Pages

Monday, March 12, 2012

Fidel’s unconvincing excuses over ‘Armageddon Letter’

Posted on Monday, 03.12.12

'ARMAGEDDON LETTER'

Fidel's unconvincing excuses over 'Armageddon Letter'
BY BRIAN LATELL
Ctp.iccas@miami.edu

Fidel Castro has again been pontificating about the perils of nuclear
war. This has been a favorite theme during his retirement, one that has
been reiterated often in his published "reflections." But his hypocrisy
could not be more appalling.

In two of the five reflections he issued this year Castro has dwelled
solemnly on the possibility of nuclear conflagration. On Jan. 4 he wrote
that after such a conflict "many millions of years would go by" before
human life again "would arise." On Jan. 12, he condemned the United
States for dropping atomic bombs on Japan at the end of World War II,
"killing and irradiating . . . hundreds of thousands . . . in a country
that had already been militarily defeated." But surely, no historian of
that war would agree that Japan was ready to surrender before President
Truman decided to drop the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In the same essay, Castro praised Iranian President Ahmadinejad, never
mentioning Iran's advanced programs capable of producing nuclear
weapons. "Yesterday," Fidel wrote, "I had the satisfaction of having a
pleasant conversation with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I am convinced that Iran
will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a
war."

These commentaries are a replay of many others. Between June and
November of 2010, a dozen articles attributed to Castro were devoted to
his preoccupation with nuclear holocaust. One was titled "The Dangers of
Nuclear War," another, "On the Brink of Tragedy." On June 16, he wrote
that "the sky is growing increasingly cloudy," and on July 11, he
brooded that "everything hangs by a thread."

Then on Aug. 23 he appeared to return to a bizarre episode that
continued to haunt him, a letter he wrote in the final hours of the
missile crisis in late October 1962. It was in that communication to
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that Castro wrote: "If . . . the
imperialists invade Cuba with the goal of occupying it . . . the Soviet
Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could
launch the first nuclear strike against it."

These are the operative words in what has become known as Castro's
Armageddon letter. Incredibly, he advocated a massive preemptive nuclear
attack on the United States if Cuba were invaded. Some have argued that
he meant Khrushchev should attack in order to save Cuba, to destroy
American military capabilities before invading troops could occupy the
island. In contrast, Castro and his sympathizers have argued,
unconvincingly, that he meant the Kremlin should attack after an invasion.

Still, by either interpretation there is nothing like that bone-chilling
letter in the entire history of the nuclear age. No other world leader
is known to have recommended the use of even a single nuclear warhead
since 1945. Fidel's recommendation to Khrushchev was orders of magnitude
greater than the American attacks on Japan because hundreds of bombs
would have been unleashed by the nuclear superpowers against each other.

Castro has remained unrepentant. In a 1990 speech in Havana when he was
compelled to admit his authorship, he said defiantly, "I do not regret
in the least what I did or what I said." He later told an interviewer,
"It is the most tremendous letter in history . . . one needed to be very
strong."

Yet, since his retirement he has had second thoughts, obviously worried
about his place in history. In August 2010 he claimed not to have
understood in 1962 that the attack he promoted would likely have
resulted in just the kind of global catastrophe he has lately been
decrying. "I should have understood much earlier that the risks of a
nuclear war were much more serious than I imagined . . . it is not the
same to explode 500 nuclear bombs in 1,000 days as it is to have them
explode in one single day."

This self-exoneration is preposterous. He claims that it was only in the
summer of 2010 that he finally got around to consulting Cuban strategic
warfare experts — including his eldest son. They helped him, he claimed,
finally to appreciate what had previously eluded him. But how could he
have failed for decades to have understood the fundamental realities of
nuclear war and the size of the superpowers' strategic weapons arsenals?

Despite his protests, the 1962 letter to Khrushchev embodied a
fearsomely apocalyptic vision and reflected his insatiable hatred of the
United States.

Brian Latell is a Cuba analyst and senior research associate at the
Institute for Cuba and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/12/2685729/fidels-unconvincing-excuses-over.html

No comments: