As Cuban dissidents flood the streets of Miami with tears of joy, recalling their painful experiences as victims of the Castro regime, world leaders, buckling under the weight of their own moral cowardice, continue to heap praise on a savage dictator who censored, abused, tortured, imprisoned, and killed his people mercilessly for six decades.
From President Obama’s diplomatic appeasement to Prime Minister Trudeau’s fawning eulogy, Fidel Castro’s tyranny has been swept under the rug in service of crude historical revisionism.
As The Daily Wire’s Harry Khachatrian noted, the Canadian leader expressed “deep sorrow” over the loss of “remarkable leader” Fidel Castro. Trudeau’s sycophantic words were later mocked by thousands of disappointed Canadians on Twitter with the quip #TrudeauEulogies.
But if ever there were a man who could one-up Trudeau’s moral inversions, it would be British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. Despised by his own party, the corpse-looking leftist politician has a long history of justifying the unjustifiable and standing in solidarity with the most despicable elements of modern society, including militants from the Lebanese terrorist group, Hezbollah. In a sickening display of denial, Corbyn blatantly ignored the sheer depravity wrought by Cuba’s communist dictator and sanctified Castro’s legacy as a “champion of social justice,” showing the world why the term “social justice” itself has become a twisted Orwellian double-speak synonymous with misanthropy.
And then there’s President Obama, nominal leader of the free world.
Sadly, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the man who stood by and watched one of the most horrific genocides in history unfold in Syria has bowed his head in deference to a Communist thug. Offering condolences to the kleptocratic Castro family, the president whitewashed history only to conclude his statement on behalf of the United States with an open-ended question mark on the Castro legacy. In failing to give voice to the thousands of Cuban-Americans he ostensibly represents, Obama cemented his own legacy as a coward unwilling to fight for freedom.
Obama’s statement on Fidel is so anodyne that it sanitizes his atrocities and terrible place in history pic.twitter.com/jeDhI9sDbS
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 26, 2016
I understand the need to be diplomatic, but why POTUS couldn’t at least reference something like Fidel’s “shameful legacy” is bonkers
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 26, 2016
Until his Fidel statement, I thought Obama opposed police brutality, supported freedom of expression & religion, & condemned tyranny
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) November 26, 2016
Ever the naive diplomat, Obama once promised to heroically champion human rights during his March odyssey to Havana. His visit marked the first time since 1928 that a sitting US president stepped foot on Cuban soil.
Unfortunately, the false prophets of “Change” and “Hope” are often disconnected from the grim world of reality. Not only has Obama’s soaring oratory about “human rights” fallen on deaf ears, the Cuban government has actually ratcheted up efforts to target and arrest dissidents, Bloomberg notes:
The Madrid-based Cuban Observatory on Human Rights said 1,474 people, including 512 women, were “arbitrarily” detained in January. The arrests have been climbing since the December 2014 announcement that the two governments would improve ties.
With nepotism serving as the sole procedure of power succession, Fidel Castro’s abdication from the throne of the presidency in 2006 failed to change the dynamics of the regime, as Castro’s close brother, Raul, continued his dynastic legacy. Since the Kennedy administration, US policy with Cuba, the de facto Castro playground, has been steadfast and firm, expecting tangible steps toward democracy in exchange for better relations.
President Obama’s efforts to deviate from his predecessors have been met with everything from disappointment to outrage. In fact, the White House chose not to invite members of the Cuban dissident community to the flag-raising ceremony in Havana, a move that angered many in the community.
For years, the administration has had strained relations with the Cuban exile community, with many claiming that the president is not taking any tangible steps to bolster human rights in Cuba, and for that matter, the rest of the region.
Even as American rapprochement overlooks the very Cubans the administration claims to champion in an undignified attempt to placate the Cuban regime, Raul Castro has reasserted his role as an anachronistic, 19th-century-style caudillo, the Latin American strongman figure marked by corruption and combative rhetoric.
According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), many of the institutional and structural bulwarks, the “repressive machinery” of human rights violations many years in the making, are embedded into the very regime Raul Castro now heads.
Here’s the Executive Director of HRW on unfortunate Obama’s response to Castro’s auspicious death.
Obama euphemistically dances around the lengthy prison terms, heartless executions that Castro imposed on dissidents https://t.co/iQAIjpJkJa pic.twitter.com/lLDtnzk8zG
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) November 26, 2016
Castro rule was marked by countless long-term political prisoners and, in early years, many executions. @HRW report: https://t.co/D5P8jBeSqm pic.twitter.com/452WZAuNSo
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) November 26, 2016
With Castro death, recall the utter brutality of his political prisons, described by Jorge Valls, who lived to tell. https://t.co/zKcFs9n24Z pic.twitter.com/dz8aMGqJ0v
— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) November 26, 2016