Fnord wrote:
Big yawn.
50 years of embargoes have not worked. Espionage has not worked. Even electing Cuban exiles to Congress has not worked. This much is obvious.
So now we can get Cuban rum and cigars without having to smuggle them in or route them through another country. So now people who want to emigrate from Cuba to America can just buy a ticket instead of swimming 90 miles through shark-infested waters. So now American can use their credit cards to buy Cuban souveniers (hand-made in China, no doubt).
Does it really matter, one way or the other?
I have a lot of respect for the Cubans. I mean, American cars of the 50s were well made, but when was the last time you saw 1950s cars running around your city, if you're in America? You might see somebody's labor of love drive by every so often, but Cuba has an estimated 60,000 old US cars. Also, I once saw a video of the studios and control rooms of Radio Havana Cuba, and they have 50+ year old Soviet made equipment that still works. We all know how awful Russian made stuff is, but they keep it working.
They even managed to deal with being cut off from Russian oil after the fall of the USSR. Cuban agriculture had been highly mechanized with the goal of producing sugar and tobacco for the Comecon Bloc, but the Cubans managed to adjust to producing much of their island's food supply, which earlier had been full of imports. They went through a period of hunger in the 90s, but managed to get through it without their society collapsing. They tore up parking lots and planted gardens.
Cubans are the people that Americans wish they could be--self-reliant and innovative. So they want a semi-communist govt, so what, they are a sovereign nation with self-determination and can have whatever form of govt they so desire, and the ones who were unhappy fled ages ago. Cubans aren't going to topple their system anytime soon. The aging Cuban expats in Miami have been allowed to run America's position towards Cuba for way too long. Most of the people involved in the old Cold War spats are long dead, as Obama noted. There is no sense in leaving a failed embargo in place to please Ted Cruz and his rabid followers.