I'd actually thought Castro's retirement would prompt more of this sort of nonsense. I guess we're still waiting for Seumas Milne to pipe up in The Guardian. Still, the palm for the most idiotic thing I've seen goes to Chris Bertram:
...And, of course, Castro ran a dictatorship that
has, since 1959, committed its fair share of crimes, repressions,
denials of democratic rights etc. Still, I’m reminded of A.J.P. Taylor
writing somewhere or other (reference please, dear readers?) that what
the capitalists and their lackeys really really hated about Soviet
Russia was not its tyrannical nature but the fact that there was a
whole chunk of the earth’s surface where they were no longer able to
operate. Ditto Cuba, for a much smaller chunk. So let’s hear it for
universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it
for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in
Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the
middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a
while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for
49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria
siempre!
Love that gentle "Of course..."
Alternatively, as I put it today's Scotsman:
SO
FAREWELL and good riddance, Fidel Castro. Only sentimental fools will
miss you. The image of a small, plucky island nation holding out
against the might of the United States has an obvious appeal. But life
is not all an Asterix and Obelix adventure.
Franklin D Roosevelt
is said to have acknowledged that the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasia
Somoza was a Class A "sonofabitch", but at least "he's our
sonofabitch". Like his counterpart in Chile, Augusto Pinochet, Castro
has enjoyed the tolerance of many who should have known better. If
conservatives – on both sides of the North Atlantic – were too ready to
turn a blind eye to Pinochet's crimes, left-wingers have been equally
credulous with regard to Castro's Cuban dictatorship.
His
regime's achievements in health and education – always cited by Castro
apologists – must be set beside the reality of an island prison in
which dissent has been outlawed and the jailing of political prisoners routine. Regardless of the failures and idiocies of US policy, this has
been Castro's own choice. Socialism has failed Cuba, just as it failed
the Soviet Union.
Like Pinochet, Castro's successes only demand
honouring in the context of his larger, wider failure. A gulag filled
with literate, healthy inmates is still a gulag*; a dictator who
inspires affection and respect (from some) is still, above all, a
dictator.
I think US policy towards Cuba has been blind, wilfully stupid and counter-productive. The embargo is an embarrassment. But still, you know, it isn't quite good enough to argue (with some justification) that there have been more monstrous dictators than Fidel.
Norm ponders the sympathy leftists have for Castro and his ilk here. He makes this excellent point:
Nonetheless, there is a central piece of bad faith in the way...[leftist]
partisans... evade a single inescapable fact: namely that, flawed as
they may be, the capitalist democracies are democracies and
none of the would-be anti-capitalist countries, anywhere, has managed
to sustain comparably good or better democratic institutions over any
length of time. Note that I do not say this means it could never
happen; I don't believe that. What it does mean, however, is that the
democratic institutions we are familiar with have yet to be improved
upon in any of those places that some leftists are given to casting an
indulgent eye upon even while they seek to distance themselves
critically from the institutions they themselves benefit from and which
are superior.
As for Cub's achievements? Tyler Cowan has some sound advice:
A simple checklist would start with the question of whether an
apologist has visited both the Dominican Republic and Cuba. And a
non-communist Cuba could have done much better than the DR. It is a
fascinating place for visitors, but right now the quality of life in
Cuba isn't close to that of the DR or for that matter Honduras, the
second-biggest Latino mess in the hemisphere... It's time to stop
apologizing for communist dictatorships; are you really so taken with
the idea of confiscating property as to overlook decades of tyranny,
impoverishment, and human misery? Yes I am familiar with the UN social
indicators; I say you need to visit each of these countries, preferably
speaking Spanish, and then report back to me.
Brad Delong deals with more credulous Castro-lovers here.
*Hyperbole? Perhaps. But if you're not free to leave a country you are, to one degree or another, imprisoned.
Perhaps that's true in the United States. But not all countries are the United States. You can imagine the delight I felt then when - via Mr Eugenides - I spied this comment from Harriet Harman* MP, currently Deputy Leader of the Labour Party as she answered questions from readers of The Independent:
*Ms Harman, it should be stressed, is not a Lady of the Loony Left. On the contrary she's been identified with the right-wing of the Labour Party. True, she's also hopeless but that's another matter entirely...