President Obama did not meet with Fidel Castro during his recent trip to Cuba, but the former president nevertheless excoriated the American visitor for his youth and inexperience, in a patronizing letter to his “brother Obama.” Castro attacked Obama for seeking to lecture Cuba, saying that it was his country which should teach the United States.
“My modest suggestion is to reflect and do not try now to develop theories about Cuban politics,” the former Cuban president wrote in El Granma, the official state newspaper of the Cuban Communist Party, in a letter to “El hermano Obama” (“My Brother Obama”). Castro proceeded to excoriate what he sees as the United States’ past foreign policy blunders, while harping on Obama’s youth and inexperience with his country.
Native populations do not exist at all in the minds of Obama. Nor does he say that racial discrimination was swept away by the Revolution; that retirement and salary of all Cubans were enacted by this before Mr. Barack Obama was 10 years old.
That’s rich: Castro attacked Obama for not being politically correct enough! Obama praised Cuba’s healthcare and education systems, but that is clearly not enough for the former Cuban president, who wants credit for calming racial relations and for providing a safety net for all of his citizens. Even Obama, who minimized the incompatibility between communism and capitalism in his remarks in Argentina, suggested that Cuba could use more free market reforms to spur on growth in this “poor country.” Evidently, Castro disagrees.
Ted Cruz attacked Obama for ignoring political prisoners in Cuba. Castro proceeded to do even worse than Obama, however, arguing that his government was legitimate and blameless from the beginning, and that the United States’ effort to overthrow it was completely unjustifiable.
Castro criticized the United States for the failed 1961 “Bay of Pigs” invasion. The former Cuban president wrote, “Nothing can justify this premeditated attack that cost our country hundreds of killed and wounded.”
The former Cuban president also contrasted his country’s efforts with America’s push to end apartheid rule in South Africa. Ridding apartheid South Africa of nuclear weapons “was not the goal of our solidarity,” Castro declared, “but to help the people of Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau and other fascist colonial rule of Portugal.” He blamed the United States for South Africa’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, excoriating the “help that racist South Africa had received from Reagan and Israel.”
Again mocking Obama, Castro wrote, “I do not know what Obama has to say on this story now, although it is very doubtful that I knew absolutely nothing.”
Castro insisted that Cuba “has no need of gifts” from the United States. “Our efforts will be legal and peaceful, because it is our commitment to peace and brotherhood of all human beings living on this planet.” In other words, Cuba is so morally superior to the United States that America should get in line. This is Castro’s response to Obama’s olive branch.
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