A (Gross) Foreign Policy Fiasco

February 16, 2011



From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's Editorial Board:


Just 90 miles off the U.S. coast, an American contractor unjustly arrested faces a slow death in a Havana prison.

The plight of Alan Gross, 61 and reportedly in declining health, is a stunning rebuke of the Obama administration's foreign policy of deferentialism. Since December 2009, the Maryland resident, working for a State Department contractor in Cuba, has been imprisoned for distributing satellite phones to Jewish groups and others.

Since then Cuba has greeted the Obama administration's open hand -- lifted travel restrictions and the easier transfer of remittances -- with a clenched fist. Now the communist regime is demanding that Mr. Gross be sentenced to 20 years in prison for so-called crimes against "the integrity and independence of Cuba."

And while the U.S. frets that the Gross case makes it "very difficult to move to greater engagement," Cuba responds by planting its thumbs in each ear and wiggling its fingers furiously.

This isn't merely another foreign policy fiasco with the contemptible Castro brothers. It's a signal to world leaders -- and thugs -- of the treatment that this U.S. administration tolerates.

For all its misbegotten overtures, the U.S. continues to play Charlie Brown to Cuba's Lucy as it yanks away the football -- again.