Susan Rice, President Barack Obama’s National Security Advisor, looked into the television camera and declared that the American 55-year-long trade “embargo with Cuba had failed.” President Obama’s history-making visit this week to Cuba, she said, lays to rest that 55-year-long failure. She and the president neglected to mention that it was President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, who created and implemented the embargo.

She’s wrong. Obama’s visit symbolizes his failure to help Cubans be free -- not that the embargo failed.

President Obama’s visit to Cuba reflects the failure of Obama’s policy towards Cuba that, while foreseen for the past seven years, is a bitter insult to the Cubans who have risked their lives to escape from the island dictatorship. It also insults all people who strive for liberty for all.

Thousands of Cubans are in prison for demanding human rights. Some were arrested even as President Obama’s Air Force One was in the air on the way to Havana according to reports. Cuba’s Communist apparatchiks are busy negotiating business deals with China, begging Venezuela for free oil, making sure Cubans do not have access to the Internet, and filling their prisons with people seeking democratic rights. Dictator Raul Castro says the United States owes Cuba billions for the “damage” he claims the United States inflicted with John F. Kennedy’s embargo. That, by the way, is an admission that the embargo worked contrary to Susan Rice’s falsities.

Americans have been imprisoned by Cuba on flimsy and false charges for years even as more than five dozen convicted and/or charged American criminals live and work in Cuba under the dictatorship’s protection and on its payroll.

President Obama had fantastic leverage and opportunities to negotiate terms with Cuba that benefited the Cuban people by making the dictatorship embark on new paradigms of governance that would benefit the Cuban people. That is, if he had seriously negotiated for freedom for all.

If you, Raul Castro, want the embargo ended then quit arresting people every weekend when they march for free speech and democratic elections. Raul, if you want Americans to come to Cuba to visit and spend money, fine, but you have to allow American communications companies to enter Cuba with their modern services and an Internet that you do not interfere with. If you want Americans to come to Cuba for any reason, for business or tourism, you must put every American criminal hiding in Cuba on a plane we will send at no cost to Cuba to bring them back escorted by U.S. Marshals. That includes the cop killer and the terror bomber.

If you want full diplomatic relations with the United States and unrestricted trade relations, you must allow full ingress and egress to Cuba for Cubans. You must compensate all claims proved for property expropriated by your government of Americans, American and foreign companies, Cubans and Cuban companies on January 1st, 1959, or after.

If you move your people towards freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, political freedom, free political parties and elections, and return all convicted or charged American criminals to the United States, President Obama will visit Cuba and watch a baseball game with you.

Unfortunately, we do not have a president who wanted anything from Cuba. He only wants future leftist historians to write well about his presidency like the mainstream American press does as he visits Cuba. That mainstream press agrees with his Cuban gift policy as it does with his closing our naval base at Guantanamo Bay and its prison for enemy combatants of the ongoing war on terrorism. Broadcasting live from Havana? Come on.

The president’s people point to public polling that says a majority of Americans support his one-sided gifts to the Cuban dictatorship. What they don’t refer to is that Congress is the only institution that can relieve, change, or end the embargo. Obama can lift visit restrictions on people, he can allow airlines to go to Cuba because only he can deal with foreign countries but he cannot end the embargo on his own.

One can only hope that the President of the United States is uncomfortable in Havana while Cubans are in prison for the crime of asking for freedom. The president could have forced the Cuban government to ease restrictions on freedom that Americans cherish and he did not. He simply isn’t capable of being a freedom fighter even on a philosophical level. Viva Cuba Libre!