We <3 Castro!?!

I almost vomited my lunch today.

I almost vomited and it had little to do with anything I ate, and everything to do with the ridicules sound bytes I heard of US politicians gushing over a visit with Cuba's Fidel Castro.

To hear Representative Barbara Lee (Calif. Democrat) and her colleagues talk about Cuba and her visit with the 82 year old dictator, you would think that Cuba was an island paradise and Castro a wise paternal old man with nothing but love in his heart for America.

My problem with the whole thing? Well, for starters, I was born in Communist Cuba and lived there long enough to tell you Lee and her law maker friends are either Marxists (thinly veiled as Democrats) or people too naive to hold a seat in Congress. How else can you explain the feel good moment that came out of the meeting?

You want to know the real Castro, ask my uncle "Chino," who spent 18 years in a Cuban prison as a political dissident before former President Jimmy Carter helped get him released. Never mind the beatings he took in prison, ask him about the year he served in the nude, or the multiple years he spent in his underwear, and you will quickly come to realize that Guantanamo was not really the prison that needed to be shut down in Cuba. While you are at it, ask my father about Castro and his regime. My dad, who had the dubious honor of once playing baseball with the man, wound up in prison as well for trying to get a passport to come to America (through the Swiss embassy), back in the day where you still could. My dad's Defense Attorney told the judge to simply "throw the book at his client." Then there are the scores of people who died by firing squad in the early days of the post revolutionary period. Need I go on? The stories are endless...

Yet, here were three US law makers, praising Castro, his "humbled" home, his wife, and his desire of wanting to know more about Dr. Martin Luther King. Still, that wasn't the moment when my lunch wanted to make a hastily exit by way of mouth. No, that moment came a bit later when our politicians actually spoke of Castro's sincere offer to, "help President Obama in any way he can."

It's a sad day when we mistake a monster for a man.