McCaffrey and Cuba

Barry McCaffrey published an op-ed in the Miami Herald about U.S. policy toward Cuba, advocating the scrapping of just about everything, including handing the entire Guantánamo base back to Cuba. It is a very well-written piece that pulls no punches (referring, for example, to the "regimented dullness of that Marxist state") and concludes, very reasonably, that "the status quo is a loser."

Modifying punitive economic and travel policies should not be viewed as making concessions to an authoritarian regime. Instead, they should be viewed as a belated recognition that our past policies were ineffective and will not promote democratization in Cuba.

Such ideas won't likely be translated into policy anytime soon, but conventional wisdom is slowly transforming.