Yeh? Well Ah Hope You Die!

That pretty much summarizes McCain's feelings toward recently retired Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

There's always been an awful lot of hubbub about that little island 90 miles from Florida. Right now, Obama's saying he'll talk to the Cubans, Hillary's saying she might talk to the Cubans if, you know, they take a knee and pay tribute or something, and McCain's saying he hopes Fidel will go meet Karl Marx soon.

In case you're curious, here's a short history of why US politicians hate Cuba. If you aren't curious, go back to watching youtube videos or check facebook again. This won't be real entertaining.

Before Castro came to power in 1959, his revolution was actually funded by the United States. I guess you can't really fault the US for playing favorites, though, because it was also supplying Batista (Castro's predecessor) with weapons.

Okay, so, fairly typical so far. The US does that stuff all the time. Castro cames to power and started talking about nationalizing resources. So the man who led the revolution the US paid for in Cuba became a dirty, rotten commie in the eyes of US policy makers. The revolution no longer had anything in common with the American or French revolutions, and it became a bad revolution.

Then the suits in Washington decided to let the CIA off of its leash. It's a wonder Castro stayed alive. The CIA tack was to undermine Castro's credibility. That way, US acts of subversion or flat-out violence reported by Castro and his government would be written off as the paranoid ramblings of a confused and incompetent man.

Everyone's heard about the Bay of Pigs invasion, and it didn't go so well. One of the more creative and interesting actions by the CIA was paying off German suppliers to ensure that German cars being shipped to the island had off-center ball bearings. The CIA also sabotaged buses, machinery, and diesel fuel entering Cuba.

There was also a smattering of biological and chemical attacks on the island, that were equally crafty but far more sinister. The mildest of these may have been slipping chemicals into Castro's system designed to make his hair and beard fall out. On one occasion, before Castro gave a speech, a dose of LSD was administered to make him appear insane. Some of the attacks targeted ordinary Cubans much more than Castro -- including the release of mosquitoes carrying dengue fever into Cuba and introducing viruses into its turkey and pig populations. To wreck further havoc on the island, clouds were seeded to pour torrential rain onto non-arable lands, which prevented rain from falling on Cuban crops.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, William Blum's Killing Hope is an excellent resource. His research is solid and his analysis is interesting and fair enough -- plus, the works cited will point you to a horde of government documents.

It goes without saying that none of this makes Castro a benevolent ruler, but it should make people curious as to whether this sort of force -- with the Cuban population as collateral damage apparently considered acceptable by the CIA -- was justified.