What do you know about Cuba?  Let me guess: good cigars, free healthcare, superior education, a socialist model of success, right?  But wait, you’ve also heard about the refugees piling their children on makeshift rafts and braving the dangerous waters to escape at any cost.  So it begs the question: if Cuba is so great, why are people dying to get out? Simple.  Cuba is a horrible place, ruled by a brutal dictator.  So why do the media, celebrities and even a former president promote the idea that Cuba is wonderful and that Fidel Castro is a benevolent leader.  I’ll let you decide after a closer look.

Vladimir Lenin referred to influential Western sympathizers that endorsed his Soviet regime as “useful idiots”.  Lenin understood that he could leverage these “useful idiots” by subjugating them with his propaganda.  They would in turn use their influence at home to peddle support for his regime.  Fidel Castro has developed his own collection of “useful idiots”, and true to form, they have used their influence here in America to paint a rosy picture of life in Cuba.  Let’s look at some examples:

In 1990, NBC reporter Ed Rabel had this say: "They are the healthiest and most educated young people in Cuba’s history. For that, many of them say they have Castro and his socialist revolution to thank.”

In February 1992, NBC’s Today visited Cuba. Correspondent Robert Bazell reported: "Cuba’s health care system is world class.  In a neo-natal intensive care unit; on a burn ward; or in a clinic to treat epilepsy one can find equipment and procedures equal to those in the U.S. and only a few other countries....The quality of care remains high and it is free. Health, a guarantee of socialism, billboards proclaim.  The Castro government has always been obsessed with health, starting with improving sanitation."

In a May 26, 2000 report, CNN Havana Bureau Chief Lucia Newman reported on Fidel’s practice of sending young teenagers to forced labor farms.  She declared the program instills "respect" for "hard work" and that while students "say at first they were homesick," they soon boast that they "are having a great time" and learning "the importance of camaraderie."

In October 2002, ABC’s Barbara Walters landed an exclusive interview with Castro.  She commented, "For Castro, freedom starts with education.  And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth.  The literacy rate is 96 percent."

In 2002, former President Jimmy Carter visited Cuba as a personal guest of Fidel Castro.  This marked the first time a U.S. president, in or out of office, had visited the communist country since 1959 when Fidel took control of the country. Upon returning to the U.S., Jimmy Carter praised Cuba’s economic and political liberalization.  Shortly thereafter, Castro outlawed the very movement that Carter praised, violently rounded up dozens of dissidents and imprisoned them where many remain to this day.  In response to this crackdown, 160 self-described artists and intellectuals, including four Nobel Prize winners and actors Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte reaffirmed their support of Castro in the form of an open letter.

Just this past year, filmmaker Michael Moore illegally traveled to Cuba to make his latest film: Sicko.  In it, he contends that Cuba has a much preferable health care system to ours.  Roger Friedman of Fox News calls the film: “Brilliant and Uplifting.”

Now,  if we took these “useful idiots” word for it, you would think that Cuba is a wonderful place to live.  Sadly, the truth about Cuba is that Castro's regime has created the most repressive police state in the Western Hemisphere.  He has refused to ratify any major international law enshrining fundamental human rights.  His Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) which operate on almost every block in Cuba spy on neighbors and report their activity.  These reports can lead to violent responses and imprisonment.  Offenses range from talking to foreigners, to criticizing the regime to trying to leave the island.  There are never trials.  He employs Rapid Response Brigades to "defend the country, the Revolution and Socialism in all circumstances, by confronting and liquidating any sign of counter-revolution or crime." Castro has implemented population controls by forcing abortions.  Children in Cuba at a very young age are forced into military training, state schooling and/or forced labor farms, all part of the indoctrination program.  Many parents are in Cuban jails because their own children reported their activity to the regime.  Shut off from the world, there is scarce food, electricity and extreme poverty.  As for the wonderful health care system praised by the likes of NBC, ABC, Jimmy Carter and Michael Moore, defecting Cuban doctors have issued this statement: “We, who have only recently emerged from the belly of the beast, can categorically and authoritatively state that our people's poor health care situation results from a dysfunctional and inhumane economic and political system, exacerbated by the willingness of the regime to divert scarce health resources to meet the needs of the regime's elite and foreign patients who bring hard currency.”

So now, the question remains: why are there so many defenders of Fidel Castro here in America?  Do they support him personally or his socialist ideology?  I am going to leave you today with another quote from the same group of defecting doctors: “It is with great sadness that we say we expect the health of our people to continue to decline, because, as despicable as it may sound, Fidel Castro finds great political utility in our people's suffering.  As long as foreign observers blame outside forces - specifically the United States - and not him, it gives sustenance to his drive for international legitimacy and justification for his stranglehold on the fate of our people.  Such is the true nature of his lust for power.”



...more columns by Todd A. Carges