US-Cuba Breakthrough Today!!

Embassies Will Open

        Today -- Wednesday, July 1, 2015 -- will be an historic day in U.S.-Cuban relations. President Raul Castro in Havana and President Barack Obama in Washington today will announce that the two nations have agreed to open embassies in the two capital cities, marking a historic normalization of relations that had been officially severed in 1961. This Reuters photo was taken in April at the Summit of the Americas in Panama. At the culmination of this historic handshake, the two Presidents agreed to do what they will officially announce today -- the opening of embassies. Both nations have been upgrading the so-called Interest Sections buildings in Havana and Washington. President Obama must give Congress a 15-day notice before opening an embassy, and that notice will be given to Congress today.

      Ultra-powerful Cuban-Americans in the U. S. Senate still vow to block all pro-Cuban funds and prevent any Presidential nomination of a U. S. Ambassador to Cuba, and they have enough right-wing support in the Republican-led Congress to thwart much of what President Obama plans to accomplish. But, a brave and decent President -- especially one who has strong support nationally, internationally, and even in the Cuban-American community -- has executive authority to combat many of the self-serving tactics of a minority faction that seeks to keep U.S.-Cuban relations serving a few while opposing the wishes and best interests of the majority.

       In the homestretch of his second term as President of the United States, Barack Obama has done what no President in the last 5-plus decades has been able to do or, indeed, dared to do. In defiance of anti-Castro Cuban-American zealots in Miami, Union City, and the U. S. Congress -- and in defiance of powerful right-wing Republican sources -- President Obama's official announcement today about reopening a U. S. embassy in Havana and fully accepting a Cuban embassy in Washington is an earthshaking accomplishment that no one believed he could pull off. Reaching this point today is a tribute to President Obama's courage and integrity.

       Despite today's monumental announcement about the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington, rest assured that the forces that have successfully dictated America's Cuban policy since the 1950s are stronger, richer, and more vindictive than ever before. The Cuban-American and right-wing Republican collaboration in the U. S. Congress still, for example, can dictate a continuation of the embargo against Cuba that dates back to 1962 and has since been strengthened by the Cuban-America/right-wing Torricelli Bill and Helms-Burton Act. President Obama has asked Congress to lift the embargo that even the majority of Cuban-Americans also want lifted, as does the rest of the world. Yet, even after the opening of embassies, the embargo will remain in place because, as always, it sates the revenge, financial, and political appetites of a handful of extremists, a situation that embarrasses America's best friends around the world who are amazed that the U. S. democracy, when it comes to Cuba, is not strong enough to bend to the will of the majority of Americans and Cuban-Americans.

     But today -- Wednesday, July 1st, 2015 -- U.S.-Cuban Relations will take a giant positive step forward, thanks to a decent and brave President of the United States who has shown both the skill and guts to stand up to powerful deviant forces.

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