Quote of the Day

" You don't have to endorse American Cuban policy, to understand that no one can makes you become a despot. No one makes you lock up artists and intellectuals. No one makes you spend 50 years as the head of a totalitarian state. America didn't make Castro a dictator, anymore than Castro made America embark on a failed embargo policy. Two people arguing can both be wrong."

- Ta-Nehisi Coates

This strikes me as exactly right. The Castro regime is an ugly, vile dictatorship, with its hands soaked in the blood of innocents, and supporting it is wrong - but at the same time, the embargo is a failed policy that does nothing to dislodge the regime and perversely empowers it. Engaging in diplomacy and trade with a nation is not equivalent to endorsement or appeasement, indeed they are often the best (and only) methods for encouraging existing dissent to create the internal sea-change that leads to a better way forward.