The Pope Goes to Hell

Pope Benedict will be visiting Cuba today; he will see one of the most brutalized and crushed people on the planet. They have lived in hell for over 53 years. Their nation is the private finca of two deranged brothers who seem to see themselves as the last Spanish conquistadores in the Americas. Remember, the Castro brothers' father was a Spanish soldier in the Spanish-American War of 1898! They have been around that long. They took over Cuba as the inept Batista regime collapsed when the Cuban middle class would no longer tolerate its corruption and crooked politics. There was no great pro-Castro revolution or successful armed insurrection; that is made-up. The Castro brothers and a handful of their friends, including the absolutely insane Argentine doctor Che Guevara, walked into a power vacuum, promised democracy, an end to corruption, and a government faithful to the principles of the great Jose Marti.

They lied.

The Cuban people saw the gates of hell opened in their country. It did not take long for the brothers, with the able support of Che, to crank up the show trials and the firing squads; launch invasions of other Latin American countries, including Venezuela; nationalize and destroy the economy; and form a close alliance with the Soviets that almost led to World War III. The Cuban people were betrayed, yes, betrayed, by the now sainted JFK. When he could take time off from girlfriends, JFK took the fairly straightforward Eisenhower plan for liberating Cuba he had inherited, and in typical "best and brightest" liberal-Harvard-elite style turned it into a mish-mash of compromises, and executed it with pseudo-sophisticated soul searching and angst that resulted in dropping off and leaving the brave freedom fighters stranded, under attack from the Castro regime, and with none of the promised US military support.

Cuba today remains a dictatorship and, of course, the darling of the Hollywood set and the model for other budding dictators such as the buffoonish Hugo Chavez, the incredibly corrupt Ortega brothers, and the increasingly loony Correa. Our lefty dopes will support a dictatorship if the United States opposes it. It also helps if the dictator speaks the "language of the oppressed," wears neat understated green fatigues with a red star or two, talks a lot about revolution, and gives the Hollywood/leftist types the time of day.  The Castro brothers, cruel evil racist thugs that they are, have proved masters at playing with the international left and the dopes in Hollywood; they continue to do it today even as the true nature of the regime should be plainly visible to even the most blind and block-headed leftist, e.g., Michael Moore.

One can only pray that the Pope will do what no US President has done, i.e., deliver an uncompromising message to the Castro brothers that their time must end, and in the process perhaps revive hope in the hearts of Cubans. That might be a tall order.

While we have marched off around the world delivering freedom, and expending our blood and treasure to do it, we have allowed this regime to set up shop ninety miles off our shores and threaten its people and us since January 1959! Never forget that JFK's "greatest moment," the Cuban Missile Crisis that almost ended in WWIII, would have not been necessary but for his worst moment, the abandonment of the freedom fighters on that beach on April 17, 1961.

The Cuban people deserve better than what they have gotten from the international community, and from the country that was their best friend, the United States.