As a teen, I remember well the victory of Fidel Castro and his band of guerrillas against the corrupt dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959.  A speaker spoke at my parents’ church condemning U.S. sponsored corruption and greed in Cuba under Batista. That was one of my first introductions to seeing the complexity of international affairs.

Then came the panic brought about by the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the rush by Americans to their grocery stores to frantically buy toilet paper and canned goods for the expected nuclear war that might follow the showdown. Premier Khrushchev and President Kennedy were standing toe-to-toe over Russian missiles in Communist Cuba and the world would live or die as a result.

The years that followed Castro’s takeover saw the U.S. embargo against Cuba.  As I began teaching high school history and current events, I had a chance to examine the Cuban issue more closely.  I saw that Castro was able to rally support and stay in power by using the “Colossus of the North” as the boogeyman. U.S. policy to Cuba has been wrong for fifty-four years, and thanks to a lame duck President, that policy is on its deathbed.

The best way to deal with Castro would have been for the U.S. to keep quiet and to continue to trade with Cuba. Americans would continue to travel there, and Castro would not have had anger against the U.S. to rally support for his regime.  Then the Cuban people would have begun to see Castro for what he really was. Had the U.S. followed this policy fifty-four years ago, Castro and Communism in Cuba would have disappeared decades ago.

Then why did the U.S. maintain the embargo for 54 years if it was counterproductive?  The answer, as ever, was, “politics”.  Most of the rich Cubans who fled Castro’s takeover ended up in Florida.  They formed a major voting block that might doom any aspiring presidential candidate from winning the presidency.

It took President Obama, frustrated with his inability to do much domestically to open up negotiations with Fidel’s brother, Raul Castro, Cuba’s current leader.  Russia is no longer able to support Cuba as it did during the Cold War, and the strongly anti-American Venezuelan President Chavez died. The Venezuelan government has provided cheap oil for years, propping up the weak and broken Cuban economy.

Now, as the price of gasoline has drastically dropped, oil-producing Venezuela lacks the ability to supply oil to Cuba as it once did. Its own economy is in shambles.  Castro has only the U.S. to turn to bail out their economy with increased trade and tourism.

Thanks to Communism in Cuba, the Cuban people are now better educated than they were fifty-four years ago.  All they need now is a more open government and a more capitalistic economy to harness these increased educational abilities to prosper Cuba.

President Obama has done future presidents a favor regarding Florida. They no longer have to fear a Cuban-American voter backlash by opening up relations with Cuba.  This new policy will put the United States in a better light in Latin America, and win us some friends who now see that we are acting rationally instead of following a failed foreign policy.

I’ve waited a long time to see the U.S. government finally end Cuba’s isolation. This change in policy holds a lesson for all of us:  Decisions made in a time of fear are usually bad decisions.  We all make better choices when we can rid ourselves of our fears and look at issues clearly and rationally.  The definition of insanity is to repeat behaviors in hopes of different results. We followed that insane policy for 54 years. The U.S. government has just become saner. It’s about time.