Ok, so that headline was to get your attention. Here's a link to the current issue of Cigar Afficionado, which this month made a call for the Obama administration to end the embargo against Cuba. One article tells the President what to do while the other one tells him what his predecessors did.

Here's a snip from the editors:

We believe it is time to end the trade embargo and open the doors of Cuba to Americans. We don't gloss over the widespread and justified condemnation of some of Cuba's domestic policies that have limited political freedoms and human rights. But after 50 years of isolating Cuba to try to achieve change there, we think it's time to try something else, and we believe that opening up the island to American visitors, and thus our influence, will help produce the kind of changes we want much quicker than any other policy.

My colleagues Julia Sweig, Peter Kornbluh and Bill Leogrande make the case for changing this antiquated policy quite eloquently, but unfortunately, Cigar Aficionado has yet to make the links available. Here's a the opening lines from Julia Sweig's piece, though:

In the first six months of your presidency, you should launch an initiative to put to rest the half century of mutual enmity between the United States and Cuba. Doing so represents an opportunity of both major foreign policy reward and low domestic political risk. Mr. President, a bold initiative with Cuba, early in your presidency, will restore America’s credibility and demonstrate your political courage with the Cuban people, in the hemisphere and across the globe.

Hear, hear.

For some additional background on the Kornbluh/Leogrande article, "Talking to Fidel," click here. These two historians were able to get some incredible documents detailing how Kennedy, Kissinger, Carter, and Clinton all created back channel negotiations with the Castro regime.

Kissinger gets the money quote, however:

"If there is a benefit to us in an end to the state of 'perpetual antagonism,'" the report to Kissinger noted, "it lies in getting Cuba off the domestic and inter-American agendas—in extracting the symbolism from an intrinsically trivial issue."