Regime change?: Fidel Castro poses no threat to the U.S.

Regime change in Cuba?

For reasons that must escape many of us, that emerged as a bit of a presidential campaign issue recently.

“We are not waiting for the day of Cuban freedom, we are working for the day of freedom in Cuba,” declared President George Bush.

Responded presidential hopeful John Kerry: “Four years after candidate Bush promised Cuban-Americans the moon, all they’ve gotten is lip service and broken promises.”

Kerry pledged “to fight full time for freedom and democracy in Cuba.”

To which the vast majority of U.S. citizens probably would react: “Ho hum.”

The United States has its hands more than full trying to secure a regime change in Iraq.

American investors and property and business owners lost billions when Fidel Castro seized power and turned Cuba into a communist dictatorship. Thousands of Cuban citizens had to flee to the United States, leaving everything they owned behind.

An effort was made during the John Kennedy administration to have Cuban “freedom fighters” retake their country. It turned into a fiasco at the Bay of Pigs when U.S. air support failed to materialize.

For a brief period, there was an ominous threat to the United States from Cuba. President Kennedy put an end to that when he called the Soviet Union’s hand and forced Moscow to remove its nuclear missiles from Cuban soil.

But there has not since been any threat posed to the United States by Fidel Castro. The world’s greatest stronghold of communism collapsed with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

China has emerged as a major communist power. And Vietnam and North Korea are communist dictatorships.

Fidel Castro is the least among the world’s communist dictators. He poses a threat to no one beyond his own islands.

Published in Editorials on May 15, 2004 11:47 PM