The United States suspended diplomatic relations with communist Cuba in 1961 and after the Bay of Pigs - a failed C.I.A. effort to overthrow Castro - and the Cuban Missile Crisis - which almost brought the world to nuclear holocaust - the two nations have remained bitter foes.

Situated just 90 miles off the American coast, Cuba may as well be thousands of miles away. There is no trade between both nations and a walk around Havana reveals a poverty-stricken country where 1950s era cars are the norm for Cubans have not been able to import anything but Soviet era moving-vehicles [to call them cars would be misleading] since President Kennedy placed the embargo.

Photo Credit: Enrique de la Osa/Reuters.

During his tenure, President George W. Bush used the U.S. Diplomatic Mission office [a step short of meaningful relations] to broadcast pro-democracy messages in a ticker than ran the length of the building. Needless to say, a pro-democracy ticker did not inspire many Cubans to rally. And now President Obama has suspended that ticker.

The neo-conservatives will now predictably denounce President Obama as an appeaser of the Castro brothers in line with his appeasement of other dictators. President Obama is suspended the ticker in an effort to engage Cuba. The ticker was always an empty point by Bush to irritate Castro. It is not like Obama is selling-out the democratic activists in Cuba who depend on the ticker, but by turning the lights off the United States can win some credible with Cuba which strongly resented such a broadcast in their capital. Any nation would be offended if another started to broadcast in their capital messages intended to inspire the overthrow of the regime.

Besides winning, presumably, the U.S. stock in dealing with Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother, but it also spares the U.S. embarrassment. Because the ticker lacked Spanish accents, several sentences were “misspoken”. For instance in writing the word “año”, which means year, due to the lack of accent it appears as “ano”, which means . . . anus. Not very pleasant. Leave it to the Bush administration to put up a sign without vetting it first.

Sample messages:

“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up” - Abraham Lincoln

“No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent” - Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.