“LEARN what the new Cuba offers its people–and its neighbors. To its people, peace, democracy, prosperity. To its neighbors, friendship, and the cooperation of men who respect each other.”
–Daily Worker, Dec. 13, 1959
Paul Kengor, author of “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism”, reacts to the latest issue of Foreign Policy Magazine:
Grove City, Pa.–Unfortunately I was standing, not sitting, when I glanced at a periodical rack that displayed the latest issue of “FP”–Foreign Policy magazine. The question emblazoned across the cover should have been preceded by a warning to readers to sit before they read further. Instead, the innocent were accosted by this headline: “Was Fidel Good for Cuba?”
Foreign Policy is published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a prestigious, left-leaning, and at times thoughtful foreign-policy voice in Washington. It is rarely noted by the likewise left-leaning Washington establishment that the Carnegie Endowment was once headed by Alger Hiss, the communist spy who served the USSR during Stalin’s Red Terror.
The sophisticated set in Washington considers it inappropriate, impolite, and, of course, a form of McCarthyism to make reference to this inconvenient fact concerning the endowment.
Yet, as I stood speechless at this inconceivable thought on the cover of FP, I couldn’t help but think of Hiss. I had an eerie feeling that Alger’s ghost was back at the endowment running its publications, maybe with his wife and partner Priscilla again behind the typewriter. Worse, much like a motorist passing a car wreck, I couldn’t help but open the pages to peer at the carnage inside.
To be fair, FP aims to be unpredictable and to challenge its readers, and this question was posed in a debate format with differing perspectives, plus an accompanying online forum, where, amazingly, 77 percent of the periodical’s respondents surmised that, yes, Fidel was good for Cuba.
Indeed, Alger’s presence lingers.
Castro: the awful truth
Here’s the reality: Whether Fidel was good for Cuba is not a matter of debate, even if FP scares up the usual suspects to pay homage to the dictator’s personal trinity of “free” health care, collectivism, and wealth redistribution. Fidel’s failures are too numerous to recount, beginning with his 48-year postponement of elections or the tens of thousands of murdered victims or the countless dead at sea who tried to escape from an island prison forced to ban boats.
Of course, the best evidence for resolving the debate would be a simple poll of everyday Cubans–if only such polls were permitted.
That said, the single most significant factor that should forever put to rest this absurd question is one that always get ignored by Castro’s sympathizers: If Fidel Castro had had his way in October 1962, Cuba would literally have ceased to exist. This is not an exaggeration. The fact is that Fidel actually recommended to Soviet General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev that Cuba and the USSR together launch an all-out nuclear attack upon the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and even urged Khrushchev to do so if U.S. troops invaded the island.
The article’s a timely counter to the insidious anti-Cuban exile, fidel castro feel good stories circulating in the MSM. Stories calling exiles “terrorists” based on old CIA files from a more honorable time, and providing a platform for convicted Cuban spies.
Mr. Kengor reminds us that the castro brothers and their buddy che were serious in their intent to destroy the United States, and had no problem sacrificing Cuba to that aim.
Read the whole thing at the Free Lance-Star..