Democracy According to Obama
By Dr. Néstor García Iturbe, 2016
A CubaNews translation.
Edited by Walter Lippmann.
I recently received an objective and interesting note published by “CUBA NEWS” where academician Nelson Valdés explains Obama’s views on democracy and gives us an insight into how a single topic can get a different treatment depending on the surrounding atmosphere.
The note in question pointed out that in his speech of June 4 in Egypt, Obama said: “So let me be clear. No system of government can or should be imposed by one nation on any other”.
However, on April 13, just 52 days before, he had remarked the following: “The promotion of democracy and human rights in Cuba is in the national interest of the United States and is a key component of this nation’s foreign policy in the Americas”.
Among the explanations the scholar tried to give to the President’s contradictory approach to this issue in such a short period were:
This gentleman has either a poor memory or two speechwriters. In his opinion, Cuba is not an independent nation, but a part of U.S. territory.
As I see it, both of Obama’s phrases are nothing but a confirmation of the way his country has practiced foreign policy ever since it was founded. Besides, they throw light on the ambivalent stance the U.S. often takes on terrorism (the good one and the bad one), human rights (who violates them and who doesn’t), immigration, children’s rights, and everything they use to boast the “good things” of a system which, truth be told, becomes more corrupted by the day.