obama instead lives it up with the dictator himself, taking in baseball games with Raul Castro, posing in front of the Che Guevara Monument to Genocide, and palled around like he was in a tropical paradise, and not in a country whose people are suffering under a tyrannical despot. He even went out of his way to show how different he is from Reagan, assuring Castro (and the Cuban people) that he won’t be asking anyone to tear something down. It’s an affront to everything the United States stands for, and it’s even worse that he would do all of this while invoking the founding fathers and the American revolution.