A Sad Day for Fidel Castro?

By Servando González
Copyright © 2001 by Servando González. All rights reserved.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, was a very sad day for Fidel Castro.

In his book about the 1989 events culminating with the death by firing squad of Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa and Col. Antonio de la Guardia, Cuban writer Norberto Fuentes, at some time very close to the highest levels of the Castro government, mentions an old dream of Fidel Castro: to be the first to drop bombs in the U.S. territory so the Yankees (Castro calls all Americans "Yankees") will suffer in their own home the same he suffered when Batista's planes were bombing he and his men in the Sierra Maestra.

Castro's words were a direct reference to a short letter Castro sent in June, 1958 (that is, six months before the triumph of his revolution) to Celia Sánchez, his secretary in the Sierra Maestra mountains. The letter was prompted by a rocket attack by American-built jet fighters of Batista's air force on the house of Mario Sariol, a mountain villager who had collaborated with Castro's Rebel Army.

Castro wrote:

Sierra Maestra
June 5 - 58

Celia: After seeing the rockets they shot at
Mario's house, I've sworn that the Americans
are going to pay dearly for what they are doing.
When this war is over, a much wider and big-
ger war will begin for me, the war I am going
to wage against them. I realize that that is
going to be my true destiny.
Fidel

But it will be a mistake to believe that the bombing of a farmer's home by Batista's planes using American-made rockets is the true cause for Castro's deep hatred for Americans. There is evidence that Castro does not care much for anybody except himself, less for some obscure, poor farmer in the Sierra Maestra. Therefore, there should be more profound reasons for the irrational, inexhaustible hatred he feels for the United States and its people. Anyway, whatever is the source of Castro's hatred for the American people, the evidence shows that most of his actions during his long political career have been directed to accomplish what he believes is his true destiny.

During the Cuban missile crisis, Castro did his best to push the Soviet Union and the United States into a nuclear Armageddon. He not only tried to convince Khruschev to fire the missiles, but was also planning to blow up several portions of Manhattan to make the Americans believe that they were under a nuclear attack and provoke them to retaliate with a nuclear salvo against the Soviet Union. When everything failed, the resourceful Fidel shot down an American U- 2 plane over Cuba, to push the U.S. into invading the island and kill Soviet soldiers as a way to force Khruschev's arm into a nuclear retaliation. After the crisis was over he began a secret project to create his home-made missiles using modified MiG 21 planes.

The Juraguá nuclear plant, which he tried for many years to build near the city of Cienfuegos, was just a cover whose real objective was to produce fissionable material to create nuclear bombs. In 1982 Fidel Castro Díaz-Balart, Castro's son in charge of the nuclear program, told an associate that they were very close to acquiring the necessary knowledge to produce a nuclear weapon. The facilities were also involved in research on nerve gases and bacteriological weapons that could be delivered to the U.S. by different ways. But Castro's son failed to deliver the nuclear goods, and Castro fired him.

After his missile development projects ended in failure, Castro's nuclear dream was postponed, but not forgotten. In 1989 General Rafael del Pino Díaz, the highest ranking Cuban defector, said that at the time of the Grenada operation in 1983, Castro ordered Cuban MiG 23 pilots to program their computers to attack targets in Florida. Among the selected targets was the Turkey Point nuclear plant, which Castro said had the potential of producing a nuclear disaster larger than Chernobyl. According to Gen. del Pino, Castro's words were: "I don't have nuclear bombs, but I can produce a nuclear explosion." The plan included the possibility of suicide attacks, crashing Cuban planes against American nuclear plants and targets in Washington D.C.

When Castro realized that making missiles or nuclear bombs was not an easy task, he began developing bacteriological weapons--the poor man's nuclear weapons. In his book Biohazard, Ken Alibek, who was first deputy director of the Soviet Union's main bioweapons directorate before defecting to the U.S. in 1992, wrote that he is convinced that Castro is developing bacteriological weapons. Several observers believe Castro was sending a clear signal to the United States when in January 28, 1998, his speech carried the threat, "This lamb cannot ever be devoured, neither with airplanes, nor with smart bombs, because this lamb has more intelligence than you and in its blood there is and always will be poison for you!"

Apparently, however, Fidel's good Arab friends, showing a total lack of respect and consideration for the Cuban tyrant, beat him to it. It seems that Castro has mellowed with age, and the Arab terrorists took the initiative and won the big honor of being the first to drop bombs in the United States. Knowing the hatred Castro has always felt for America and the Americans, one may safely surmise that last Tuesday Castro had a very sad day. Now he will die some day without being remembered as the one who first attacked the Americans in their own soil.

Or maybe not.

Since last year Castro has been frantically working in creating a strong alliance of anti-American Muslim countries. Since then, visits to Cuba of Muslim leaders of all levels, as well as visits of members of the Castroist government to anti-American Muslim countries, have increased considerably. Last July, Hojjatoleslam Hajj Seyed Hassan Khomeini, grandson of Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini, visited Cuba for the celebration of the triumph of Fidel's revolution. On May of this year Castro made a long trip visiting several anti-American Muslim countries, among them Algeria, Iran, Malaysia, Qatar, Syria and Libya.

In Algeria, Castro was received by Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. One source close to the Cuban delegation commented privately that the official communiqués gave the impression that more things were actually discussed in the exchanges with "an old friend of many revolutionary conspiracies" than it were reported in the press. Political analysts in Havana mentioned the possibility that, despite what was said publicly in Algiers, the two leaders examined topics related not only to the Cuban interest in strengthening the Non-Aligned Movement and the so-called Group of 77, as the official Cuban press affirmed in evaluating the tour, but also about how to stop the worldwide spread of United States influence.

Upon his arrival in Iran, the second stage of his journey, Castro was prodigal in praising Iranian Islamism. Afterwards, he made an emphatic declaration: "I have not come to speak of trade, but of politics and of culture." Observers noted attentively an affirmation by the president Mohammed Jatami: "The cooperation between Iran and Cuba will be able to confront the hegemony and the injustice of the great arrogance (of the United States)." One of the existing Cuban-Iranian cooperation agreements refers to the area of scientific investigation and vaccine production--a common cover for producing bacteriological warfare agents--in a high-technology laboratory now nearing completion in Iran.

In Qatar, Castro was received by the Sheik Hamad bin Kalifa Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, who had visited Cuba last September. From Qatar Castro flew to Damascus, where he met Sirian leader Bashar Al-Hassad. During his visit, Castro again publicly praised the importance of Islamism in the modern world. In his visit to Libya, the next step of his trip, Castro was received by Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, who gave his friend Fidel a tour of the house the evil Americans bombarded in 1986.

Before visiting Qatar, however, Castro made a stop in Quala Lumpur, Malaysia, to pay a visit to his friend Mahatir Mohamad, whom he praised as an "excellent leader." During his visit to Malaysia, Castro repeated his new-coined mantra that he is a "great admirer of [the Islamic] religion." In Kuala Lumpur Castro and his large entourage visited the famous Petronas twin towers. With its 88 floors, the Petronas twin towers are considered the tallest buildings in the world. During his long visit to the tower, Castro said that he "felt closer to heaven." However, after the attack on the World Trade Center's twins towers last Tuesday, undoubtedly made by Islamic anti-American fanatics, Castro's visit to the Petronas twin towers takes a totally different meaning.

The engineers who built the World Trade Center were shocked by the way the towers collapsed. They had calculated that the WTC towers would have been able to withstand a big commercial plane crashing against them. But, just a few minutes after the suicide planes crashed against the towers, they collapsed like card castles. Undoubtedly, the suicide bombers were familiar with the structure of the buildings, and knew exactly where to crash their planes to cause maximum structural damage. Short of a computer simulation model, only a close inspection of the WTC towers, or to a building with similar characteristics, would have allowed them to discover the weak points in the building's structure. Did Fidel Castro bring with him some of his highly trained army demolition engineers to study the structure of the Petronas towers? Did he pass the information on to the men who perpetrated the attack to the WTC? These are questions that should be investigated.

During a five-hour speech on the occasion of commemorating the 40th anniversary of his revolution, Castro brought up again the subject of a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Talking about some anti-Castro organizations in the U.S., Castro claimed, in a typical freudian projection mechanism, that they "dream about a war confrontation" between Cuba and the U.S., adding that "their hatred is such, that they would like to see our motherland suffering a demolishing genocidal attack similar to the one suffered by the Serbian people."

More recently, National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón, one of the non-entities Castro surrounds himself with, declared in a lengthy proclamation that "the economic blockade imposed by the United States of America on Cuba constitutes an act of genocide." Likewise, the word "genocide" keeps popping up in Castro's speeches in his references to the U.S.

One must keep in mind that the monster next door has an irrational hatred for the United States. Following Castro's reasoning one can arrive at the conclusion that, if it were true as he claims, that the U.S. has been committing genocidal actions against Cuba, then Castro would be morally justified to commit genocidal actions against the U.S. It seems that, as it happens all the time, Castro's twisted mind has found a good excuse to justify his evil plans.

According to Norberto Fuentes, Castro's plans for a Cuban military attack on the U.S. territory were laid down a long time ago and are still operative. Fuentes tells how Carlos Aldana, at the time Castro's main ideologue, had been commissioned to write down the ethical principles justifying a devastating Cuban attack on the U.S territory. Recent information obtained from the "Wasp Network," a net of Cuban spies captured in Florida, indicate that Castro is still actively planning the destruction of America.

I have always compared Fidel Castro to Adolf Hitler. Some people, however, may think that this is not only unfair, but far-fetched. Granted, the human cost of Hitler's madness was close to forty million dead, while Castro has been directly responsible for the killing of less than fifty thousand. But the reasoning is fallacious. In the first place, evil cannot be measured by the number of deaths alone. Some American snipers in Vietnam killed more people than Jeffrey Dahmer, but they cannot be properly called evil while Dahmer evidently was. Secondly, and this is even more important, one must keep in mind that while Hitler is dead Castro is still alive, and he does not mind how many have to die, so long as he takes revenge against the world. He still has the desire, the capability, and the means to cause mayhem and destruction in the United States on a magnitude never seen before in the history of this country, and such becoming one of the greatest mass murderers in modern history.

In a fascinating book about Adolf Hitler, George Victor arrived at a controversial conclusion:

Three blunders by Hitler are often cited as causing Germany's defeat--letting the British forces escape Dunkirk, not invading England, and invading the Soviet Union. These decisions were not blunders, however, for Hitler's goals were not what they seemed. The decisions were calculated risks taken to further a secret goal--the launching of the Holocaust--which was more important to Hitler than military victory. Although they led to disaster, from his viewpoint they were right decisions, because they enabled him to carry out the Holocaust. His conduct of the war, costing forty million lives, is extreme when viewed as an event in geopolitics and militarism. But when understood as a cover for getting rid of Europe's Jews, it is even more chilling.

I fully agree with Victor. In the same fashion, Castro's secret goal has always been the destruction of the United States. Most of his political and military actions have been a cover for the consummation of his ultimate dream: getting rid of the Americans--Castro's Jews.

Castro believes that Americans are an infectious plague that must be eradicated from the face of the earth in order to save Gaia from its main polluters. Contrary to his claims, Castro not only hates the U.S. government, but the American people as well, including (or perhaps particularly) the many Americans who love and support him. His efforts to incite Khrushchev into firing nuclear missiles against the United States in 1962 is proof of this visceral hatred. Therefore, it makes sense that, as he tried to do during the Cuban missile crisis, he is willing to sacrifice the existence of the Cuban nation itself to reach his ultimate goal of purification of Gaia by the destruction of the American people.

Americans should rest assured that Castro is no small enemy. Testifying before a House Committee in June, 1965, Fidel's older sister, Juana Castro Ruz, said that "Fidel's feelings of hatred for this country cannot even be imagined by Americans. His intention, his obsession to destroy the U.S. is one of his main interests and objectives." Herbert Matthews, who knew Castro well, once said, "He is the most dangerous enemy that the United States has ever had in the Western Hemisphere."

During an unusual interview on Cuban tv in the evening of January 4, 2001, Raúl Castro advised the American "imperialists" that it would be better for them to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba while Fidel is still alive than in the future. Most analysts of Cuban politics were totally confused about the meaning of Raúl's words. Why does he believe that it would be easier to normalize relations now than after Fidel's death? Apparently Castro is concerned that he is getting old and perhaps may die before seeing the United States destroyed and humiliated.

As I have mentioned above, on several occasions Fidel Castro has referred to the U.S. embargo on Cuba as a genocidal action, and he compared it to noiseless atom bombs. Therefore, in his mind he has all the justification he needs to retaliate in kind. Under this light Raúl's words could be interpreted not as an advice, but as an ultimatum. Either the U.S. unconditionally stops the embargo and normalizes relations with the Castro government while Fidel is still alive, or else. Perhaps Castro sees himself as a Samson, and wants to bring down the temple burying himself along with the Philistines in the ruins of an Armageddon. That many Cuban people will die does not matter to him. If he can hurt the U.S. badly he will be covered in glory. If he can hurt America he will be the ultimate winner. Dead or alive, he would have won the final battle against America.

Now, is the U.S. government going to investigate the possibility that Castro is connected to last Tuesday's tragic events? I suggest that you don't hold your breath. For reasons which I don't understand, Fidel Castro has proved to be an untouchable to the American government. Therefore, the U.S. government is not going to investigate the Castro connection to the WTC attack, the same way it never investigated the Castro connection to the Kennedy assassination despite the fact that most of the incriminating evidence pointed to Castro. Further proof of it is that, despite overwhelming evidence that Castro is producing bacteriological warfare agents and that he is willing to use them to attack the United States, Secretary of State Colin Powell recently made a statement claiming that Castro is "no longer the threat he was." Powell's words either reflect his total ignorance on the subject or shows that he has privileged secret information about Fidel Castro he does not want to share with the rest of us.

President Bush declared that the U.S. government is going to go not only after the terrorists but after the countries who harbor them. Well, since he grabbed power in Cuba in 1959 with the help of the American government and media, Fidel Castro has been harboring all types of anti-American terrorists. For forty long years, Castro has been openly promoting anti-American guerrilla subversion in Latin America and terrorism in the U.S. and Europe.

Since the beginning of this year, both Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl have been making cryptical references to the massive use of "mines" against the U.S. Moreover, there is evidence that Castro has plans to cause heavy damage to the U.S. by resorting to "asymmetric war," a new military term originating in technology and cybernetics. According to military specialists, asymmetric war is a very effective military response of an inferior force against the military and civil infrastructures of a superior force. Asymmetric war is not fought in the traditional battlefields, but against computer networks in commercial aviation, banks, power grids, telephones and transportation, and using weapons like bio-terrorism. Sources in Cuba report that Castro has been preparing for many years to wage asymmetric war, and has all the necessary human and technical means to do it. Testifying last May to a senatorial subcommittee, Thomas Wilson, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, expressed his belief that Cuba is well equipped to wage a technological war attacking the U.S. computer networks. However, as we will see, no serious action will be taken by the U.S. government to punish or even investigate Castro for his aggressive activities against the American people.

The attitude of the American government vis-à-vis Castro, through a long parade of Republican and Democrat administrations, shows that, for reasons that we ignore, our leaders simply don't want to see what cannot be more evident. I guess that they must have good reasons for doing this.

In 1961, Senator J. William Fulbright wrote a memo to President Kennedy which included a phrase that became famous, "The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh, but it is not a dagger in the heart." 40 years later, however, there are strong reasons to believe that the Castro regime is not a thorn in the flesh, but a poisonous dagger pointing to the heart of the United States and its people. Fidel Castro is old, but he is not finished yet, and it is too early to tell his whole story. In 1961 Herbert Matthews called him "a prophet of doom." He was right. As long as he is alive and in power in Cuba he will persist in his Armageddon dreams. Seemingly his grandiose plan is to go to the trash can of history with a big bang. As Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante pointed out quoting an old Chinese proverb, "the most dangerous part of the dragon is its tail."

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Servando González is a Cuban-born American writer and intelligence analyst. His book The Secret Fidel Castro: Deconstructing the Symbol, will be released this Fall.

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