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President Obama – who owes nothing to Florida’s powerful community of rich Republican Cuban expatriates – is trying to erase U.S. hostility toward the island 90 miles from Key West. …

Now, oddly, an expert says a loophole in U.S. law could give Obama a chance finally to erase the embargo. Writing in The Washington Monthly (a journal created by Charleston native Charles Peters), Patrick Doherty of the U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative outlines this scenario:…

“In a little-known corner of the U.S. Code, the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, Congress gave the president extraordinary authority in times of humanitarian disaster,” Doherty wrote. It allows the White House temporarily to suspend other laws while saving people’s lives. If another hurricane rips Cuba, he said, Obama could lift the embargo for 180 days, which would let U.S. businesses rush to the island, boosting international goodwill toward America. Afterward, Congress probably would end the embargo permanently.

This is a fine strategy. But it shouldn’t be needed. Congress simply should halt the trade obstacle, without a hurricane. After all, America trades freely with communist China, communist Vietnam, and the like. If Washington welcomes relations with huge Red nations, why is it so cruel to a helpless little Red neighbor barely offshore?

If U.S. businesses and tourists flooded Cuba, its people would be so happy with rising prosperity that they would forget communism and eagerly embrace capitalism. End the embargo.