BY WILLIAM C. HENRY After decades of steady and evermore forceful insertion, America’s resident Cuban expats and their uber-pandering Washington politicos may finally be forced to begin extracting their middle digits from between the cheeks of the 11 million-plus Cuban citizens they’ve been long-distance sodomizing for the past thirty years. And how only-slightly-better-late-
Ironically it’s the youngest generation of that very progeny that the Cuban people have to thank for sparking the shamefully overdue humanitarian change now taking shape in this country. It is unsurprising to see it being advanced by 
a Democrat President, but I’m pretty sure you’d have had to wait through another Republican administration or two to witness anything resembling this one’s initiative. Remember, folks, the ONLY ones who’ve been hurt (well, actually not the only ones, but more on that to follow) by the Cuban embargo are ordinary Cubans. As you may have already surmised, not a single member of the political elite or the monied class on the island has had his or her lifestyle altered one iota by the sanctions. Which leads me to the two points I most want you to take away from this rant: 1) every American politician who’s had a hand in perpetuating this immoral outrage bears direct responsibility for all of the economic and physical misery that has and continues to beset the Cuban people; and, 2) had all of those Cubans fortunate enough to have reached our shores and been accepted into this country put as much effort into ending the embargo as they have campaigning for its continuance, the hardship and suffering of those they left behind would doubtless have been greatly eased, if not completely ended, decades ago.
Although the Cuban people have by far borne the brunt of the sanctions’ carnage, they aren’t the only ones who’ve been harmed. Detriment to the American people has been significant, and in many cases, unconscionable. Billions upon billions in lost sales and earnings, not to mention the forced separation of immediate family and close relatives. The monies could have ended up as additional tax revenues, found their way to the bottom lines of American businesses, or into the pockets of American workers in the form of higher wages and benefits; no price can be placed on the anguish and torment of family division and disunion. In essence, the embargo has benefited NO ONE — except the Castro regime and American sugar producers — unless you measure success by the extent of human misery imposed. Never forget that world governments have known for eons that sanctions rarely if ever accomplish the desired ends. In fact, sanctions sometimes result in the butchery of thousands of innocent people. Embargoes, sanctions, blockades or boycotts, call them anything you like. But, whichever moniker you assign, you can count on it ALWAYS, a) resulting in the demise and utter despair of untold numbers of innocent ordinary human beings and, b) that its imposition will NEVER EVER bring so much as a SMIDGEN of economic or physical pain to any of the wealthy, the powerful or the governing elite within the confines of wherever it is brought to bear. They are all exercises in malignant futility.
When it comes to succinctly, honestly and apolitically making the case for the immorality of mayhem being forcibly imposed upon those helpless to prevent it — for whatever reason or purpose — perhaps no one has ever worded it more unambiguously or disturbingly than Robert Higgs, the eminent American economic historian:
“Anarchists did not try to carry out genocide against the Armenians in Turkey; they did not deliberately starve millions of Ukrainians; they did not create a system of death camps to kill Jews, gypsies, and Slavs in Europe; they did not fire-bomb scores of large German and Japanese cities and drop nuclear bombs on two of them; they did not carry out a ‘Great Leap Forward’ that killed scores of millions of Chinese; they did not attempt to kill everybody with any appreciable education in Cambodia; they did not launch one aggressive war after another; they did not implement trade sanctions that killed perhaps 500,000 Iraqi children. In debates between anarchists and statists, the burden of proof clearly should rest on those who place their trust in the state. Anarchy’s mayhem is wholly conjectural; the state’s mayhem is undeniably, factually horrendous.”
Amen.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fed up early stage septuagenarian who has actually been most of there and done most of that. Born and raised in the picturesque Pocono Mountains. Quite well educated. Very lucky to have been born into a well-schooled and somewhat prosperous family. Long divorced. One beautiful, brilliant daughter. Two far above average grandsons. Semi-retired (how does anyone manage to do it completely these days?) and fully-tired of bullshit. Uncle of the Editor-In-Chief.