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March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk
Feb. 19, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: Is the Divine beyond us or within us?
JWisdom.com Olympic Faith with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Israel and the West are perpetrators of a myth that endangers the Jewish State
Feb. 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Who is Rashad Hussain?
JWisdom.com A Wedding Disaster to Remember with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein ( 3 MINUTES)
Feb. 17, 2010
JWisdom.com Think your life is messed up? with Rabbi David Aaron ( 11 MINUTES)
Greg Logan: 'Greatest Jewish sporting event of all time since David versus Goliath' may be postponed because of bar mitzvah
Feb. 16, 2010
Anya Martin : Boy's 'cerebral palsy' fixed with diet
JWisdom.com Feet On The Street Spirituality with Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 8 MINUTES)
Marty Peretz: Let Europe Mind Its Own Business. It Brings Nothing To The Table Save For Mischief
Feb. 15, 2010
Herb Geduld: Lincoln and the Jews
JWisdom.com Are Our Children Really Ours? with Rabbi Mordechai Becher ( 5 MINUTES)
Susan King: 'Wolf Man' reflected writer's wartime Jewish experience

Jewish World Review Feb. 21, 2008 / 15 Adar I 5768

Adios, in-Fidel

By Cal Thomas


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Left's favorite dictator, Fidel Castro, is "resigning" as Cuba's president of the Council of State. Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who was born in Cuba and, at the age of 15, along with his brother, was evacuated from Cuba during Operation Pedro Pan, observed: "…Castro has resigned from a position he was never elected to in the first place."


The Hollywood Left, including Steven Spielberg, Jack Nicholson, Naomi Campbell, Chevy Chase, Danny Glover and Oliver Stone, among others, has treated Castro as a reformer. Various idiocies have poured from their lips, praising Castro for supposed excellence in health care and education. According to Chase, "Socialism works … Cuba might prove that." Says Campbell, Castro is "a source of inspiration to the world." Nicholson declared Castro "a genius." These are the leftists who denounce their own country for alleged human rights abuses at Guantanamo and elsewhere, but travel to communist Cuba and return gushing praise and sounding as if they had just returned from the healing waters at Lourdes.


While human rights advocates rot in Cuban jails, or are executed, leftists around the world perform the political equivalent of dancing on their graves. Castro's nearly 50-year tenure in power is not the result of the love and support he received from those Cubans unable to escape, but rather a consequence of his ruthlessness in imprisoning or killing anyone who opposed him. As the Soviet Union began to sink, Mikhail Gorbachev issued the equivalent of a "save yourself" warning to Castro, urging him to follow Gorbachev's lead and adopt perestroika and glasnost. Castro would have none of it. He responded: "openness and reform are dangerous and represent a threat to fundamental socialist principles."


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The United States had a hand in creating Castro because of its support for his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista. When Batista seized power in 1952, the United States mostly turned away. Six years later, America ceased arms sales to Batista when his brutality became too obvious to ignore. By then, Castro was already radicalized and plotting his armed overthrow of Batista's regime.


The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when Castro allowed Soviet missiles to be established in Cuba, has been well documented. The United States nearly went to nuclear war with the Soviet Union before Premier Nikita Khrushchev backed down from his showdown with President Kennedy and withdrew the missiles. Castro followed with revolution on the installment plan, supporting communist insurgents in Nicaragua, El Salvador and more recently, Venezuela and Bolivia.


In the reams of fiction generated from within and outside Cuba, probably none equals the supposed "excellent" healthcare system on the island. It is true that some good health care is available, but only for the elite who can pay for it with hard cash and for the communist hierarchy and military commanders. Everyone else is forced to take what little he or she can get.


Liberals blame the American economic blockade of Cuba for its economic woes and substandard health care for ordinary Cubans. The Cuban American National Foundation interviewed a group of Cuban doctors who had managed to get out of Cuba and come to the United States. They told the organization they were "mystified" by claims in a report from the American Association for World Health blaming the U.S. embargo for Cuba's health care struggles. According to the Cuban doctors, "we . . . 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 regime to divert scarce resources to meet the needs of the regime's elite and foreign patients who bring hard currency."


Castro's brother, Raoul, has been handed the reins (or in this case chains) of power, so little is likely to change in the near future. However, if President Bush is right about all people wanting freedom, then the ultimate collapse of communism in Cuba is as certain as its collapse in Eastern Europe. The question is what comes next and will the United States learn from its previous mistakes in dealing with Cuba, or will it repeat them, causing further damage to U.S. interests in Latin America? One hopes history will not repeat.


The best thing that could happen in Cuba is for the regime to collapse. Then, properly restored, Cuba could become an engine for democracy that, instead of fueling revolution throughout Latin America, would be part of what President Kennedy called an Alliance for Progress that would promote economic growth and human freedom throughout the region.

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JWR contributor Cal Thomas is co-author with Bob Beckel, a liberal Democratic Party strategist, of "Common Ground: How to Stop the Partisan War That is Destroying America". Comment by clicking here.

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