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Don't you think you're a bit wiser now than you were, say, 48 years ago?

Were you even out and about way back then? If so, ask yourself this — suppose, back in those days, you had a nail sticking up from a floorboard in your house. You tried to fix it by screwing it in with a screwdriver. But it was, you know, a nail, so it didn't work.

But the next day, you tried screwing it in again. And the next day, and the next.

For forty-eight years.

At some point, wouldn't a sane and rational person say to himself — uh, hello, this isn't working — and give up? Not if you're like every American administration since JFK's. We've tried to make Castro screw by putting a stranglehold on his economy for 48 years. But it hasn't worked. Castro is still the head hombre.

The economic warfare we've waged against Cuba for nearly a half century has accomplished nothing except make the lives of generations of ordinary Cubans as miserable as possible.

And yesterday, US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez claimed that we can't even take responsibility for that. The decades of punishing economic sanctions we've imposed on the island are in no way responsible for the economic hardship there, insists the Cuban-born Gutierrez, without even wrinkling his mustache.

So let's see — 48 years of economic sanctions have yet to force Castro out, and they haven't even caused the Cubans' economic distress. So why does Gutierrez insist on staying this irrational course? Gutierrez:

The question is not when will the US change its policy. The question is when will the Cuban regime change its policy.

And, the Cuban regime's answer, Mr. Secretary, has been made loud and clear for lo these past 48 years — Screw you.