Read an article denouncing Che. Thought it started out well, if one-sided, but then it quickly slipped into ridiculousness. And you know what happens when some hack wastes my time while distorting history ... that author gets letters!
Why on earth would you destroy what seemed to me, at first, to be a reasonably factual, or at least, non-hysterical account of Che's dirty dealings?
You talk about Cuba's economy in 1997 as if it hadn't been under U.S. attack - literally and figuratively - for decades:
"In fact, by 1997, the thirtieth anniversary of his death, Cubans were dieting on a ration of five pounds of rice and one pound of beans per month; four ounces of meat twice a year; four ounces of soybean paste per week; and four eggs per month."
We'll never know what would have been possible in Cuba without Che and Fidel having to worry about getting murdered 24x7 by American presidents. But don't let that stop you from selectively choosing facts to suit your needs.
That you even mentioned the Bay of Pigs invasion starts to seem surprising, but then, instead of providing context for the attack, you use it to further attempt to bolster your argument that Che was so power hungry that he'd do just about anything to gain even more power - including inviting a full-scale U.S. invasion of the mainland:
"The U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 became the perfect occasion to consolidate the new police state, with the rounding up of tens of thousands of Cubans and a new series of executions. As Guevara himself told the Soviet ambassador Sergei Kudriavtsev, counterrevolutionaries were never "to raise their head again."
No mention of the hundreds/thousands of U.S. funded 'counterrevolutionaries', both in the U.S. and in Cuba, who actively plotted against the Cuban government and its people. Did Che have a reason for rounding people up? Of course not - he was just power-hungry! Brilliant!
No mention of the decades-long U.S. campaign of terrorism aimed at both Cuban government officials and thousands of innocent Cuban civilians - the civilians that the heart of your article feigns to bleed for.
No mention of how the intent of these U.S. terrorist strikes was to weaken the Cuban economy, and eventually, to destabilize the nation.
No mention of just how many innocent civilians were 'injured, murdered, and traumatized for life' by these U.S. terrorist attacks on 'soft targets' like health centers. Not even an estimate from a former doctor who treated the wounded from such attacks. Despicable. As is the intellectual dishonesty with which you wield your poisonous and well paid-for pen.
The intent of your article was not to document U.S. atrocities in Cuba, of course - many others have completed this grisly history for us - but by intentionally leaving out the context for the strengthening security apparatus in Cuba, you've done your readers a great disservice, and have irreparably harmed your reputation among thinking readers - which, of course, means you'll probably be appearing on Fox News in short order.
An honest article, it seems to me, would have opened the door for the reader to draw the conclusion that it was the U.S. terror campaign against Cuba that was the main cause of the shift in Cuban domestic policy regarding personal freedoms. But allowing readers to think for themselves doesn't make much money these days, does it?
One doesn't need a PhD to spot a hack job when he sees one. Hope you were paid well, comrade.
http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/archives/...
Seems the article originally appeared in The New Republican. I found it here. Which said it was originally posted at the author's blog, here.
I'm all for human rights and all that fun stuff, but I'm not up for distorting history and reality to make a few bucks.
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