• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 10 / 17 / 2010

---

From a column in The Journal Inquirer of Connecticut by Chris Powell, the newspaper's managing editor:  His 36 years in Congress will end in a few months but the other day Connecticut Sen. Christopher J. Dodd may have  performed a service as good as any in his long career when he visited Cuba and returned calling for diminishing or ending the U.S. embargo against that country so reform might be encouraged there.

The embargo of Cuba is 50 years old but has failed to weaken the communist government. The world long has disregarded the embargo. Indeed, it seems mainly to have enabled the Caribbean island to posture as the defender of Cuba's sovereignty, a sovereignty disrespected disgracefully by the United States ever since Spanish colonial rule was replaced by the imperialism of Cuba's big neighbor.

Normal economic and travel relations with the United States likely would weaken or reform the government, as such relations have done with communist China and Vietnam.

Dodd is a vigorous 66 and is not ready to retire from public life. He is fluent in Spanish and expert in Latin America. If the United States ever got sensible about Cuba, Dodd might be the best choice as the first U.S. ambassador to Havana in half a century.

Source: //miamiherald.typepad.com/cuban_colada/