Humberto Fontova
Thursday, June 5, 2003

One sap called Castro’s form of government "Machismo-Leninismo." (By the way, don’t we need a "Deck of Saps"? True, many already appear in the Deck of Weasels. But just a thought.)

Now, could anything be more preposterous than this "Machismo-Leninismo"? Castro has never been an underdog. He’s always had powerful sectors of the U.S. government and 95 percent of the media on his side – and he’s always conducted this opera of propaganda the way Toscanini conducted the New York Philharmonic.

Thus the world’s almost inconceivable ignorance about matters Cuban. Thus we just saw Argentinean imbeciles roaring themselves hoarse in adulation of the Lider Maximo. Thus we saw the Spanish government honoring Fidel Castro with honorary citizenship the very week it served indictment papers for murder against Augusto Pinochet!

Thus we hear him called "helluva guy" and "genius."

In truth, far from machistas, Castroites have never prevailed in genuine combat without an outrageous superiority in men and Soviet arms. Fidel’s achievements spring not from any valor or cojones – but from his genius at guile, from his expert ability to detect, flatter and enchant fools (and scoundrels) who can help him.

Far from any "machismo", these traits were always considered female traits. Think Scarlett O’Hara vs. Rhett. Think Hepburn vs. Tracy. Think Bette Davis and Barbara Stanwyck in any of their roles. Think Luuuuu-cy Ricardo vs. Ricky. Hell, think what happened to me! I’ve been married 24 years and just took out the garbage!

Anyway, from the earliest days, Castro has either fled from, or been stomped during, any form of physical combat. One case speaks volumes.

In high school Fidel got into an argument over a debt (he was always a deadbeat) with a schoolmate named Ramon Mestre, who pounded him like a gong. Fidel’s head served for Ramon the way a punching bag served for Cassius Clay.

Helluva guy got a helluva stomping that day. Fidel cried uncle and slunk away whimpering that he’d go fetch the money he owed Ramon.

Instead he came back with a cocked pistol, hoping to surprise and murder the unarmed Mestre, who’d already gone home. There’s your genuine Fidel in all his macho splendor.

A bit later Fidel was accused (but never convicted) of two murders while attending the University of Havana. Both involved ambushes where the victim was shot in the back. There again is your genuine Fidel in all his valiant splendor.

Fifteen years later Fidel was de facto head of state. To read his deck of saps, Castro’s first official acts were establishing "free health care" and "land for the peasants" and "literacy campaigns." Blah ... blah … blah.

Actually, the day he got to Havana, on Jan. 6, 1959, Castro ordered his goons to track down and arrest Ramon Mestre, whom he hadn’t seen or heard from in 15 years. Señor Mestre ended up serving 20 years in horrible dungeons on totally trumped up counterrevolutionary charges. There, yet again, is your genuine Fidel in all his gallant splendor.

Find old pictures of Fidel as a "guerrilla" in the Sierra Maestra and you’ll notice his favorite weapon was a scoped rifle. Thus he never had to get anywhere near a Batista soldier.

Indeed, he’d start every "battle"(puerile little skirmish) by firing off a shot in the distance. Then he’d let his "guerrillas" (bandits, wastrels, hoodlums) do the actual "fighting" (usually murdering unsuspecting soldiers in their bunks, terrorizing unarmed peasants and rustling cows).

While his men engaged in their murder and banditry, Fidel would scurry back to camp, where, no doubt, several "reporters" (saps) from the New York Times, Look or CBS eagerly awaited an "interview" (shameless, sycophantic soft-soaping).

I realize I’m plowing the seas here. What is Fidel’s true record against the raw emotions and fantasies of his groupies and saps?

Take Norman Mailer’s breathless ode to Fidel: "You are the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since the second world war! It’s as if the ghost of Cortez had appeared in our century riding Zapata’s white horse!"

Take George Mc Govern’s campaign manager Frank Mankiewics’ perfumed love letter to the Maximum Leader: "One of the most charming men I’ve ever met! ... Castro is personally overpowering. It’s much more than charisma. Castro remains one of the few truly electric personalities in a world where his peers seem dull!"

Take the smitten George Mc Govern himself: "Castro is shy, sensitive. I really liked him."

Take Saul Landau’s coos, gurgles and moans between hot flashes: "As Fidel spoke I could feel a peculiar sensation in his presence (oooh! ooooh!). It’s as if I am meeting with a new force of nature! Here is a man so filled with energy he is almost a different species! Power radiates from him!"

These are all quotes (except the oooh! oooh!) from grown men, folks – from men taken seriously in the Beltway and Left Coast. In their heyday, Sinatra, Elvis and Jagger might have envied having such habitues.

Even some Castro-hostile biographers like Ann Geyer write about the Cuban "victory" in Angola. This adds much to the "Machismo-Leninismo" myth. But I’m always suspicious when I read of a Castroite victory in anything except bamboozling people, stealing or murdering the defenseless. So I decided to investigate.

Sure enough! Several books and articles by Castro defectors (Juan Benemelis, Rafael Del Pino, Juan Vives) and by South African military men set the record straight.

Turns out that Cuban "victory" in Angola belongs with the rest of the library of hogwash about the Cuban Revolution. It’s as much a military victory as the one against Brigada 2506 (see Operation Cuban Freedom – NOT!).

And the Escambray Freedom fighters (see Cuba’s REAL Rebels – and Dunces) – which is to say, a victory of overwhelming Soviet armaments – a "victory" only made possible by a sickening sellout of their freedom-fighter enemies by their "allies." – most significantly, it’s a victory where the "victors" suffered 20 times the casualties of the "defeated." Shoulda known.

Desastre (disaster), barrieron (they swept up) fracaso (complete failure) appear in almost every other paragraph of the Cuban defector writings. These refer to what happened to them, at the hands of UNITA and the South Africans (many of these were black troops too, by the way).

What I read was a litany of routs, retreats and relentless stompings. Most telling (and hilarious) is that while Castro had 50,000 troops in Angola, the South Africans never had over 4,000! And every clash was a hideous rout for the Reds.

Cuban MiGs actually had orders to avoid dogfights – to skedaddle at top speed – at any sighting of a South African Mirage! The MiGs’ strict role was ground support, which is to say, strafing and bombing defenseless villages. In any other role they were blown from the skies like skeet.

Chester Crocker himself, who served as Reagan and Bush’s assistant secretary of state for African affairs, confirms it in his own book.

One story in Juan Benemelis’ book “Castro Terror & Subversion in Africa” was a gem. A few weeks after getting to Angola, the swaggering Cuban general, Raul Diaz Arguelles, snapped on his holster, affected a Pattonesque scowl and mounted an armored vehicle with some fellow officers.

They were off to the front. They’d arrived to kick enemy butt. They’d show Jonas Savimbi and those South Africans the tactical brilliance of Castroite officers!

Within hours a South African patrol ambushed him ... Whooom! BALOOOM! With a well-aimed bazooka blast they sent the mighty Arguelles and his toadies spinning through the air like those human cannonballs you see at the circus, which is fitting. Castroite commanders have always been more clowns than soldiers. They make Groucho Marx in “Duck Soup” look like Hannibal.

The few Castroite victories in Angola came from saturation barrages of Soviet rockets and artillery against poorly armed villagers, in some cases using poison gas (reported by Evans & Novak in 1988). They say Angolan civilian casualties ran to half a million in that war.

Why don’t we ever read about this collateral damage? You know good and well why: Communists inflicted it.

In 1936 Benito Mussolini used gas against Ethiopians and caught hell from the League of Nations. Castro does the same, actually kills multiple times as many Africans – and the League’s successor appoints him to its Human Rights Commission!

So why did the South Africans leave Angola? So why did UNITA lose, you ask?

They were sold down the river, hung out to dry, abandoned by the Western powers, that’s why. It’s an old story. Ask any Cuban-American freedom fighter.

In Nicaragua a handful of Contras with a trickle of U.S. aid sent the Castroites scurrying home. In Grenada U.S Marines and Rangers swept the floor with them. The free Cubans of Brigada 2506 and the Escambray rebels mauled the Castroites savagely.

Alas, the list of routs is an even longer one. Three thousand Castro troops also served with the Syrians in the Yom Kippur war, 500 of them manning T-55 tanks along the Golan Heights.

I’ve seen pictures, and let me tell you: These tankers look badder than Leroy Brown. They look like one crackerjack outfit. They all sport those fancy tankers’ helmets and scowl above their chinstraps for the camera. No tanker in Rommel’s Afrika Corps looked the part of desert conqueror as much as these Castroites.

Within a week of its lightning surprise attack on Israel to storm its capital, the Syrian government was scrambling to evacuate from its capital, Damascus! An Israeli force (a tiny fraction of the Syrian/Cuban forces’ size) counterattacked, blasted the enemy tanks into a smoldering scrap pile and rolled over them like a speed bump on the way to envelop the Syrians' own capital!

What accounts for such unconquerable imbecility? How does one explain so incessant a string of blunders by such an endless parade of donkeys as those who infest Castro’s military, you ask? Can’t a few competent commanders emerge? Wouldn’t the law of averages allow for it?

First off, Castro’s troops are hapless draftees who probably detest the regime as much as anyone in Miami. They have no stake in its wars. But mainly, it’s the rampant megalomania and paranoia of their commander in chief that accounts for the Cuban military’s astounding stupidities and failures.

Communist armies in general and Castroite armies in particular promote officers not on battlefield merit but strictly on political reliability, which is to say on lackeyism, cowardice and donkeyheadedness.

Some say there was exception even in Cuba. Arnaldo Ochoa was his name. He was supposedly a "brilliant" commander in Angola. After reading the South African side. I see that "brilliant" actually means "not quite a complete moron." Call him a Cuban McClellan. There were hints that he possessed courage and could think for himself.

Whatever the truth of this, in ’89 Castro got wind of these alarming rumors and sprung to action. He slapped Ochoa with bogus charges of smuggling and put him in front of a firing squad – just to be sure.

This Communist promotion policy acts a s a foolproof filter against courage, brains, intrepidness – the very things valued by the armies of free nations. Saddam’s army did the same. And we saw that joke.

We’ve all seen a version of Castro’s promotion policy in the workplace. We’ve all seen that gossipy little backstabber, that sniveling little *ss kisser, that busybody shrew get promoted over their betters, especially during the humbug of "re-engineering."

Remember that farce? Remember how after every flush of "downsizing" many of these Eddie Haskells and Mrs. Kravitzes kept bobbing back to the surface?

To some extent it’s human nature. All organizations favor "team players." In the private sector these things (eventually) get rectified, or the company goes under. There are stockholders and customers to keep happy.

But under socialism this swinishness is the very essence of the system. There is only the Maximum Leader to keep happy.

If you work in the private sector, just multiply the favoritism and incompetence you see in the office by 1,000,000 to get an idea of socialism at work. If you work in the public sector, only multiply it by 1,000.

Call it reverse Darwinism. Rather than survival of the fittest, Red regimes – in civilian as well as military matters – all practice survival of the most resentful, incompetent, backstabbing and swinish. That’s why they all eventually implode.

Indeed, the economic prowess of Castroites closely mirrors their military prowess. Just look at the people around Castro: Ricardo Alarcon, Carlos Lage, Perez Roque – donkeys all! Wusses all!

Who’d a-dreamed you could take a country with net immigration from Europe, with a higher standard of living than Belgium or Italy, and turn it into one shunned like a rotten roadkill by half-starved Haitians?

Who’d a-dreamed you’d see desperate people hiding in the wheel compartments of intercontinental jets in an attempt to get out of the Pearl of the Caribbean? To these poor people asphyxiation and freezing to death seem like a small price to pay for a chance to flee.

Who’d a-dreamed you could take a country with a backlog of immigrant visas (people wanting to get in) in 1958 and convert it to one where the hottest items on the black market are inner tubes (to float away in) and ping-pong paddles (to paddle with)?

To hundreds of thousands of desperate souls the chance of a slow death by thirst, sun and starvation, or a quicker one in the jaws of tiger sharks seem worth the price for a chance to escape the handiwork of Stone’s and Nicholson’s "genius."

Who’d a-dreamed you could murder 18,000 people with firing squads, use poison gas against Angolan villagers, incarcerate a larger percentage of your subjects than Adolf Hitler (and for three times as long) – then exile a bigger percentage of your population than Stalin or Mao – and be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize and elected to the U.N. human rights committee!?

Who’d a-dreamed you could install a penal code that mandates 18 months of prison for mouthing any joke about yourself, then be gushed about as "witty," "humorous" and "charming" by everyone from Chevy Chase to Whoopie Goldberg?!

Who’d a-dreamed you could take a country with a trade surplus and a peso on par with the U.S. dollar and convert it to one with a lower credit rating than Somalia and Haiti?!

And best of all – who’d a-dreamed this record would get you a thunderous standing ovation at any international economic conference?!

And who’d a-dreamed that after this stellar record, you’d get credited with doing "good things for his nation" by the same man who made the case against Saddam Hussein at the U.N.?! (Colin Powell) And be appraised a "genius!" by Hollywood millionaires?!

Can the world be any loonier on the other side of Alice’s looking glass? No way! Joseph Goebbels offers some consolation here. Recall his famous dictum: "The bigger the lie, the greater the number of believers. Just keep repeating it."

Anyone who lived through the Cuban Revolution and the resulting disaster and horrors, then reads the version in the Beltway press or academia, knows that Goebbels smacked the bull’s-eye.

Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in history from Tulane University. He's the author of "Helldiver's Rodeo," described as "Highly entertaining!" by Publisher's Weekly, "A must-read!" by Booklist, and "Just what the doctor ordered!" by Ted Nugent.

You may reach Mr. Fontova by e-mail at hfontova@earthlink.net

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Castro/Cuba
Media Bias

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