Redstate

Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in Featured Stories | Foreign Affairs — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

And I suppose that the termination of a life shouldn't be celebrated except when that life was lived in the service of what reasonable and rational individuals might call "evil." In which case, a party is in order.

Get out the party hats:

Ever since President Fidel Castro was sidelined for what was said to be abdominal surgery last July, Cuban officials have maintained that the country's leader will return to his post. ''We will again have him leading the revolution,'' said Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque just two days ago, speaking at an outdoor rally to protest the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, according to the Communist Party daily newspaper Granma.

But U.S. officials tell TIME that many in the U.S. government are now convinced that Castro, 80, has terminal cancer and will never return to power. "Certainly we have heard this, that this guy has terminal cancer," said one U.S. official.

Of course, such intelligence reports could be wrong, and one official cautioned that definitive proof is nearly impossible for the U.S. to come by. Yet the fact that the Cuban government removed Castro from the public stage before his death could suggest that Castro and his would-be successors were aware of a terminal condition and wanted to gauge public reaction to his absence. "They got to see how people would react," says one U.S. official. "They have had a chance to see how things might work without out him functioning day-to-day."

I am not one of those people who believes that the Cuban Communists will automatically fall apart without Castro at the helm, but I imagine that it will be a great deal more difficult to keep the Old Order together without him. For now, the Cuban leadership is getting by with the claim that at some point in time, Castro will return to his duties. When it becomes clear that the only duty Castro will attend to is the one required by a dirt nap, there may be some instability visited on the quasi-Stalinist regime 90 miles south of Florida.

As for Castro himself, it is to be hoped that at some point before the end, he realizes the scope and nature of his crimes and is horrified beyond measure by what was wrought through his "leadership." A sudden belief in a merciless Hell whose rooms are reserved for tyrants and criminals like ol' Fidel and the attendant terror of an eternity spent in such a hothouse would also be welcome.

There is no reason why Fidel Castro should die with a tranquil mind. There is no reason why he should rest in peace. Let his thoughts be troubled with the possibility that at long last, retribution will be visited on him. Let the rest of us take joy in the psychological pain those troubling thoughts bring about.