An editorial from the Parkersburg News and Sentinel
PARKERSBURG, W.Va. — Lest anyone forget the regime President Barack Obama flirted with in Cuba last week, that nation’s former ruler Fidel Castro penned a mocking response to Obama’s visit and speeches, which was published in the Communist government’s official newspaper, Granma, Monday. That means, little brother Raul – so friendly with Obama a few days ago – did nothing to stop the message.
Fidel Castro bristled at Obama’s “honeyed words,” saying “After a merciless blockade that has lasted almost 60 years? … I warn you that we are capable of producing the food and material wealth we need with the effort and intelligence of our people. We do not need the empire …”
Obama did his best to appear in the right photo-ops with murals of Fidel Castro’s sociopathic brother-in-arms Che Guevara, who was responsible for so many murders in the name of the regime that no one is certain of an accurate figure beyond “many hundreds.”
Obama desperately wants Americans to “forget the past” when it comes to a government that hoped so fervently for the Cuban Missile Crisis to boil over that Guevara declared “we must proceed along the path of liberation, even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”
Fidel Castro is not forgetting. Though his brother is now the face of the regime, the ideals he and his ruthless revolutionaries forced upon their people are still alive and well.
“Nobody should be under the illusion that the people from this noble and selfless country will renounce the glory and the rights, and the spiritual wealth it has earned with the development of education, science and culture,” Fidel Castro said as he ridiculed Obama’s effort to pad his legacy.
The tone of Fidel Castro’s critique of Obama’s visit is defiant and derisive, leaving little doubt that Obama’s message of cooperation and hope was ill-timed. That is no surprise, but it is a shame that in the waning months of his presidency, Obama continues to waste effort -and money – on attempts to, as one pundit put it, “add a line to his Wikipedia entry,” that continue to fall flat.
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