There are a lot of people angry about the US resuming talks with Cuba, and unlike Kos I don't dismiss them all as old, wrinkled hold-outs from a bygone age. There are people who hate Cuba who have definitely earned that right. People who were tortured by the Cuban government, oppressed by the regime... you know, people who were persecuted for daring to disagree with the way things were. I find it more than reasonable for those people to be absolutely, unbendingly angry about the US decision to resume diplomatic ties with the country that attacked them, tortured them, made them suffer. And they have every right to feel betrayed by the US for doing it.
It's everyone else I don't get. And I'm pretty sure there's more "everyone else" complaining than the people who have actual cause.
I'll go on record as saying that, in my opinion, Cuba is a dictatorship, run by a tyrant, that oppresses its people. The way it runs things doesn't jibe with how I want a country to work. Whether or not people actually agree with my take on Cuba is largely irrelevant for this discussion--the important takeaway is that I view Cuba as a country that belongs in the same column as China and the Soviet Union, back when it was a thing.
But that's just it: we do business with China. And we had diplomatic relations with Soviet Union. We sort of had to, in order to keep the world from blowing up.
So what's different about Cuba?
The difference with Cuba was that it was safe for us to embargo. When Cuba wasn't being fed nuclear weapons by the Soviets it wasn't really a threat, so it was "safe" for us to take a hard-line stance against it. We could say "well we won't tolerate this" and ignore them, and withhold money from them, and make some constituents happy and go on our way with nary an inconvenience on our part.
Meanwhile, we had to deal with the fact that the Soviet Union existed, so we did. And we have to deal with the fact that China exists, so we do. And we have to deal with the fact that North Korea exists and is run by someone who appears to be batshit crazy--and that "batshit crazy" is, apparently, a job requirement written into their goddamn charter, or whatever they have--so we deal with them to. We can't afford not to.
And that is the problem I have with all this.
If the reason for not having diplomatic ties with Cuba is because it's run by a dictatorial prick who gives fuck all about human rights, then we should also immediately cut of all ties with China and North Korea. But we talk to China plenty because it's good for business, and we talk to North Korea because they're too crazy to ignore. Apparently our diplomatic principles have a side limit, as in "you must be under this size in order for us to courageously tell you to go fuck yourself."
The whole point of diplomacy is that you spend a lot of time talking to people you disagree with. IF YOU AGREED WITH THEM YOU WOULDN'T BE AT THE TABLE IN THE FIRST PLACE. This means you deal with countries like China--China, the government that executes someone and forces their family to pay for it. That means you deal with countries like North Korea, the country that threatens war when they think someone might be laughing at them. That means you deal with countries like Russia, which seems to be looking forward to a return to the Good Old Days of empire and expansion.
Given that we regularly and routinely deal with so many assholes, why not one more? If the argument for working with China is "because working with them is the best way to introduce democratic ideals to the country and it's not because of all their money really it isn't I swear to God" then why is that argument not valid with Cuba?
The answer as far as I can tell is "because we could get away with it," and it's about as sniveling an argument as I've ever found.
Which, again, is not to say there aren't people who don't have legitimate grievances with Cuba. And I don't have anything wise or reasonable or comforting to say to them, because the truth is that they did pretty much get screwed over here. But I can't find any way, given our basic activities as a world power, we can justify "Cuba is bad" as a reason not to deal with them when there are other countries out there who are as bad or worse that we do deal with.