AP Photo - Natacha Pisarenko

AP Photo – Natacha Pisarenko

Fidel Castro was a monster – plain and simple. Over the past 57 years he killed and tortured countless thousands of his own people. Cuba is an island prison as thousands of its more fortunate former citizens now living in southern Florida will attest.

The American left has been quite willing to create a romantic caricature of Castro. It is chic in some leftist circles to wear quasi-military fatigues that resemble his or to hang his visage as “art” on the walls of one’s home. He is often called a “revolutionary” in the most romantic connotation of that term.

Many of the leading lights of Hollywood are among Castro’s most ardent fans. Chevy Chase, Steven Spielberg, Danny Glover and many others have been effusive in their praise of Castro and his regime.

But say what they will, dress as they will and adorn their personal art galleries as they will, the left’s construct of Fidel Castro is just that – a construct. The reality of Castro is starkly and shockingly different.

Fidel Castro was a brutal, ruthless, murderous dictator who persecuted anyone who displeased him. Even as Cuba “mourns” Castro’s death, thousands of innocents rot in hellhole prisons for nothing more than their political beliefs. In a half century of his dictatorial rule, thousands have been shot, hanged, tortured and imprisoned at his personal direction and whim.

It is true that 50 years of American policy toward Cuba has done nothing to mitigate Castro’s murderous behavior. But the recently developed Obama policy toward Cuba will do nothing either. The relaxation of American economic sanctions against Cuba by the Obama administration was granted while receiving exactly nothing in return. Leverage that America might have had in helping the suffering people of Cuba was forfeited by a weak, irresolute Obama administration.

It would be nice if President Obama – just once once before leaving office – would express some actual outrage over that which is actually outrageous. Instead, President Obama again demonstrated his facility at euphemism. In response to the news of Castro’s death, the president waxed eloquent on, “…the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation.”

If he means Cuban individuals and families the courses of whose lives were altered by living in constant fear of imprisonment, torture and death, perhaps the president’s statement is correct. But the statement definitely does not convey that kind of clarity and there is nothing to suggest that that was what Obama was thinking.

It was Donald Trump who spoke clearly.

Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights.

While Cuba remains a totalitarian island, it is my hope that today marks a move away from the horrors endured for too long, and toward a future in which the wonderful Cuban people finally live in the freedom they so richly deserve.

Though the tragedies, deaths and pain caused by Fidel Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty.”

I couldn’t have said it better.

The left has it all wrong. Again. Fidel Castro is not a fallen folk hero. He was a monster.

It’s good that he’s dead.

Print Friendly, PDF & Email