Ben Rhodes Quotes

Our Cuba policy didn't make much sense during the Cold War and makes even less sense now.

Ten Presidents have tried to do something about Cuba and the statis is quo.

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.

For more than fifty years, our policy towards Cuba was not making life better for Cubans. In many ways, it was making it worse.

For more than fifty years, Americans and Cubans have been isolated from one another even though Cuba is only 90 miles away from Florida.

The Elian events were shocking to Cubans because we were the fair-haired boys of the Cold War. The problem is, the Cold War ended.

The consequence of the Bay of Pigs failure wasn't an acceptance of Castro and his control of Cuba but, rather, a renewed determination to bring him down by stealth.

I think a policy of isolationism toward Cuba is misplaced and hasn't worked.

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won't allow it.

A great many people simply do not at this moment see that Cuba presents so grave and compelling a threat to our national security as to justify a course of action which much of the world will interpret as calculated aggression against a small nation.

It’s about time we talked to Cuba instead of fighting a war that is 40 years old.

For more than fifty years, the United States pursued a policy of isolating and pressuring Cuba. While the policy was rooted in the context of the Cold War, our efforts continued long after the rest of the world had changed.

Our Cuba policy was a major obstacle to getting things done in the hemisphere and a source of tension around the world.

[Cuba's goverment] is an anti-American government.

I thought that in general we in the United States were too optimistic in believing that the Soviets might alter what had been for a long time, as a matter of fact for centuries, fundamental Russian policies in respect to the rest of the world.

I'm sorry that I can't snap my fingers and undo 50 years of bad American foreign policy.

Well of course New Zealand isn't anti-American.

Hostility toward Iran may not be the silliest of all American foreign policies - that would probably be the continuing trade embargo of Cuba - but it is undoubtedly the most self-defeating.

I always felt that the Cubans were being pushed into the Soviet Bloc by American policy.

One of the achievements of which I am most proud was the codification, the writing into U.S. law, of the U.S. embargo on the Castro dictatorship.

Despite the President's orders that no American forces be used, the first two people who landed in the Bay of Pigs [in 1961] were Americans. The CIA sent them in.

Thorough consideration should be given to the elimination of Fidel Castro

…as the Cuban exiles intensify their activities aimed at overthrowing Castro, the more difficult it will become to conceal the U.S. hand..

The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh, but it is not a dagger in the heart.... I have no evidence that the Cuban people are able and willing at this time to assist any invasion from the outside.

[Fidel] Castro was gifted leader who engineered social improvements that benefitted most Cubans, a statesman who placed Cuba at the center of world politics, and a masterful tactician who outlasted ten hostile U. S. Presidents…