The Fall Of Fidel Castro

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Fidel collapsed today before thousands at an outdoor rally. This is a reminder to all sides of the political struggle that no one is immortal. Fidel Castro is an old man who is closer to death than he was forty years ago. His rambling speech broadcast over Telemundo recently, and passing out at a public forum serves as evidence to back up the previous sentence. This brings us to one of the lies spread by the regime that has been imbibed by almost everyone on the planet, and especially Cuban exiles. The myth is that nothing will change in Cuba until Fidel Castro dies, then the system will end with him. If I believed that to be true I would’ve never gotten involved in the struggle for a free Cuba, and sat around waiting for biology to take its course. However, it is not true. If we look back through the history of tyrants: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Papa Doc, the Somozas, Kim il Sung, Ho Chi Minh, and a list tragically too long to list here, then you’ll find that when tyrants die these evil tyrannies have replacements that are equally as evil.

Let me provide two notorious examples. The first tyrant of the Soviet Union was Lenin. During Lenin’s tenure outsiders could even claim that the regime had moderated with its New Economic Policy that allowed foreign investment and limited amounts of capitalism to keep the regime from collapsing completely. Did this early engagement of trade with the Soviet Union in the 1920s have a big pay off? Was there a turn to democracy or greater economic liberalization? Lenin died a transition or should I say succession took place. The answer to the previous questions is given with the name Josef Stalin and the murder of 50 million Russians at the hand of their own government.

Communism didn’t fall in the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe because of the death of a tyrant, or because of economic engagement. Communism didn’t fall it was pushed. It was knocked down abroad by the effective foreign policy o...