Castro’s Last Cigar

The death of Fidel Castro, coming as it did Friday amid America’s peaceful transition of power, is a moment to reflect on nature of communism — on its inherent incompatibility with democracy. America has had 15 quadrennial elections since the cigar-chomping revolutionary emerged from the jungles to begin his tyranny. Eight elections involved the peaceful transfer of power not only to a new president but one of the opposing party. Yet Cuba hasn’t seen one such election in all the years since Eisenhower.What a tragedy. The hostility of communism to private property, requiring it also to abridge the other rights that America comprehends as coming from God, has locked the island nation out of the progress that comes with freedom. Even the partial restoration of rights has led to a rebirth of the economies of Russia and China. Yet Cubans can only nurse their dreams in secret, while Venezuela, which also fell under the grip of Marxists, is in the midst of its own catastrophic collapse.What a contrast to those Cubans who made it to America and have become a prosperous, politically powerful, and respected part of our polity. They have been one, if only one, reason that America has so far refused to end its embargo of Communist Cuba. The embargo is often set down as a policy failure, in that Cuban communism has endured. But by our lights, the embargo has been a success, preventing the abandonment of the property claims that that have obtained since the Communist theft.The effort to slink around Congress in pursuit of a normalization with the communist regime, even while Fidel and his brother Raul were in power, has been one of the errors of the Obama years. It was nauseating to watch Secretary of State Kerry prep for Mr. Obama’s visit to Cuba by going to Havana to suggest that the presidents of Cuba and America have been “prisoners of history.” It would be gilding Mr. Kerry’s words to call them morally equivalent malarky. The prisoners have been the people of Cuba, and their jailers have been Fidel Castro and his brother.No doubt the Left in our country is going to use the death of Fidel Castro to try to hasten the normalization of relations with Cuba. It is a moment to remember Helms-Burton, more formally the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act. It establishes that normalization can occur only after the meeting of strict conditions, including the release of Cuba’s political prisoners, a commitment to “free and fair elections,” independent trade unions, and a government that “does not include Fidel Castro or Raul Castro.”The columns that have flown the flag of The New York Sun have been partisans of Free Cuba going back to the days when it was ruled by Spain. Jose Marti, during his exile at New York, made his headquarters in our newsroom, from which the flag of Cuba Libre was flown over Lower Broadway. The Devil may have lit Castro’s last cigar, to use the metaphor of Elliott Banfield in a cartoon issued as the dictator began his decline. But the celebration can wait until freedom finally comes to Cuba.

Castro’s Last Cigar

Castro’s Last Cigar

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