From our Bureau of Terrorist-Sponsoring Dictatorships That Love to Pretend They Are Peaceful Humanitarian Neighbors and Innocent Suffering Victims of Bullying by Imperialist Enemies
Via the Center for a Free Cuba
On this day in 1962 Fidel Castro sent a letter to Nikita Khrushchev asking the Soviet leader to launch a nuclear first strike on the United States. The Cuban dictator also ordered all of his artillery to begin firing on American reconnaissance aircraft at dawn of “Black Saturday.” On October 27, 2022 when tensions reached their highest point during the Cuban Missile Crisis and an American U-2 spy plane was shot down and the pilot, Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., killed.
Fidel Castro’s efforts to provoke WW3 unnerved Khrushchev, and the timing of his concessions to the United States, may have been a result of the fear that allowing the crisis to continue would give Castro further opportunities to launch a global nuclear war. Castro was willing to reduce Cuba to powder,” explained former CIA analyst Brian Latell.
Ten years ago, Latell observed on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis that “Nikita Khrushchev believed, I think until his death, that Fidel Castro had personally ordered the shoot-down by a Soviet ground-to-air missile site, Khrushchev believed that Castro had actually somehow been responsible for it himself.”
“Castro’s letter calling for a first strike against the U.S. concerned the Soviet premier and spurred [Khrushchev] to try to resolve the standoff,” said Michelle Paranzino, an assistant professor of strategy and policy at the U.S. Naval War College.
If the same thing had been done by a right-wing dictator, the usual suspects would never have stopped harping on it, and would do so every chance they got–same as they always say “dictator” when they mention Batista but rarely if ever do that with Castro. And yes, they know we know they’re hypocrites.
To resolve this crisis the US agreed to stop trying to remove Fidel and instead the CIA began arresting Cuban-Americans that were trying to remove Fidel. For all of his murderous evil, Fidel was able to outmaneuver every US president for over half a century. Even the world’s most powerful nation could not stop Fidel. If Hitler had been endowed with Fidel’s political abilities, we would all be speaking German. So don’t feel bad. You got to give the devil his due.