* While the Middle East and Russia have lent themselves to much Obama Administration speculation, second guessing and outright criticism, some developments in our own hemisphere have hardly qualified as foreign-policy bragging points. And this is in addition to easedropping on Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
For example, the Obama Administration has been playing the incrementalist card on Cuba from the get-go. That’s hardly the sort of “change” a lot of us wanted to believe in. No executive order to open up travel, no White House lobbying for Helms-Burton changes. And now, as we well know, the political climate won’t allow for sensible, humane immigration or gun-control legislation, let alone a historic turn on Cuba.
But now we find out that in the fall of 2009, this country–via the U.S. Agency for International Development–began overseeing a project that sent Venezuelan, Costa Rican and Peruvian youths undercover to Cuba in hopes of stirring up rebellion. And that same autumn saw the beginning of the once-secret “Cuban Twitter” project that was exposed in April of this year.
Is this a Cold War time warp? Was Allen Dulles reincarnated as Leon Panetta? Are there more Amateur Hour undertakings to be unearthed?
* This just in: The U.S. has now officially spent ($104 billion) more in fighting and reconstructing in Afghanistan than it did on the Marshall Plan ($103.4 billion current-dollar value) after World War II.
The Afghanistan return: 2,200 U.S. deaths, 20,000 Americans wounded. Every expectation that endemic corruption will continue and the Taliban picks up where it left off 12 years ago.
The Marshall Plan return: European nations helped in their rebuilding efforts. Viable democracies and trade partners resulted.
* Let’s not make too much out of that Uganda court that recently struck down an unconscionably punitive anti-gay law that can punish some homosexual behavior with life in prison. The rationale is nothing to celebrate. A five-judge panel in Kampala said the Anti-Homosexuality Act was invalid because it had been passed by Parliament without a proper quorum–not because it was, well, barbarically wrong.