politics to go

Fidel Castro was an evil despotic murderer

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Some in the media and or liberals in the U.S. government are treating the death of Fidel Castro as a loss for the world, describing him as a revolutionary, a freedom fighter, someone to be revered for bringing education and social services to the Cuban people. NONSENSE!

Castro was a ruthless dictator who once put the world on the brink of a nuclear war, trampled the rights and freedoms of his people, put his opponents in jail to be tortured, executed them by firing squad, and was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands across Latin America.

Chris Mathews of MSNBC recalled that when Castro took power he was “a romantic figure” and “a folk hero to most of us.” His colleague Andrea Mitchell said that “Castro gave his people better health care and education.” Is she serious?

Across the dial Geraldo Rivera said on Fox and Friends, “Yes, he was a leftist. Yes, he was a communist. Yes, his economic system failed. But the fact of the matter is, I mean, the Cuban medicine is renowned the world over. You know, there are aspects of his, what he left behind, that I think will be remembered.”

Former President Jimmy Carter praised the dictator for the love of his country and went on to say, “We recall fondly our visits with him in Cuba.”

Green Party presidential nominee, Dr. Jill Stein, tweeted, “Fidel Castro was a symbol of the struggle for justice in the shadow of empire. Presente!”

Even President Obama soft-peddled Castro’s evil.

“At this time of Fidel Castro’s passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people. We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him.”

The problem with these statements is that Castro was not a statesman or a freedom-fighter, he was a ruthless torturer and murderer. He was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Cubans and trained terrorists from other countries to go home and kill others. He persecuted Christians, capitalists, democratic activists, homosexuals, and anyone else he didn’t like. He and his subordinates murdered fathers, mothers, children. They raped, pillaged, stole, and abused anyone who got in their way.

He killed between 3,000 and 4,000 people via firing squads, sometimes “joining in on the fun.” Some of these executions were filmed and shown in cinemas. Some of those who disagreed with the dictator were spared execution but may have preferred a quick death to the years of torture.

One of his most savage acts was the treatment of his former revolutionary comrade Huber Matos. Matos, a long-time democratic enemy of the dictator Batista, protested against Castro’s closeness to Moscow. After a show-trial, including a seven-hour speech of denunciation from his former friend Castro, Matos was flung into prison for 20 years (16 of them in solitary confinement), during which he was horribly tortured.

Another victim of Castro’s torture was the poet Armando Valladares. Originally a supporter of the revolution, Valladares he refused to put a ‘”I’m with Fidel” sign on his office desk. He was charged with terrorism and sentenced to 30 years. He served 8,000 days (22 years) during which he was forced to eat other prisoners’ excrement and confined in cells so small that he could not lie down.

Women and Children weren’t spared from Fidel Castro’s murderous ways.

One July morning in 1994, a group of 72 Cubans boarded a state-owned tugboat with the intent to navigate it to freedom. Within minutes the vessel was under attack by other state-owned tugboats. By the time the incident was over 41 Cubans were dead. 10 of them were children. A complaint about the incident was filed with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is an “autonomous organ of the Organization of American States (“OAS”) whose mission is to promote and protect human rights in the American hemisphere.” The report states:

“Government boats positioned themselves on either side and sprayed everyone on deck with pressurized water, using their hoses.

“The pleas of the women and children on the deck of the tug 13 de Marzo did nothing to stop the attack. The boat sank, with a toll of 41 dead. Many people perished because the jets of water directed at everyone on deck forced them to seek refuge in the engine room. The survivors also affirmed that the crews of the four Cuban government boats were dressed in civilian clothes and that they did not help them when they were sinking.”

When he wasn’t killing, and torturing his own people, Castro was trying to export murder throughout the world. He exported his revolution to Latin American countries in the 1960s, and dispatched Cuban troops to Africa to fight Western-backed regimes in the 1970s.

And, of course, there was the time that he helped push the human race to the abyss of self-destruction by inviting the Soviet Union to place ballistic missiles in his country.

In October 1962, American spy planes discovered that nuclear-capable intermediate-range missiles capable of reaching the United States were placed in Cuba by the USSR. Castro believed they made him the big man in the Americas. Thankfully he became a bit player in the ensuing crisis involving President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet leader, Nikita S. Khrushchev.

JFK put American forces on on alert and ordered a naval blockade of Cuba. JFK and Khrushchev stared each other down for 13 tense days as the word stood on the brink of nuclear war. After the crisis, Castro was angry that a compromise was reached. Reportedly, Castro wanted the Soviets to launch a nuclear war, and he perceived the outcome as a betrayal by the Soviets.

But that was Castro; he preferred hundreds of thousands — even millions — of deaths to protect his ideology. 

Castro was not a statesman or a freedom fighter as some implied; he was a murderer, torturer, rapist, an evil man who killed his own people, exported murder to other countries, and was upset that his Soviet allies preferred an uneasy peace to nuclear war.

The world is better off that this degenerate is now sharing a special place in Gehinnom with Arafat, Hussein, Stalin, Mao and other murderous “freedom fighters.”

Jeff Dunetz is a columnist for The Jewish Star.