A friend of mine recently achieved top-secret government clearance as a part of the military and I was decidedly miffed. It was one of those deals in which agents overhaul your entire past, dig up childhood friends and hold interviews with your current contacts.

“Why didn’t they ask me?” I teased. “I am the gossip queen and I have all kinds of dirt on you!”

“Well, I didn’t know you that well before this summer,” he said. “And besides, I was trying to protect you. I mean, look at the kind of literature you’re reading.” He gestured to my array of books stacked in front of our study session. A quick review of the titles revealed, “In Defense of Socialism,” “Selected Speeches by Fidel Castro,” and “The Che Guevara Reader.”

“They’re for my Cuban Revolution class,” I replied, defensively.

“Exactly,” he said. “You’d have a better shot if it was for your ‘Anti-Cuban Revolution’ class.”

“Well, how do you know I wasn’t going to burn them when the semester’s over?” I challenged.

“Unlikely,” he said. “Let’s face it, our friendship is dangerous.”

But is it really? What’s the big deal about Cuba anyway? Does anyone even remember or do we just continue to spit out the slandering rhetoric that we’ve been spoon fed since birth? I am inclined to believe the latter.

OK, so there was a time when Cuba was a viable threat to our nation, both in terms of its proximity and its Communist ideology in the dawn of the Cold War, but that was ages ago. Isn’t it kind of childish to hold grudges? Let me put it to you this way: say you were in a long-term relationship with a guy for most of your college career and during that time, you two were inseparable. You invested an ample amount of money, time and energy into your coexistence in hopes that it would lead to marriage. Yet one day, he inexplicably turned and left you for some socialist slut. Naturally, you would be heartbroken for a long time; but forty years? I don’t think so.

Eventually, you would come to terms with the fact that he had a change of heart and you would move on. Perhaps you could even be friends. Maybe you would realize that the relationship hadn’t been exactly perfect and that you were much more controlling and manipulative than you had thought. Everybody has been young and everybody has made mistakes. It doesn’t make sense to make him, all of his friends and family, and the generations to come, pay for the unfortunate fallout — especially if his family has already suffered numerous hardships, such as three consecutive hurricanes that ravaged their homeland.

Sure, you could offer him aid money, but that would seem kind of cheap. If you continue to keep up the embargo and the international invective of calling him a terrorist, but slip him money on the side, that’s no apology — that’s hypocrisy. You’re best friends with China and he sleeps with that socialist slut as well.

Maybe you think it’s wrong to reduce international foreign policy to a human anecdote, but I don’t. At the end of the day, that’s what it all comes back to. We’re all humans. We’re capable of compassion just as much as we’re inclined to make mistakes. For the sake of humanity, I hope an older, wiser — dare I say darker-toned and skinnier — elder will shed some fresh perspective on this petty and archaic relationship vendetta. Then I can go back to reading my books in peace.

Ashley Dresser welcomes comments at adresser@mndaily.com.