Sympathy?

Fidel Castro condemns attack on US congresswoman

The Jamaica Observer Sun, 09 Jan 2011 09:57 AM PST

HAVANA, Cuba (AP) â Fidel Castro today denounced as “atrocious” an attack on a member of the United States House of Representatives that left six people dead and the legislator fighting for her life.

The attack on Gabrielle Giffords and the murder of six people was indeed “atrocious”.  That Fidel Castro makes that comment is risible.

Under the guise of liberator, later of Marxist Leninist, Fidel is nothing if not a Machavelian opportunist.   Now, as he admits the revolution didn’t work, lays off 250,000 workers, and continues to deny the most basic human rights to his own people, he takes time to express his sympathy and outrage over an attack on a member of the United States House of Representatives; a member of a government he rebukes at every opportunity.

In a kind of “look at how violent Yankee Land can be” statement, he is happy to point out to his citizens just how bad things really are in our great country.  Are we to believe he is horrified by violence even as he perpetrates worse violence on the Cuban people?  It seems he has forgotten the atrocities he himself is responsible for committing in the last half a century;  atrocities that far surpass the attempted murder of Representative Giffords and the murder of six of our citizens.

Twenty percent of the Cuban population lives in exile.  People have preferred to risk their lives navigating shark infested waters in rafts and inner tubes to the U.S. mainland rather than endure his cruel regime.  Those who have been able to do so have escaped to other countries like Peru, Mexico, and Spain to start new lives.  Can you begin to imagine what it would take for twenty percent of U.S. citizens to make a decision to emigrate?  For them to take to the ocean in rafts or anything navigable in an attempt to seek shelter in another country, leaving behind their families, their friends, their homes, and their history?

Some say only the rich left Cuba when the revolution came.  I can only respond that if twenty percent of the Cuban population was rich, then our island was indeed in great economic shape before the revolution.

We left because there was verbal violence, emotional violence, and physical violence.  We left because Fidel lied and promised elections fifty years ago that never took place.  We left because of the bloodshed, because of the indoctrination, because we were governed by a madman;  a madman who would have us believe he is sorry for what happened to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fidel pounces on every opportunity to point out just how “dangerous” a place our country is.  He can talk about the shooting and tell his people “You want to live in the U.S.?  They are killing the people who govern them.”  Incidents like these give him an opportunity to make our country appear to be an undesirable place to run to.

What has happened in Arizona has been devastating.  For those of us old enough it is a reminder of the vulnerability of  our leaders and of our own.  I watched in disbelief as shortly after I arrived in this country President John F. Kennedy was assasinated  in Dallas and I felt my new found sense of safety disappear.  But let’s not lose sight that these things though tragic are aberrations.  That for the most part our leaders and our citizens live a safe existence.

As I reflect on the tragedy in Arizona, my heart goes out to the families of the dead and to our Representative.  One disconnected lonely man took it upon himself to destroy the lives of innocent people.  Another man in a faraway land used this tragic incident  to express his contempt for our country under the guise of sympathy and outrage.  I am not sure which causes me more pain.