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Article snippet: The recent op-ed by former Obama administration official Mark Feierstein underscores the moral failure of the previous administration and its misguided appeasement policy regarding Cuba. As Feierstein’s piece makes clear, that policy was devoid of any support or concern for Cuba’s long-suffering dissidents and pro-democracy advocates, the majority of whom have endorsed President Trump’s rollback of Obama policies and applaud the president’s restatement of the importance of the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. The Obama administration’s abandonment of these core principles of freedom — as well as the Cuban people themselves — in favor of accommodation with a brutal, repressive dictatorship is the tragic result of Obama’s ill-considered “legacy-building” in the late stages of his presidency. The argument that “commercial and people-to-people” exchanges, all of which are on Cuba’s terms, can bring about change and democracy on the island is ludicrous. Freedom and democracy triumphed in Eastern Europe because of America's and the West’s unwavering support of dissident and civil-society movements, such as those inspired and led by Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel of Czechoslovakia. Obama’s legacy in Cuba to date is a fiasco. Since his “historic opening” with Cuba of December 2014, the Castro dictatorship has intensified its political repression with the arrest of more than 10,000 dissidents. Nothing has changed. It's business as usual for the dictat... Link to the full article to read more