Cuba, the socialist police state so adored by Obama administration twerps like Ben Rhodes, is finding itself in the line of fire for its brutal grip on Venezuela.

President Trump has vowed to make the socialist dictatorship pay by threatening Cuba with 'full and complete' sanctions, which is exactly what it deserves.  Here are his tweets:

If Cuban Troops and Militia do not immediately CEASE military and other operations for the purpose of causing death and destruction to the Constitution of Venezuela, a full and complete....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2019

....embargo, together with highest-level sanctions, will be placed on the island of Cuba. Hopefully, all Cuban soldiers will promptly and peacefully return to their island!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 30, 2019

but killing Cuba's people in the political prisons and streets.

But right he is to squeeze Cuba to the gills.  The socialist hellhole run by the same greedy and murderous family for 60 years is a linchpin to keeping the Maduro dictatorship in Venezuela in power.  Cuban communists not only provide troops and advisers in all of the country's security operations, but reportedly run those operations.  What's more, they run the country's critical infrastructure.  Like the blackouts?  They did the blackouts.  They control Venezuela's corrupt electoral system and have their hands on all the identification cards in the country, too.  When I visited Venezuela's Cojedes state in late 2005, a Venezuelan veterinarian told me they were even controlling the agricultural department, issuing orders on what kind of cows were to be had on the nascent collective farms being set up from expropriated farmland.  Cuba's vaunted medics, meanwhile, hand out medical treatment tied to how one votes.  No treatment if you don't vote the way they want you to vote.  No wonder a lot of them have fled — that's not medicine.  With this kind of control from a foreign power, no wonder Venezuelan government offices frequently feature the "Cubazuela" flag.

Yes, they've got to go.

And Trump would be justified in embargoing the hell out of them just for their treatment of America's diplomats, wounding many of them permanently in sick sonic attacks. 

They need every last boat coming into their island redoubt blocked and every bank transmission halted.  No remittances to benefit the Castroite government first; all overseas bank accounts frozen.  No imports, no exports, no "free" Venezuelan oil, no money to buy guns and torture equipment, no diplomatic exchanges, no tourism — and hell to pay for anyone on the outside who tries to trade with them or play tourist anyway. 

According to Fox News, it's not the first time he's brought the problem up:

The White House has long linked Venezuela's fortunes to Cuba. At a major foreign policy address earlier this year, Trump declared: "When Venezuela is free, and Cuba is free, and Nicaragua is free, this will become the first free hemisphere in all of human history."

Trump continued, as the crowd roared: "The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and Cuba as well. Do we love Cuba? Do we love Nicaragua? Great countries. Great potential."

How is it that a huge sovereign nation such as Venezuela, with the world's richest oil reserves, can come under the thumb of a filthy socialist hellhole pariah state such as Cuba?  It's astonishing, and Trump is making a smart move at Venezuela's point of vulnerability. 

Island states are uniquely vulnerable just for their geography, and any normal island state will make as many friends as it can to keep itself viable as a nation.  Cuba doesn't do that — it makes war and takes over other countries — and anything that can't go on won't, to paraphrase Herbert Stein.  The socialist dictatorship has a few resources around its elites, but not enough to keep the nation, or even itself, afloat.  The Castroite fortune amounts to about $900 billion that Forbes could prove, so there are some reserves.  But with frozen bank accounts, it's not going to last all that long.

Squeezing Cuba to the gills will for sure hamper its operations in Venezuela — and may well knock out the communist dictatorship in Cuba, too.

Taking them both out at once is a first-rate proposition, and one can only hope that either the Cubans get out of Venezuela or President Trump shows them he means what he says and takes the whole socialist hellhole industrial complex out cold.

Image credit: Twitter screen grab.