Frank Calzon, the Executive Director of the Center for a Free Cuba (a DC think thank funded by US AID) writes in today's Miami Herald:

Is it possible that our charismatic President Obama -- though now a Nobel Laureate -- has adopted Henry Kissinger's realpolitick model for conducting foreign policy? A model cloaked in pragmatism but devoid of passion for freedom and human rights?

Calzon argues that in several instances, the President has abandoned the cause of human rights, in order to appease authoritarian governments. Take the President's decision to "avoid offending Russia" and dump a $4.5 billion ballistic missile shield planned for Poland and the Czech Republic. Supporters of Obama's decision will argue that these missile interceptors have not been proven effective (far from it) and would thus be a waste of taxpayer dollars. But Calzon suggests that the $4.5 billion program would have made Poland and the Czech Republic feel less "vulnerable."

Agree or not, Calzon raises an interesting and debatable question about this President's foreign policy and how to understand its principles and methods. But he strains credulity applying his logic to the case of Cuba, mainly because there's no 'there' there.

Calzon complains that Cuban dissidents weren't invited to a reception at the US Interests Section in Havana last month - though he fails to mention that they had a private reception with the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State during her visit to Havana. He also notes that representatives of a Cuban human rights prize winner (who was not allowed to leave Cuba to accept the prize) were not received by the White House. Did Mr. Calzon complain when no one in President Bush's White House would receive Hector Palacios when he came to Washington last year? Palacios, a prominent Cuban dissident, was one of 75 rounded up and imprisoned in April 2003, and lucky (not exactly) to be out of prison due to his failing health. But then, Palacios has been known to differ with U.S. policy on Cuba from time to time.

Calzon goes on:

At State there are some who believe the promotion of democracy by American diplomats is a mistake and a subterfuge.

It's a statement meant to evoke outrage at the abandonment of the cause of human rights. But who's really abandoned the cause of human rights in Cuba? How does Mr. Calzon answer the protestations of Cuban dissidents, like Oswaldo Paya, Elizardo Sanchez or Miriam Leiva, who urge the United States not to meddle in affairs only the Cuban people can settle, and not to give the Cuban government reason to brand them "agents" in the pay of Uncle Sam?

And what does Mr. Calzon say about human rights defenders like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Freedom House, who all separately came out for greater engagement of Cuba - through either the lifting the U.S. travel ban or lifting the entire embargo - in the last year. I doubt they did so because they no longer believe in the promotion of human rights.

The human rights groups endorsed engagement because they recognize that after 50 years, the United States - despite hundreds of millions of U.S. taxpayer-funded grants to organizations like Mr. Calzon's - has failed to actually promote multiparty democracy in Cuba.

Perhaps the issue is not whether the United States would abandon the cause of democracy and human rights in Cuba, it's whether we might finally abandon Mr. Calzon's approach to promoting them. Mr. Calzon's op-ed didn't mention that Congress has cut back U.S. government spending - which was quadrupled under the previous administration - on groups like his, not because Congress no longer supports human rights, but because the USAID Cuba program has been largely ineffective, and has suffered from waste, fraud and abuse.

Mr. Calzon's real concern may be that global human rights groups, along with Cuban dissidents like Oscar "Chepe" Espinoza, will actually convince the U.S. government that it can do more to improve the lives of the Cuban people today by simply promoting the freedom of Americans to travel to Cuba and engage the Cuban people directly. And, conveniently, that policy wouldn't cost the American taxpayer a dime.