About the announcement that Fidel Castro had at long last resigned as the dictator of Cuba, two reactions caught our eye. The first was that of President Bush. “There will be an interesting debate that will arise eventually. There will be some who say, let’s promote stability. Of course, in the meantime, political prisoners will rot in prison, and the human condition will remain pathetic in many cases,” he said. “I believe that the change from Fidel Castro ought to begin a period of democratic transition. First step, of course, will be for people put in these prisons to be let out.”

Mr. Bush went on to call for institution-building and eventually “free and fair elections — and I mean free and I mean fair, not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as being true democracy.”

The second comment was that of a senator from Florida, Melquiades Martinez, who fled Cuba at age 15. “We must remember that Fidel Castro has resigned from a position he was never elected to in the first place,” he said. A fitting epitaph for a terrible dictator and an enemy of America. Had he been overthrown years ago, Cuba and the entire Western Hemisphere would have been better for it.