Castro has finally joined Che, Mao, Stalin, & Lenin in Hell

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another viewpoint I found-

You’re Thinking About Fidel Castro All Wrong

Ernesto “Che” Guevara arrived in Guatemala City on Christmas Eve in 1953. An aimless radical who had yet to find his path in life, he had come to see firsthand the liberal reforms being carried out by Guatemala’s democratically elected leader, Jacobo Arbenz.
The most consequential of them, it would turn out, was his effort at land redistribution. Arbenz proposed seizing the uncultivated land held by the company United Fruit, and compensating the firm by paying it the full amount it had claimed the land was worth in its latest tax filings.
Unfortunately for Arbenz, then-Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, Allen Dulles, the head of the CIA, were both effectively paid agents of United Fruit, which was represented by their law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell. They were also zealous Cold Warriors, and believed deeply that Arbenz was a communist, regardless of whether he admitted it.
The CIA launched a coup, led by several hundred U.S.-backed rebels, and backed by U.S. bombs and a substantial propaganda campaign both in print and on the radio.
Stephen Kinzer, in his dual biography of the Dulles brothers, writes that the Eisenhower-approved coup left a lasting impression on the young man, Guevara, who happened to be in the capital as the coup was carried out:
Later he told Castro why it succeeded. He said Arbenz had foolishly tolerated an open society, which the CIA penetrated and subverted, and also preserved the existing army, which the CIA turned into its instrument. Castro agreed that a revolutionary regime in Cuba must avoid those mistakes. Upon taking power, he cracked down on dissent and purged the army.
None of this means the U.S. is directly responsible for the decisions Castro made, or for the path he took Cuba down. None of it justifies or excuses human rights abuses or the subjugation of an entire people. What Castro did is his own.
But the conditions he operated under matter, and if Arbenz was an example for Guevara and Fidel Castro of what not to do, his successor regime offered a different lesson. The U.S.-backed military dictatorship that took over killed tens of thousands and crushed dissent.
The debate over Castro’s legacy is being waged on familiar grounds, with his opponents condemning him as an irredeemable tyrant and his defenders arguing that the good he did around the world and for the Cuban people outweighs the black mark of his human rights record and his leveling of Cuban civil society.
The conversation in the U.S. often goes on, however, as if Castro were operating in a vacuum. It may well be that Castro’s own personality, or pressure from the Soviet Union, would have pushed him regardless toward the hard-line communism that came to dominate Cuba. But when Castro took over, observers in Cuba, the U.S. and around the world felt there was a chance Castro would be a nationalist reformer rather than an orthodox communist.
Looking back at the experience of Arbenz, Castro and Guevara had good reason to believe the U.S. would do whatever was in its power to overthrow the new government, whether the regime was in the camp of liberal reform or hard-line communism. Arbenz, after all, had been elected and his term in office was nearly up when the U.S. came for him. The CIA had done the same the year before to the democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran, who was by no means a communist.
And, in 1961, the same planners of the Guatemalan coup organized a new one against Cuba, this one ending in the debacle known as the Bay of Pigs. It came just a few months after a U.S.-backed plot had brutally assassinated the elected leader of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, another nationalist the Dulles brothers believed was a secret communist.
If the United States had been serious about wanting to spread democracy around the world, perhaps it should have shown more respect for and to democracies.

I don't imagine they would.

Yeah, vegetarians tend to get testy when you fire up a Cohiba in their presence.

1. The United States has killed it's own citizens under firing squad. You need to reword that claim to show me why it' so atrocious.

2. Castro also legalized homosexuality in Cuba. You can't blame Castro when the entire culture of Cuba was extremely homophobic when he came into power and continues to be homophobic to this day.

3. Yeah, that's what you do when you're dictator. After living in places with government controlled media this doesn't phase me at all.

4. And the US has a higher per capita prison rate. Do you really believe Americans are just more criminally inclinced than Cubans?

5. And if were to distribute all his personal wealth to everyone in Cuba everyone still be just as poor, it's simple math.

The reason the standard of living was so terrible under Castro was because of the embargo. Doesn't matter if you get rid of income inequality when the entire country is impoverished.

The US executes people after due process of law, not because it suits whoever sits atop the heap to do so.




Castro isn't to blame for the concentration camps? They just spontaneously appeared out of nowhere and gay people volunteered to join?



It isn't a question of what phases you, personally, it's a question of whether or not dictatorial control of the media is a good or bad thing. I'm going with "bad thing", for the usual plethora of reasons.



Strawman and false equivalence rolled into one. How many political protesters, journalists and lawyers has the US jailed for speaking out against the POTUS?



He was the communist, not me. His playboy lifestyle is proof that he used communism as a means to a personally gratifying end, not because he believed in its principles.



There are plenty of potential trading partners other than the United States. If Castro can't put a lucrative offer together to attract anyone, that's on him, not the US.

1. So you're making the assumption the due process is inherently more just than Castro. The basis of that assumption seems to be democracy being more fair than dictatorships. That might be the case, but then it's not Castro that is to blame, but the system that placed him as a dictator.

2. The problem is you fundamentally don't understand how government works. The Cuban government doing something is NOT synonymous with Castro doing something. Castro could only do something if his keys would let him, as like any dictator, his power comes not from himself, but from other people. You also missed the point that homosexuality was illegal long before Castro, and it became legal under Castro.

3. If you're a dictator, it's a good thing. It gives you more power, and if you are right, then it would be better if you had more power.

4. If someone is a threat to your power, you need to stop them. The only reason it doesn't happen into the US is because the system doesn't allow it.

So all the problems stem from the system, not Castro himself, and the reason for the system is that the United States wouldn't allow Cuban democracy because Cuba wanted to be communist.

it's not Castro that is to blame, but the system that placed him as a dictator.

So what, you're telling me that Castro tried to implement democracy but the people insisted he reign as an unelected dictator?