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THE ULTIMATE idiocy of the stay-the-course-in-Cuba crowd was displayed Wednesday on CNN.

Asked why she so vehemently opposes any initiative to normalize relations with Cuba, CNN commentator Ana Navarro gave us this gem:

"For no other reason than the calendar," she said. "We're so close, 55 years closer, and now [Obama] does this."

Her point, and the misguided point of our irrational, inconsistent, duplicitous and counterproductive Cuban policy for the last five decades, is that our breakthrough is just a body bag away. With Fidel about to die, she said, and Raul's state funeral to follow shortly thereafter, Cuba will cast off communism and embrace democracy.

But common Cubans have never embraced communism. Communism is a paternalistic, elitist ideology imposed by dictators. Like the masses in every communist country since the Bolsheviks turned out the czar, most Cubans have never been party members or true believers.

But to believe that Castro's death will make us, by default, the choice of Cuba's people ignores our long history of indifference to their plight.

Where were we when Sgt. Fulgencio Batista promoted himself to commander-in-chief and divided Cuba up among his friends and family? Today, we offer democracy, albeit from afar. But democracy was a nonstarter in U.S. policy toward Cuba back then.

We want the Cubans to remember our words and forget our deeds. We want them to believe our platitudes about justice and ignore the fact that we use part of their island to imprison people without trials and to violate the international conventions against torture that we authored. That's a contradiction that can't be explained from afar.

Can we make them forget the past and buy the promise?

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Why normalizing relations with Cuba is long overdue