[lit-ideas] Adios, amigo.

I know I said I was on vacation, and I am, but I had to stick my head back in 
the door just to wish my old amigo Castro adios.  I wish like hell that he had 
been more tolerant of dissent, but he wasn't.  He was, however, unbelievably 
successful at telling the US to go fuck itself and getting away with it for 50 
years.  Ever since Kennedy's colossally stupid mistake of taking the advice of 
McNamara and Rusk to follow through on Eisenhower's plan to invade Cuba with a 
rag-tag band of exiles (after all the CIA assured him that the population would 
rise up and join the invaders)and the subsequent fiasco -- ever since then, 
Castro has been my hero.  He was no friend of freedom, it's true, but he was a 
thorn in the side of the U S war mongers for 50 years.  I celebrate that.  
Except for the matter of political liberty -- a very important matter, mind you 
-- he built a good, just and equitable society in Cuba.  Something this country 
has failed to do in two hundred plus years.  And he did it 90 miles off the 
shore of the most formidable military power in the history of the world, a 
power that would go into paroxysms and foam at the mouth whenever it thought 
about him.  For that, I salute him.  Maybe now that Castro has stepped aside 
(having stepped over the graves of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, 
Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and over the machinations of Carter, Bush I, Clinton and 
Bush II), maybe now our petty, petulant little leaders can forgo their 
obsession with "communism"  and drop the execrable economic embargo and get 
down to serious trade negotiations with Cuba.  Let Cuba be Cuba.  We 
desperately need to learn how to make a just society -- they can probably help 
us greatly in that.  And maybe we can show them the way to democratic 
institutions if they're interested.  In addition we would be providing our 
domestic markets with a rich source of 1950 era Chevys, and major league ball 
players. 

Carry on,
Mike Geary
Memphis

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