End sanctions against Cuba

After 35 years of doing something that hasn't worked, maybe it's time to rethink our sanctions on Cuba. The United Nations General Assembly this past week voted 157-2 to urge the United States to drop its embargo.

Only loyal Israel voted with us. Last year, and in 1996, we could muster three votes. Instead of reexamining a failed policy then, we instead ratchet up the sanctions with the 1996 Helms- Burton Act. That law was so intrusive in what other nations deemed their own business that even our closest neighbors, Canada and Mexico, feel free to ignore our sanctions.

The sanctions remain in place only because of domestic political considerations and rigid, reflexive anticommunism, like that of the act's two sponsors. The sanctions were politically easy: While they hurt the Cubans a lot, they hurt us not at all.

If deposing Fidel Castro was (and still is) the goal, old age probably will get him faster than our sanctions. Maybe the rest of the world is wrong and we're right. Still, after 35 years and no more international support, maybe it's time to try some other way to spread the spirit of free-market freedom to Cuba.

How about trade and tourism?

-- The Stuart News, Stuart, Florida