We Get Too Soon Old

And, of course, too late smart. Fifty years after Fidel Castro saw his guerrilla-led triumph in toppling Cuba's Fulgencio Batista, he is an old man, 84 and feeble, yet still consumed by his passion for Communism. Cuba, the Workers' Paradise. With its pure ideology of equality and respect for the working class, contempt for the wealthy. The former ascendant, (but poor), the latter persona non grata.

Education, the arts, medicine would triumph. And the philosophy of the socialist state. No more brothels and casinos operated for the delectation of wealthy American tourists. Wealth would be created by the people for the people, and the country would, through education and the socialist ideal, become other than what it was, a cringing pimp for the moneyed leisure class of social moral deviants.

Cuba sent its barefoot medicos all over South and Central America. No sacrifice too great for social cohesion within the hemisphere. It helped immeasurably, with American embargoes imposed upon the island that the Soviet Union took it under its financial and ideological wing. And just as the USSR saw the dismal failure of its collectivization of farms and failed industries so now does Cuba.

With the dissolution of the USSR Cuba was left adrift. But before that during the Cold War, Nikita Kruschev had installed powerful missiles on Cuban soil capable of carrying nuclear-tipped warheads, bringing the world closer to nuclear war than at any other time in its history. Fidel Castro proved himself willing to face off against the U.S., seriously encouraging a Soviet launch against the States.

He has the leisure now to look back on that era as an error in judgement.

But had it not been defused by a showdown between Presidents Kruschev and Kennedy, the world would have seen a counter-attack demolishing Cuba entirely. And causing huge losses of life in the United States. Was this evidence of world-class statesmanship? Mr. Castro is now in the process of redeeming his humanistic legacy of wanting to do good for the world; his world. He is still, it would seem, dedicated to the ideals he always advanced.

So is North Korea. And so is Venezuela, Cuba's newest champion and paymaster. Uncompromising on the promise held within the Communist ideal. Trouble is, that ideal runs counter to human nature, as Russia discovered, when it had to import wheat to feed its population when the communal farms collapsed. And as wiser heads in China acknowledged when it heralded in an ideological hybrid-era of capitalist-Communism.

There is a saving grace in his reminiscences, and his observations. Although Cuba - along with Venezuela and Brazil - present as firm supporters of Iran which threatens to annihilate Israel, Fidel Castro relieved himself of his opinion that Jews have historically been oppressed and vilified, their religion disdained, their people methodically slaughtered in a paroxysm of hatred resulting in the Holocaust.

One can only hope that message of personal conviction has made its way through to his great admirer, Hugo Chavez, and a little further in the World's geography, to Iran.