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THE LITTLE TIN SOLDIER MARCHES ON

This is what I cannot understand, why those who oppose Castro are almost reverent in their attitude when they write about him. What good has he ever done do for Cuba? His plans from the very beginning were for subjugation of the people to his Will and his Will alone. Communism, yes, but his idea and form and notions of it, nothing more than that. He intended to betray his fellow revolutionaries and the Cuban people from the very beginning.

They write about him in a scholarly manner, when he has been at war with all of them for 44 years, at war with the free press and the idea of a free people.

He wasn't a great tactician and conquering General like Napoleon; it was a guerilla war and a little bit of wearisome fighting in the mountains and that was it. Yet, he maintains the glorious image of a martial man, as if he was a genuine General, by the continual appearances wearing his childish camouflage suit 44 years after all fighting had ceased! He's still no more than a little boy, an international buffoon playing with his toy soldiers! He is the perfect epitomy of The King Who Had No Clothes, a modern-day fable, no more, no less.

When his men came out of the mountains, Batista had already fled the country at U.S. insistence. The nation was tired of the corruption that their former dictator had brought upon them, and they looked to Fidel Castro as a saviour, not expecting a devil and a deceitful liar in disguise. They exchanged one dictator for one who was far, far worse. At least under Juan Batista they had a modicum of freedom, while under Castro they lost everything they owned and ended up without any freedoms at all.

He fights best when his opponents are blind men, and women, and librarians, and those too weak and helpless to fight back. Even a comparison of him to the Cowardly Lion would be leagues above what he actually is, just a Cucaracha running around a small island in a phony uniform.

It's the perfect comedy for a half hour TV show, if it wasn't a true story. Only one of TV's inane laughter tracks could make it funny; it's a real tear-jerker when you think of all the misery he has brought to the Cuban nation and a formerly vibrant country.

Strip him of his camouflage and imagine him standing there in front of you, naked, a bearded old man, a noisome old fart, spouting and sputtering a meaningless gibberish, while in the background looms the decaying buildings and failing Cuban nation, the result of one man's dreams that were impossible to realize from the beginning, and one man's intransigence that forestalled any change, and one man's refusal to listen to other, more experienced voices.

This, mind you, is Steven Spielberg's genius with whom he spent the most memorable hours of his life, Oliver Stone's hero with human qualities, Harry Belafonte's Christ-like figure, Hollywood's Knight of the Golden Prune, Al Glover's Saint Fidelito! There he stands, a naked bearded old man in the center of Havana, with but a single gift that has enabled him to mesmerize his followers and a host of celebrities with his main attribute, one commonly known as Diarrhea of the Mouth.