Huffington Post

Posted: 02/13/2014 9:27 am EST Updated: 02/13/2014 9:26 am EST

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More than half of Americans want to put the U.S. embargo on Cuba to rest, according to a poll released this week by the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank. We’re not surprised. It’s an outmoded idea whose time has passed. Here’s 7 reasons why the U.S. government should finally give it a rest.

1(AP Photo/The United Nations, Rick Bajornas)

The United Nations has voted for 22 years in a row to condemn the Cuban embargo in lopsided votes. Last year only Israel and the United States itself voted against the resolution.
2

It’s ineffective

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The idea behind the embargo is to topple the Communist government. More than five decades later, the policy has led to the overthrow of zero out of two Cuban heads of state.
3

It’s expensive

The inauguration ceremony of the first phase of a port overhaul project in Mariel, Cuba, Jan. 27, 2014. (AP)

The embargo on Cuba doesn’t just hurt the Cuban economy — it costs U.S. businesses as well. The United States loses out on $1.2 billion in forfeited earnings from lost trade with Cuba annually, according to the Harvard Political Review.
4

It’s undemocratic

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A poll by the Atlantic Council, a non-partisan think tank, found that a solid majority of Americans favors normalizing relations with Cuba. You’d never guess by looking at the behavior of the U.S. government.
5

Cuba isn’t a threat

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The idea behind the embargo emanates in part from the Cold War-era notion that a Soviet-aligned government 90 miles off the coast posed a grave security threat. That may have been true during the days of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, but it’s tough to make a reasonable case that Cuba poses a threat to the world’s most massive military machine today.
6

It targets the wrong people

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The embargo aims to cower the Cuban government into submission by engendering resentment among a cash-starved populace. If one takes the U.S. government at its word that it aims to free a country from an oppressive government, why punish the people you’re supposedly trying to help?
7

Its time has passed

While it’s up for debate whether the embargo was ever a smart policy, today it’s clearly anachronistic. The United States now does business with China, Vietnam and Russia, but not Cuba. The policy, first partially implemented in 1960, has survived 11 U.S. presidents with nothing to show. Give it a rest.