The Left's favorite dictator, Fidel Castro, is "resigning" as Cuba's
president of the Council of State. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who was born in
Cuba and, at the age of 15, along with his brother, was evacuated from Cuba
during Operation Pedro Pan, observed: "Castro has resigned from a position
he was never elected to in the first place."
The Hollywood Left, including Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Naomi
Campbell, Chevy Chase, Danny Glover and Oliver Stone, among others, has
treated Castro as a reformer. Various idiocies have poured from their lips,
praising Castro for supposed excellence in health care and education.
According to Chase, "Socialism works; Cuba might prove that." Says
Campbell, Castro is "a source of inspiration to the world." Nicholson
declared Castro "a genius." These are the leftists who denounce their own
country for alleged human rights abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere, but
travel to communist Cuba and return gushing praise and sounding as if they
had just returned from the healing waters at Lourdes.
While human rights advocates rot in Cuban jails, or are executed, leftists
around the world perform the political equivalent of dancing on their
graves. Castro's nearly 50-year tenure in power is not the result of the
love and support he received from those Cubans unable to escape, but rather
a consequence of his ruthlessness in imprisoning or killing anyone who
opposed him. As the Soviet Union began to sink, Mikhail Gorbachev issued the
equivalent of a "save yourself" warning to Castro, urging him to follow
Gorbachev's lead and adopt perestroika and glasnost. Castro would have none
of it. He responded: "openness and reform are dangerous and represent a
threat to fundamental socialist principles."
The United States had a hand in creating Castro because of its support for
his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista. When Batista seized power in 1952, the
United States mostly turned away. Six years later, America ceased arms sales
to Batista when his brutality became too obvious to ignore. By then, Castro
was already radicalized and plotting his armed overthrow of Batista's
regime.
The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when Castro allowed Soviet missiles to be
established in Cuba, has been well documented. The United States nearly went
to nuclear war with the Soviet Union before Premier Nikita Khrushchev backed
down from his showdown with President Kennedy and withdrew the missiles.
Castro followed with revolution on the installment plan, supporting
communist insurgents in Nicaragua, El Salvador and more recently, Venezuela
and Bolivia.