[shield]

This is a long read ---- an excellent article.

[Doogle]

...SHOCKER!!!...he didn't care what happen to Cuba over the last 40 years ....so what's new?


Doogle

[cripplecreek]

I've thought about dictators and their thoughts for the future of their countries. The lack of concern for the future seems pretty common even if they don't say it outright.

Castro planned on putting his brother in power even though he really doesn't have what it takes to hold power. Saddam Hussein was going to put one of his sons into power and that would have led to a power struggle that would have torn the country apart.

Megalomaniac dictators seem to think they are their countries and without them the country ceases to exist. The ultimate in selfishness.

[Brilliant]

Hugo Chavez could succeed him.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The generally accepted truths about Fidel Castro are really only elastic creations that stretch, like a lithe feline, into the realms of mythology.

My "lithe feline" who can read the future, had this to say to me this morning: "Rauuuuuuuuuul!"

[Cinnamon]

Excellent read... no wonder Hugo Chavez amigo 1 with him..

[kabar]

Another fawning, puff piece on Castro. He was simply a ruthless, power-hungry dictator who ran a police state and murdered thousands. History will judge him so.

[Moonman62]

Perhaps most important of all, Castro's Cuba will be forever cited as the first example of Soviet communism's success in establishing a satellite country in the Western Hemisphere,

Bullcrap. Castro hated America, which is why I believe he chose Communism. He cooperated with the Soviets only to the point that it would help him personally, or cause problems for the US. He purged Communists from his government who tried to follow the Soviets rather than him.

[RetiredArmy]

My prediction is that when Castro dies, Jimmy Carter will assume power in Cuba. He will name Dan Rather to his cabinet.

[popdonnelly]

Thanks, Fidel. After forty years of ruining the country, you don't care what happens to it? I wonder if your fawning idiots know this, or even care. The only thing we have to regret is that we couldn't slip you one of those exploding cigars.

[JustDoItAlways]

When they write his obituary, they better talk about all the millions of people he slaughtered in Latin America and, especially, Africa with his arming and supporting of communist rebel armies who have wrecked havoc in countless civil wars.

[BW2221]

You're right. It is an excellent article and explains a lot about why he has operated the way he has.

Let's hope Fidel croaks soon and Cubans can get on with the next chapter in their history.

[Lazamataz]

Fidel Castro: I don't care what happens to Cuba after my death.

I, too, don't care what happens to Cuba after Castro's death.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

"epigone"

This word was echoing around the "Grand Salon" and managed to escape and fall into this article. Too fancy.

She should call him emasculated, neutered, drunk, degenerate--use a word with a bit of force and kick to it. We're talking tyrant, not art historian.

Otherwise, the author provides a good amount of information about a man who we all hope will soon be consigned to the trash bin of history.

[leilani]

Fascinating read, shield, thank you for posting it.Georgie Anne is probably the only American journalist who ever really "got" Fidel. His life reads like a Gabriel Garcia-Marquez novel, only with real blood & real tears, not magic ones, dripping from the pages.I've often wondered whether spiking this megalomaniacal savage's drinking water with lithium would have saved the Cuban people from his monstrously murderous ego - I don't anymore. He was just thoroughly, irredeemably evil. Everywhere he walked on that beautiful little island, he left behind him the footprints of the el diablo himself.

[Chode]

do I really have to say it???

[goldstategop]

Fidelismo is less Communist than it is personalist. One suspects Castro would have been equally at home as a fascist - if the temperament of the times had allowed it. He has no true successors.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)

[TheGeezer]

He succeeded at what he wanted: to have power to the end. He failed at everything else. Cuba is destitute and miserable. It has the the 24th-highest infant mortality in the world (in Batista's time it was #8). I'd fel sorry for him, but he is a monster we will be better off without. Like Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il Jung, etc., etc.

You are right: it is an excellent article.

[OldCorps]

enjoyed it. Well worth the read.

[montag813]

If Raul is smart he will enrich himself and his people and sell the island to American corporate interests, such as Big Gaming. I always envied my father's glorious tales of Havana. I would love to experience that in my lifetime as well.

[FreedomPoster]

Castro epitaph?:

"History will note that the people in the American jails at the tip of this island ate better than the average Cuban."

Kudos to the freeper who posted this on another thread, I don't have his name.