RUBIO: Obama Shunning Castro Opponents Equals New Low

Tracy – who served in the Marines Corps for 30 years – was a master gunnery sergeant entrusted with lowering the flag at the embassy in Havana when the US severed relations with Cuba on January 4, 1961.

On Friday, the American flag will once again fly over the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, the most potent symbol of the shift in relations between two countries that throughout the Cold War bristled with open hostility toward one another.

The history of the U.S.-Cuba ties is full of instances of the U.S. disrespecting the norms of diplomacy, he said.

Washington’s top diplomat will be in Havana this morning to raise the Stars and Stripes over the newly opened U.S. Embassy, making a symbolically charged victory lap for the Obama administration’s new policy of engagement with Cuba. There are quite a few destabilizing forces in the region but the most toxic of all has been Cuba.

Perhaps the most important driver of warming ties between the two countries, however, will be the American and Cuban people.

The U.S. embargo, however, remains firmly in place. “Regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba or any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States”, President John F. Kennedy said.

Castro’s birthday fell on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s trip to Havana.

“I am just fired up at that”, said Fox of the historical moment.

During the 38 years that the US mission here operated as a downgraded “interests section, ” US officials hosted the types of events that they do elsewhere: Fourth of July receptions, dinners for visiting VIPs, and special-invitation parties to watch the Super Bowl.

Castro made no mention either of Kerry’s visit to reopen the embassy, a step that comes eight months after Obama and Castro’s successor and brother Raul announced plans to restore relations.

NPR’s Michele Kelemen interviewed Geoff Thale of the advocacy group Washington Office on Latin America, who has been working to improve relations with Cuba for 20 years. Several Cuban-Americans also are part of the delegation.

The poet and author admits that his grandmother, in addition to trying to turn a profit off the new DC-Havana relationship, would have used the opportunity to introduce her Miami-raised grandson to a local. Known now as Assata Shakur, she was convicted of murdering a New Jersey state trooper in the 1970s and is said to be living in exile in Cuba after breaking out of prison. They have an entrepreneurial spirit they are way ahead of their government. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who has long advocated for more travel to and trade with Cuba, sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as does Sen.

Piccone suggests that the Cuban government may not be all that eager to put out the welcome mat for U.S. companies.