I’ve never been a fan of Fidel Castro. I’ve never been convinced that he’s the worst monster ever, either. He strikes me as a guy who has been hypocritical about a lot of things and who, like every other communist leader I can think of, ultimately failed to deliver on his promises. Repression and communism are not cleavable. But the truth is that I don’t care about Cuba. If my parents had fled Cuba, I’d feel differently. But my parents fled Iowa and Michigan, so I don’t care much at all about what goes on in Havana. I think I ought to be able to travel there and spend my money however I see fit, but I have no desire to actually travel there. The Cold War is over; the communists lost. We should all get over the whole Bay of Pigs, exploding cigar madness that almost resulted in a nuclear holocaust. Just say ‘bygones’ and start selling each other a bunch of crap.
Nevertheless, I have to admit that Fidel’s on point here:
Cuba’s Fidel Castro weighed in on the GOP field Wednesday ahead of next week’s Florida GOP primary vote.
The former Cuban leader, 85, whose 1959 Communist takeover of the island nation prompted the exodus of many of those whose families now comprise Florida’s politically influential Cuban American community, took to official state media organs to blast the Republican primary contest, the Associated Press’s man in Havana Paul Haven reported.“The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is—and I mean this seriously—the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been,” Castro wrote in an opinion column carried by a Cuban state paper, Haven wrote.
I couldn’t have said it better.
Every American president strikes me as a guy who has been hypocritical about a lot of things and who, like every other American leader I can think of, ultimately failed to deliver on his promises
Before saying he didn’t keep his promises, we probably ought to establish what Fidel actually promised and when he promised it by referencing his own text.
Communism is a failed governance system, but more than any other communist leader, Castro gets an asterisk by his failures due to over a half-century of economic embargo (as well as covert actions and assassination attempts) by the most powerful and richest nation on earth – and for over 20 of those years now, without a Soviet patron to help buoy the economy.
Both Bush and Obama have eviscerated the civil liberties of accused enemies of our state with far less provocation than Cuba has faced. On both economic and liberty issues, it’s hard to know how many of Castro’s failings would have happened anyway, and how many were the predictable result of Washington’s hostility. I would guess many or most of them – but it can’t be assumed, and the context of having an existential threat to their regime 90 miles away all those years can’t be ignored.
I don’t think any American has room to slam Castro for “hypocrisy” or failure. Cuba’s situation is analogous to the US being subjugated, subverted, and isolated for generations by a giant planet with the power and wealth to obliterate it at will. Can you imagine the state of American democracy and liberty in that situation, giventhe effect Sept 11, and before that, the sham threat of the “communist menace” had on American fealty to the ideals of freedom and democracy?
Right: Fidel did not and does not operate in a vacuum, chronological or spatial. What came before? What were the options? What was the context? All political figures–or even people generally–should be approached similarly.
It is all very interesting about Fidel Castro. Life magazine (Henry Luce’s rag) hyped Fidel as a “freedom fighter” and the American revolution was finally coming to Cuba’s shores…la dee da de da. Until Fidel began a program of nationalizing US-owned businesses that had been exploiting Cuba, and shut down mob-owned casinos, hotels, and nightclubs.
It all looks a lot different once you find out about J. Edgar Hoover’s ambiguous and symbiotic relationship with organized crime. And note the fact that for many people J. Edgar Hoover was the arbiter of who was and who was not a dangerous communist. (In Hoover’s eyes, Martin Luther King was. And the Kennedy family were a bunch of former mobsters who had social climbed with their money.)
I remember watching a program on the JFK assassination, and this reporter claimed that he asked Castro flat out, off the record, whether he had had JFK killed. Castro replied with an emphatic no, saying that it would have been the stupidest thing he could have done, as that would have been all the excuse needed for the us to launch a full out invasion of Cuba, and that was what his number one priority at preventing. Take that for what you will, but it rings pretty true.
…and I tend to agree with that assessment baed on my own observations during my travels through ex-communist Russia/Central Europe and parts of South/Caribbean America that are trying to operate on similar priniciples…
If it does not work very well, why go to all of that trouble to crash it? This is Ron Paul’s logic regarding the whole thing, Booman. Leave it alone and let it crash by itself.
Castro did not start out being a “Communist,” by the way. He was forced into an alliance with the U.S.S.R because big …er, ah…”business” (Including…ahem…”We’re bigger than U.S. Steel” mob interests.) leaned on JFK to oppose Castro by any means necessary. JFK tried to double-deal ’em and ended up dead.
Hmmmm…
AG
P.S.
Oh.
OK.
So…you don’t care about Cuba, because your parents “fled” from Iowa and Michigan. From what exactly were they “fleeing?” A racist, mob-owned military dictator like Fulgencio Batista?
Please.
Some sort of Iowa/Michigan barrios?
I don’t think so.
But even if they did…
Lemme see.
OK…how about Florida, Mississippi and Texas? Do you “care much at all” about the people of those states?
No?
Ok.
How about the rest of the goddamned so-called “United States?”
Care about people from Maine?
Oregon?
California?
Yes?
No?
Where do you draw the “caring” line?
Please.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Even the late Osama bin Laden wants to know.
Eh!!!???
You know, something fucked up probably happened in St. Lucia yesterday. And in Lichtenstein. And in Oregon. I don’t care.
Sue me.
When I say that I don’t care about what goes on in Havana, I mean that I don’t think whatever is going on justifies our Cuba policy.
Is this too complicated for you?
No.
It’s too simplistic.
AG