Castro wanted nuclear war [UPDATED]

In my post about Fidel Castro’s death I wrote: “It has never been clear to me whether Castro asked the Soviets for missiles or whether the Soviets initiated the idea and Castro agreed (as the New York Times says).” But wherever that idea originated, the evidence is that Castro advocated striking the U.S. with Soviet nukes. In other words, he called for thermonuclear war.

Here, via Andrew Stuttaford, is an excerpt from a letter Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev sent to Castro after the Cuban missile crisis:

In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to carry out a nuclear strike against the enemy’s territory. Naturally you understand where that would lead us. It would not be a simple strike, but the start of a thermonuclear world war.

Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, I find your proposal to be wrong, even though I understand your reasons. We have lived through a very grave moment, a global thermonuclear war could have broken out. Of course the United States would have suffered enormous losses, but the Soviet Union and the whole socialist bloc would have also suffered greatly.

It is even difficult to say how things would have ended for the Cuban people. First of all, Cuba would have burned in the fires of war. Without a doubt the Cuban people would have fought courageously but, also without a doubt, the Cuban people would have perished heroically.

We struggle against imperialism, not in order to die, but to draw on all of our potential, to lose as little as possible, and later to win more, so as to be a victor and make communism triumph.

Thus, as Stuttaford concludes:

Castro, the internationalist, mourned by a pope, presidents and the leadership of an ‘ever closer Europe’, wanted to start a nuclear war. Castro, the patriot, was willing to consign his own country to the flames.

The hard left’s affinity for Castro demonstrates that it shares the dictator’s hatred of America. I assume it does not share his desire to destroy America at any cost, but sometimes you have to wonder.

UPDATE: Che Guevara, hero to a whole new generation of leftist imbeciles, had this to say about the Cuban missile crisis:

Here is the electrifying example of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the move with our own voice.

Guevara’s words can perhaps be dismissed as rhetoric after the fact. However, it’s clear from Khrushchev’s letter that Castro advocated a nuclear strike on October 27, 1962, before crisis had been resolved.

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