Time to Open the Doors to Cuba

Undoubtedly in an election year, this will not happen. Castro has been an authoritarian dictator there. But he replaced many American imposed ones, e.g. Batista:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista

Two positive things were, however, done by Castro for the Cubans -- he inspired universal literacy and provided universal medical care:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Cuba

http://www.bicyclingcuba.com/bikecuba/education.htm

If we want to open the doors wider in Cuba, it is long time waiting for us to allow families to rejoin there and Americans to visit and make their own critical judgments. Americans now have free access to far more repressive regimes, e.g. Saudi Arabia from which the vast majority of those who did the 9/11 horror emanated:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hijackers_in_the_September_11_attacks

We have been blocked from interaction in the past by the many who fled the Cuban revolution, but they are being replaced by many others who now want to go home to visit friends and family.

It is time to end our guilt regarding our treatment of Cuba in the past which inspired Castro's revolution.

Lest we forget:

"Cuba and the United States of America have had an interest in one another since well before either of their independence movements. Plans for purchase of the nearby island from the Spanish Empire were put forward at various times in the United States. As the Spanish influence waned in the Caribbean, the United States gradually gained a position of economic and political dominance over the island, with the vast majority of foreign investment holdings, the bulk of imports and exports in its hands, and a strong influence on Cuban political affairs."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuba_%E2%80%93_United_States_relations
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"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
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Ed Kent [blind copies]