Castro...Cuba .... Buchanan vs Asner .... unreal !!

[MORTARDUDE]

http://www.zcportal.com/2003/033.asp
Why Would Anyone Moon Over Castro Of All People?
By John Hawkins (Rightwingnews)

Castro is a an incompetent & brutal Communist thug who has mired his people in poverty & squalor. In the US, left-wingers and celebrities rant about their "dissent being squashed", Bush acting like a "dictator", and how terrible it is to live in the United States. However, in Cuba, dissent is REALLY squashed, there is REALLY a dictator in charge, and the people are REALLY miserable, so much so that they're willing to risk their lives crossing the ocean on anything that floats just to get away from Castro's merciless regime. Yet, Castro's most ardent supporters are the very same left-wingers and celebs who seem to believe that Bush is going to, or already has made America into another Cuba.

Jeff Jacoby talks about some of Castro's cheerleaders, Jesse Jackson, Norman Mailer, Danny Glover, Harry Belafonte to name a few. Then there's Oliver Stone, Jack Nicholson, Naomi Campbell & Kevin Costner and plenty of others. Their attitudes are typified by comments recently made by Ed Asner in an exchange with Pat Buchanan on the May 7th edition of Buchanan & Press...

Buchanan: ?...What is it about these, Harry Belafonte, frankly, and Danny Glover that they can attack the American government and defend a guy (Castro) who would basically put him in prison for doing what they do here in the United States??

Asner: ?Well, they may well be put in prison here for those, for the support they?re giving to Castro, the way things are going in this country. I am opposed to capital punishment by any country, by any persons. I disapprove of Mr. Castro?s executing. I understand that the trial was very fair, that the death penalty is exercised in Cuba and therefore, by Cuban standards, the trial was fair and judicious even though I abhor the death penalty.?

Buchanan: ?I want you to name individuals in this country who have made political statements criticizing President Bush who have been put into a penitentiary for five, ten, or twenty-five years like these dissidents who criticized Castro were put into prison. And is this not a real slander on your own country to suggest that it behaves in the same manner as Fidel Castro??

Asner: ?Uh, my country is much more fortunate so it can?t, it doesn?t have to afford the excesses that Fidel Castro has to resort to by constantly being embargoed by the United States.?

Buchanan: ?Why does he have to do this? Why does he have to do it??

Asner: ?Why does he have to do it? Because he feels the imminent threat of the Bush administration. I don?t regard the Bush administration as being representative of my country.?

A bit later Buchanan pointed out: ?He has persecuted his own people, he has denied them free elections for 40 years. He?s an unelected dictator who puts people in prison on his own whim. What is the infatuation??

Asner interjected: ?We didn?t have a free election in 2002.?

Here's a guy who's angry about executions in the US where the criminals get appeal after appeal and trial after trial -- but Castro, who can sentence men to death at a whim doesn't bother Anser. Asner claims that we may start putting people in prison for disagreeing with Bush and he's obviously unhappy about it, but Castro has done exactly that for decades and Asner in unmoved. Asner says that, "(w)e didn?t have a free election in 2002" which is quite frankly right out of the barking moonbat's conspiracy handbook and yet Asner defends Castro's Cuba, where they really don't have free elections.

Attitudes like this defy all logic and common sense and on some level, the Castro defenders must know it. After all, you don't see people like Asner, Costner, or Stone moving to Cuba do you? So what are their motivations? Are they so full of hatred that they'll simply embrace anybody who will attack Bush &/or America? Could they be so blindly supportive of thoroughly discredited Communist doctrine that they're willing to embrace even a thug like a Castro as long as he tows the right ideological line? Whatever their reasoning (or lack thereof), to excuse a monster like Castro for his abuse of the Cuban people and act as if he's some sort victim of the US is the act of a despicable human being.