AND IF "CUBAN TWITTER" HAD SUCCEEDED SPECTACULARLY, DO YOU THINK OBAMA WOULD HAVE GOTTEN ANY CREDIT?

U.S. policy toward Castro-era Cuba has always had an Elmer Fudd quality -- it's been full of ridiculously elaborate schemes that had no chance of success. I'm sorry to learn that President Obama used some Acme products* to try to kill the wabbit, too:

The U.S. government masterminded the creation of a "Cuban Twitter" - a communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba, built with secret shell companies and financed through foreign banks, The Associated Press has learned.

The Obama administration project, which lasted more than two years and drew tens of thousands of subscribers, sought to evade Cuba's stranglehold on the Internet with a primitive social media platform. First, the network would build a Cuban audience, mostly young people; then, the plan was to push them toward dissent....

We can't blame this on throwback Republicans. It started in Obama's first year in office, and was clearly aiming at Obamaesque Net-savvy hipsterism:

The social media project began development in 2009 after Washington-based Creative Associates International obtained a half-million Cuban cellphone numbers.

... Eventually, documents and interviews reveal, they hoped the network would reach critical mass so that dissidents could organize "smart mobs" - mass gatherings called at a moment's notice - that could trigger political demonstrations, or "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society." ...

Needless to say, this hasn't brought the Cuban government to its knees. But what if it had? What if it had succeeded beyond its planners' wildest expectations? I assume the president imagined that commie-hating conservatives would rethink their enmity toward him, and would stop regarding him as an American-hating menace. Toppling the Cuban government would win him respect.

Y'know, just the way ordering the death of Osama bin Laden has won him all that respect from his enemies.

Forget it. All the credit, according to right-wingers, would have gone to ... oh, I'm going to take a wild guess and say Ronald Reagan. Does that seem about right?

Seriously, Mr. President: If you were thought this would change your domestic enemies' minds, you shouldn't have bothered. It was never possible.



*Oops -- as Victor notes in comments, Wile E. Coyote was the Acme repeat customer, not Elmer Fudd.