whenever a US President tries to reduce tensions, they do something to ratchet them back up. For example, Obama was inaugurated in Jan of '09, announces easing the embargo by allowing families in the US to visit and send money more easily in April, and by December some poor schmuck (Alan Gross) is rotting in a Cuban jail for bringing computer equipment in for Jewish groups.
why would we trade with a country that is holding one of our guys in prison for the crime of helping people access the internet?
It would cost them literally nothing to let this guy go, but they insist on keeping him in prison
The article on Gross in Wikipedia is pretty good http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A... and the linked article in The Forward is pretty good too. Gross worked for Development Alternatives, a contractor for the USAID and other government agencies, possibly including the CIA, which was involved in some development projects in places like Afghanistan and Iraq where they were an arm of the U.S. military. The Venezuelan government accused them of giving support to the rebels trying to overthrow the Chavez government. Gross' projects in Cuba were funded under the Helms-Burton bill, the purpose of which was to overthrow the Cuban government, by methods including telecommunications, as Gross was doing. If a foreigner tried to do the same thing in the U.S., we would (and have) sentence them to long jail terms too. They convicted Gross of something like treason. At first he denied it, but later when his wife became dissatisfied with the U.S. government's efforts to get him out, she basically admitted it.
(According to The Forward, the Jewish community in Cuba was on good terms with Raul Castro, and Gross would have put the Jewish community at risk if they cooperated with him. They may have turned him in. They're patriotic Cubans.)
The Cuban government wants to release Gross in exchange for the Cuban Five, now down to three. They were five Cuban intelligence agents who went to Miami as refugees and infiltrated the anti-Castro groups. They had good reason to infiltrate those groups, because the Miami Cubans were committing terrorist acts in Cuba. The most notorious was Luis Posada, who engineered the bombing of a Cuban airliner, which killed all aboard. Posada was living in the U.S., which refused to prosecute him, even though he bragged about it publicly. Other terrorist acts included setting off bombs (with a few fatalities) at tourist spots, in order to discourage tourism and hard currency.
So that's the situation. The Cubans want to exchange Gross for the Cuban three, and the U.S. wants them to free Gross without anything in return. I'd like the Cubans to release Gross for humanitarian reasons (even though he's guilty of trying to overthrow the Cuban government, which is what Helms-Burton money is for). I'd also like the U.S. to free the Cuban three (even though they're guilty of traveling to the U.S. disguised as refugees, to monitor the Miami groups to stop terrorism). It's not reasonable to expect one without the other.
I would hardly agree that the U.S. was trying to reduce tensions, if they were sending people like Gross to set up a communications network to help the Jewish community overthrow the Cuban government. Don't forget, Helms-Burton only disburses money for projects to overthrow the Cuban government. If Gross was getting Helms-Burton money, then he was trying to overthrow the Cuban government.
It seems that the ones who are holding up the deal are people like Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and the other anti-Cuban hard-liners. It seems that they don't want a trade, because it would improve relations with Cuba. They only want to overthrow the Cuban government. They'd rather let Gross stay in jail than improve relations. I suggest you address your concerns about Gross to them. I suspect, though, that you'll have to wait until they're dead before we establish normal relations with Cuba again.