During last night’s Republican debate here in Florida, republican presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, a congressman from California, said something few people have had the guts to say in public, let alone on national television.
U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California… then mentioned Cuba and criticized former President John F. Kennedy for allowing Fidel Castro to remain in power by sacrificing Bay of Pigs “freedom fighters.”
“A thousand miles away from there is El Salvador, where a Republican president, Ronald Reagan, hung tough, brought freedom to El Salvador,” Hunter said. “And you know something? Today, they are fighting side by side with our guys in Iraq.”
Hunter does not appear to have a chance at the Republican nomination, but I would like to thank him for saying what so many find taboo to even insinuate: that JFK, the purported foreign policy mastermind, is the true reason behind the Bay of Pigs fiasco.
The fact that the JFK “legend” (or rather mythology) is still being served up as if people were too stupid to know better is one on my ongoing problems with the Democratic party (not to mention the media). It’s not just that he totally bungled the Cuba crisis and royally screwed the Cuban people; there’s also the matter of his highly questionable election victory (especially the Chicago/Illinois results via the machinations of Mayor Richard Daley), his hiding serious health problems from the public, the maniacal philandering…but hey, he was photogenic, and his wife was a fashion-plate.
This kind of extreme emphasis on appearances, image, “aura” and what have you is very hard for me to understand, because to me BS is just BS. The whole Kennedy “mystique,” starting with “patriarch” Joseph and his shady fortune, down to the latest Kennedy who’s shilling for Chavez (not to mention the disgraceful and repulsive senator), basically amounts to a whitewashed closet full of skeletons (“sepulcro blanqueado”).
I’m utterly sick and fed up with the whole damn lot, and I have little or no respect for those who continue to worship at the unholy Kennedy shrine.
It’s important to remember that Kennedy’s incompetence and/or lack of intestinal fortitude didn’t just screw the Cuban people for decades to come–he also, by extension, screwed most of Central and South America, and places as far afield as Angola. The guy stinks on ice, and yet it’s still more or less taboo to admit that.
My Cuban friends…old timers and new arrivals tell me Cubans have just a few months to make a move or be faced with adoption by Chavez. I do not think Bush will stand by, at least I hope not, but should ol thunderthighs get to be pres. I worry about the future of Cuba.
You are exactly correct about JFK.