Given the vagaries of the human mind, I can offer no single explanation. I can recall that similar attributes during the century of the dictator were attributed to all the century's dictators, even Hitler for a time. One other point: these are the attributes progressives never detect in, say, a George W. Bush or a Ronald Reagan. At home they find them in Kennedys, Clintons, and other dynamic Democrats. It makes you wonder, does it not? [End Excerpt]
Why the Double Standard for Castro?-- [Excerpt] Thanks to communism, Cuba - once one of the wealthiest Caribbean countries - is now one of its poorest. Cuban society is ruthlessly regimented by a police state modeled on those of Stalin and Mao. Much of the Cuban population has been forced to flee in successive expulsions since the 1960s.
The response proposed by American liberals? The United States should be nicer to Fidel Castro. Today almost all liberal politicians, pundits and journalists, joined by many in the American business community, claim that ending U.S. economic sanctions on Cuba will promote political freedom and ultimately democracy in Castro's bankrupt police state.
Curiously, the American left made the opposite claim in the 1980s, when it backed the economic sanctions that played a role in ending apartheid in South Africa. And few liberals show interest in easing sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. [End Excerpt]
Although several countries -- Iraq, Syria, North Korea, Cuba and Libya among them -- were said to be harboring thousands of members of these shadowy networks, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Washington was broadening its investigations into their financial sources.
Facing an enemy operating in 60 countries, including in Europe and the United States, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said troops would not be engaged in a conventional war.