WASHINGTON, D.C. Dec. 23 (DPI) – It took him nearly six years, but Barack Obama finally took a bold and independent step on the global stage – and the results will likely be transformative, both for the U.S. and Latin America, and for his personal legacy, according to reader comment boards on major news sites.

The president’s decision to establish full diplomatic relations with Cuba this week is a huge – and still largely underappreciated – act of political de-regulation, one that will for generations reverberate throughout Latin America and beyond. Surely there will be major bumps – the issue of compensation to those whose businesses and properties were confiscated by the Castro regime is only beginning to get attention – but restoring formal diplomatic relations is a dramatic step in the right direction, experts and most readers seem to agree.

Even Republican critics – most notably Florida Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban American – failed to foam at the mouth after the announcement, suggesting that, long-term at least, recognizing Cuba is in everyone’s best interests. Even the protests and criticism in Miami’s Little Havana were muted, reflecting that, after more than 50 years of a US embargo and policies isolating the island nation, it was time for a change. Elderly Cubans in Miami too made mostly tepid protest. On NYTimes.com and other news sites, reader reaction was generally supportive.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/18/world/americas/us-cuba-relations.html

The top five most-recommended reader posts connected with the NY Times main news story – more than 2,100 posts there alone – reflected that:

Number 1 Recommended (1933 Recommendations):

I am a pretty staunch Conservative, but this move is long overdue. We deal with dictatorships and murderous regimes all over the world but yet for the last 50+ years we have refused to recognize Cuba. A small island 90 miles from our shores which was taken over in a revolution by Communist Fidel Castro. So, what is the difference from a lot of much larger and just as corrupt and dangerous countries that we currently have relations with and deal with??? Just think what we “may” have been able to achieve with the Castro regime and more importantly the peoples of Cuba over the past multiple generations if we had simply tried to “kill them with kindness” over the decades and years rather than the back of our hand. I certainly do not approve of Castro and his party but I really think we could have helped to build a more open and prosperous society in Cuba had we not been so block-headed.

Number 2 Most Recommended:

I am delighted America is going to try to normalize relations with Cuba, which haven’t been ‘normal’ since before I was born in 63. While I deplore Cuba’s treatment of political dissent, Cuba in no North Korea. It would be delightful if more countries, including the United States, followed Cuba’s example and had universal education, full literacy and free healthcare

Number 3 Most Recommended:

It’s nice to see not all of Obama’s foreign policy seems stuck in the 20th century. This strikes me as good for the American people and good for the Cuban people.

Number 4 Most Recommended:

I was born in 1950 in Miama (traditional pronunciation) Beach and grew up in Ft. Lauderdale. I’ve seen my parents come back from vacationing in Cuba when the dictator Batista was still in power and giving me the nickname that appears above; I’ve seen the Cuban Missle Crisis with portable missle launchers with missles a fixed rolling down US 1 through Ft. Lauderdale towards Homested AFB; I’ve been through the drills at Bayview Elementary school where we were taught to “duck and cover” under our desks in case on a nuclear strike against Port Everglades; I’ve seen the children of Cuban professionals enter that elementary school speaking little or no English and welcomed with open arms; I’ve seen the boat people risking their lives to touch U.S. soil; and I’ve seen a small but politically powerful group of anti Castro Cubans in South Miami preventing the end of the boycott/embargo for generations, thanks to cowardly politicians, after the boycott/embargo had long ceased to have any meaning other than to prolong the suffering of the Cuban people.

Thank God we finally have some rationality and humanity towards our neighbors a mere 90 miles from our shores. God bless Cuba and the United States!

Number 5 Most Recommended:

The United States was on the wrong side of history regarding Cuba in the 1950s when we backed the Bautista dictatorship there, and we have been on the wrong side of history ever since with our petulant, barbaric economic blockade of Cuba. U.S. policy has been poisoned ever since by those Cubans who benefited financially and politically from the Bautista reign who fled to the U.S. when their patron was toppled.

As with Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam and others throughout the world since the U.S. colonization of the Philippines in 1898, Fidel Castro knew that if the “leader of the free world” was opposed to his fellow country people’s freedom, he had to look elsewhere for support. That antidemocratic tragedy has occurred over and over again for over a century.

Thank you, Mr. President, for your historic attempt to establish normal diplomatic relations with the people of Cuba. It may be 50-plus years to late, but it i welcome by democracy-loving Americans and other people throughout the world.