The Obama administration has just announced it would open full diplomatic relations with Cuba, over fifty years after the revolution. This is not necessarily to endorse the Castro regime, but I say this is long overdue. For over fifty years, “our” government has waged a futile undercover war to bring down the regime, using proxy military forces like at the Bay of Pigs, economic sanctions, and fanciful ideas to make the regime look bad. All this was to bring down the regime, but it only made THIS country look bad-nations continue to do business with Cuba, and Fidel Castro remains popular.

I have always wondered-“our” government has maintained relations with other Communist-based countries-the Soviet Union, China, Viet Nam, even closed-off North Korea; why not with Cuba? From my understanding, it’s because of the Cuban-immigrant lobby in Miami. But there were ethnic lobbies for immigrants from the other Communist-based nations. Imperial vanity, not logic, has not guided our foreign policy.

With the establishment of an embassy in Havana, issues of human rights can more easily be addressed; but any movement towards democratization of Cuba has to come from the Cuban people themselves, since ‘our own” government throughout history has not pursued democracy in such nations as Iran under the Shah, Guatemala and El Salvador under the military juntas, South Africa under the Apartheid regime, the Dominican Republic under Trujillo, the Philippines under Marcos, and Cuba under Batista. that would be a project for the Cuban people to carry out; and judging by how rank-and-file people brought down the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, I say they can do it, with out “our” government’s “help.”