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Fidel Castro, Longtime Dictator of Cuba, Has Died

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You certainly implied that very thing in a couple of posts.

Point it out?

Understand, the US didn't contract with mercenaries to fight in Angola. The US offered financial aid and some small arms delivered through proxies. Mercenaries were present for the same reason they are present in any such conflict. Money is available for them to fight. The US did not assist SA in Angola and Namibia. It's true that our efforts were sometimes congruent, but that was simply a matter of convenience and not an endorsement of a more expansive cooperation or an expression of policy.

You know who Frank Wisner is? You ever watched his interview on US involvement in Angola and payments through South Africa and Mobutu in Zaire? Seems he's happy to confess what you are unable as an American to see.


Nice video.

Now watch Chester Crocker, Herman Cohen, Frank Wisner as well as Pik Botha and various Cubans who were there tell me a different story from the one you're peddling.



 
Point it out?



You know who Frank Wisner is? You ever watched his interview on US involvement in Angola and payments through South Africa and Mobutu in Zaire? Seems he's happy to confess what you are unable as an American to see.



Nice video.

Now watch Chester Crocker, Herman Cohen, Frank Wisner as well as Pik Botha and various Cubans who were there tell me a different story from the one you're peddling.

I hope you realize you just made my point. Simultaneous achievement of Cuban withdrawal and Namibian independence was a double victory for US diplomacy. Crocker's achievement, mainly.
US diplomacy and South African battlefield success made this possible.
 
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~ US diplomacy and South African battlefield success made this possible.

I'll say this, you are untouched by facts or the words spoken by people who were actually there.
 
Please specify what words in the videos make any point contrary to mine. FYI: The 1975 video is irrelevant to all important questions.

Pic Botha's meeting with Risquet in Cairo for one. The US funded Savimbi and South Africa to do their fighting, the policy of constructive engagement was a failure (I've already posted that) and finally, one of your own countrymen admitting that Cuba never got the credit it deserved and that it acted the way America likes to pretend it does where other people's national struggles for freedom are concerned.

I sense we will go round the mulberrybush interminably but your own countrymen state in the video that it is not in the American psyche to admit anything good came out of Cuba and you are a perfect example of that by trying to pretend US policy was to ever engage in the end of Apartheid or the freedom of Nelson Mandela. Like I said also about 3-4 pages back - you are a perfect product of an American view of the world and the one thing I do not expect you to do is to step beyond that.
 
Pic Botha's meeting with Risquet in Cairo for one. The US funded Savimbi and South Africa to do their fighting, the policy of constructive engagement was a failure (I've already posted that) and finally, one of your own countrymen admitting that Cuba never got the credit it deserved and that it acted the way America likes to pretend it does where other people's national struggles for freedom are concerned.

I sense we will go round the mulberrybush interminably but your own countrymen state in the video that it is not in the American psyche to admit anything good came out of Cuba and you are a perfect example of that by trying to pretend US policy was to ever engage in the end of Apartheid or the freedom of Nelson Mandela. Like I said also about 3-4 pages back - you are a perfect product of an American view of the world and the one thing I do not expect you to do is to step beyond that.

Your smug self-assurance with an insufficient knowledge base is your undoing. It is fair enough to state that Cuba never got credit they deserved. So what? They did what American diplomacy intended they would do. Do you think Botha met Risquet without talking to us first? Namibian independence and Cuban withdrawal were victories for constructive engagement.
US policy was focused on the end of apartheid from the 1950's forward. Mandela's release from prison in 1990 was due in part to US diplomacy.
 
From 1899 to 1958 the illiteracy rate dropped from 72% (Census of 1899) to 18% (Cuba's Ministry of Education archives) for persons older than 10 years of age, a remarkable achievement. Cubans were not just literate but also educated
Cuba has had one of the most literate populations in Latin America since well before the Castro revolution. Cuba national illiteracy rate was 18% in 1958, ranking third in Latin America. Cuba was the Latin American country with the highest budget for education in 1958, with 23% of the total budget earmarked for this expense. This data is found in the archives of Cuba's Ministry of Education.

The female percentage, in relation to the total student population, was the highest in the Western Hemisphere including the US. According to the United Nations Statistics Division yearbook of 1959, shows Cuba having 3.8 university students per 1,000 inhabitants, well above the Latin America median of 2.6.
 
Your smug self-assurance with an insufficient knowledge base is your undoing. It is fair enough to state that Cuba never got credit they deserved. So what? They did what American diplomacy intended they would do. Do you think Botha met Risquet without talking to us first?

Botha and South Africa received US financial support so why would I doubt that? Now, if you're going to claim Botha did what he did under US instruction then you're living in cloud cuckoo land.

~ Namibian independence and Cuban withdrawal were victories for constructive engagement.

Constructive engagement has already been rubbished as appeasement. One side of US govt gave South Africa carte blanche while another side thought it was engaged in diplomacy. Cuban blood on the ground won independence across other parts of Africa. You going to claim those too?

~ US policy was focused on the end of apartheid from the 1950's forward. Mandela's release from prison in 1990 was due in part to US diplomacy.

You joined reluctantly and towards the end, like many other international conflicts to claim victory when others had sacrificed first. There were a huge range of factors in Mandela's release, among the smallest are US diplomacy and policy.
 
I can't wait to see the response of the righteous souls and the bleeding hearts in this topic to the imminent death of Henry Kissinger or the eventual death of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
 
Point it out?

Post #160, and a couple before that.



You know who Frank Wisner is? You ever watched his interview on US involvement in Angola and payments through South Africa and Mobutu in Zaire? Seems he's happy to confess what you are unable as an American to see.

Nope, don't know Frank, and his view is as important to me as mine is most likely to be to him. That conflict involved quite a few proxies on either side, and was a complicated affair. If you understand what the use of proxies entails, you'll understand that individual events do not always unfold as intended. In effect, you're examining a regional conflict with a microscope. The result of our effort was a victory for the good guys.
 
Post #160, and a couple before that.

1) Post 154 - American mercenaries certainly existed.

2) Post 157 - no mention.


3) Post 160 - American financial assistance going back as far as the 1960's is documented. Mercenaries - I did not mean mercenaries as sent by the US govt. My apology if it came across that way.


4) Post 163 - (one you quoted to start) I was trying to clarify that these mercenaries were not sent by US govt in this instance.


5) Post 193 where I clarified that American mercenaries were not sent by US govt.


~ Nope, don't know Frank, and his view is as important to me as mine is most likely to be to him.

The videos I posted for jack hays included interviews with state dept officials at the time and in the first (I think), around 18 minutes in, one official talks specifically about the US giving money to UNITA through Zaire and South Africa TO hire mercenaries and to aid in the battles in Angola. Other records by people actually there record that financial aid goes back into the 1960's by the CIA and other agencies.

These are American officials going on record, not my badly worded messages on a debate site.

The result of our effort was a victory for the good guys.

Those efforts have been questioned since and the parties responsible for those results are open to question. If I post a thread about Mandela in the US section of Debate Politics, I can guarantee 85% - 90% of American posters will be calling him a terrorist etc so the question of the good guys is not one I often debate with American posters.
 
Botha and South Africa received US financial support so why would I doubt that? Now, if you're going to claim Botha did what he did under US instruction then you're living in cloud cuckoo land.



Constructive engagement has already been rubbished as appeasement. One side of US govt gave South Africa carte blanche while another side thought it was engaged in diplomacy. Cuban blood on the ground won independence across other parts of Africa. You going to claim those too?



You joined reluctantly and towards the end, like many other international conflicts to claim victory when others had sacrificed first. There were a huge range of factors in Mandela's release, among the smallest are US diplomacy and policy.

Botha's approach was part of a US-orchestrated scenario. No one gave South Africa carte blanche.
It is a charitable assessment to suggest the Cubans achieved even a draw in Angola. Cuban blood on the ground elsewhere? That's a laugher. You mean like being on both sides of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war? Support for the tyrannical Derg in Ethiopia? Mozambique?
The principal political problem for the US in South Africa was the destruction of the mixed race parties and the white liberal parties who were the natural partners of the US. Nonetheless, there was a long series of US initiatives to engage the government of South Africa on the apartheid question.
 
Botha's approach was part of a US-orchestrated scenario. No one gave South Africa carte blanche.
It is a charitable assessment to suggest the Cubans achieved even a draw in Angola. Cuban blood on the ground elsewhere? That's a laugher. You mean like being on both sides of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war? Support for the tyrannical Derg in Ethiopia? Mozambique?
The principal political problem for the US in South Africa was the destruction of the mixed race parties and the white liberal parties who were the natural partners of the US. Nonetheless, there was a long series of US initiatives to engage the government of South Africa on the apartheid question.

I love your version of history. It's only going to wash in America I'm afraid.

Fidel Castro: How Cuban leader changed Southern Africa - BBC News

I was in Washington at that time and managed to get a briefing on Angola at the Pentagon. I was shown a satellite photograph that showed Cuban and East German airforce bases in southern Angola, some south of Cuito Cuanavale.
I asked if the South Africans had seen them yet.
"They will find out soon enough," came the reply.
At that extraordinary moment I realised that the world had changed.
The Americans had decided that since the Soviet Union was no longer the big threat in the region, the real enemy of peace in southern Africa was the racism of South Africa.
The man whose decision to go to war in Angola had triggered this moment was Fidel Castro.

Cue "American policy" blah blah. Nothing outside the US supports your claims, the videos I linked don't support you. I bet you weren't even there.
 
I love your version of history. It's only going to wash in America I'm afraid.

Fidel Castro: How Cuban leader changed Southern Africa - BBC News



Cue "American policy" blah blah. Nothing outside the US supports your claims, the videos I linked don't support you. I bet you weren't even there.

You don't seem to realize that your posts and your links make my point. You also don't seem to know about Ethiopia and Eritrea, or Mozambique. History will not be kind to Castro or his role in Africa.
Except for eleven months 1980-81 I was in Africa continuously 1978-88. I spent much of my time working on southern African issues. That's why I know this topic quite a bit better than you.
 
1) Post 154 - American mercenaries certainly existed.

2) Post 157 - no mention.


3) Post 160 - American financial assistance going back as far as the 1960's is documented. Mercenaries - I did not mean mercenaries as sent by the US govt. My apology if it came across that way.


4) Post 163 - (one you quoted to start) I was trying to clarify that these mercenaries were not sent by US govt in this instance.


5) Post 193 where I clarified that American mercenaries were not sent by US govt.

I said you implied it, just as you are still implying above that American mercenaries were sanctioned by the US government. They were not.


The videos I posted for jack hays included interviews with state dept officials at the time and in the first (I think), around 18 minutes in, one official talks specifically about the US giving money to UNITA through Zaire and South Africa TO hire mercenaries and to aid in the battles in Angola. Other records by people actually there record that financial aid goes back into the 1960's by the CIA and other agencies.

These are American officials going on record, not my badly worded messages on a debate site.

The CIA would never talk about any such thing, and I seriously doubt any such record of payments exists. I think what you have there is hearsay and suspicions.


Those efforts have been questioned since and the parties responsible for those results are open to question. If I post a thread about Mandela in the US section of Debate Politics, I can guarantee 85% - 90% of American posters will be calling him a terrorist etc so the question of the good guys is not one I often debate with American posters.

I'll grant you that events appear differently depending on the point from which you view them. From the US perspective, several objectives were achieved.
 
Batista killed a lot more people in a much shorter timeframe, along with huge wealth inequality and little to no health and education for the poor.

Castro was a dictator, but by any conceivable metric, he was an improvement on what had been before him.
There is a pattern from the Castroit regime to inflate the percentage of illiterates prior to 1959, by using the illiteracy rate of the 1953 census of 23.6%. Fidel Castro on December 17, 1960, in the CMQ-TV program "Meet the Press" affirmed that “The illiteracy rate in our country is 37.5%.” In the Central Report to the First Congress of the Party in 1975, Fidel said that “on the date of the Moncada (1953), 23.6% of the population over 10 years was illiterate.” In spite of what Fidel said, the document "V Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1997, referring to the period before 1959 says “a country with more than 40 per cent of illiterates.” Dirty bastards liars.
 
I said you implied it, just as you are still implying above that American mercenaries were sanctioned by the US government. They were not.




The CIA would never talk about any such thing, and I seriously doubt any such record of payments exists. I think what you have there is hearsay and suspicions.




I'll grant you that events appear differently depending on the point from which you view them. From the US perspective, several objectives were achieved.

My original stance was as I meant however finding the video and websites where discussion of payments and what the money was for has clarified my position. You are correct now in what I think but wrong on what you thought I was previously saying.

And thanks for seeing that the point of view has a huge impact on how things are seen with regard to US policy and achievements in Africa.

You don't seem to realize that your posts and your links make my point. You also don't seem to know about Ethiopia and Eritrea, or Mozambique. History will not be kind to Castro or his role in Africa.
Except for eleven months 1980-81 I was in Africa continuously 1978-88. I spent much of my time working on southern African issues. That's why I know this topic quite a bit better than you.

See my previous comments and no, just because I did not widen discussion to Mozambique (where I once lived) or Ethiopia and Eritrea does not mean I don't know about them. :doh

I'm just tired of repeating what you don't know and what your lack of experience and point of view cannot allow you to see.
 
My original stance was as I meant however finding the video and websites where discussion of payments and what the money was for has clarified my position. You are correct now in what I think but wrong on what you thought I was previously saying.

And thanks for seeing that the point of view has a huge impact on how things are seen with regard to US policy and achievements in Africa.

I didn't arrive in Africa until 1984. I have to defer to Jack for insight into events before that time to a large extent. I simply know the policy and the events generally speaking before I got there. It was a complicated conflict involving a surprising number of countries, and from my perspective, a person had to be deeply involved to have sufficient understanding of all that transpired, and why.
 
I'm consistently baffled by those who abuse statistics. Literacy rate improved between 1900 and today? WOW! I didn't think that possible. Medical care has improved since the 60's? That's crazy!
 
I didn't arrive in Africa until 1984.

Where did you go?

~ It was a complicated conflict involving a surprising number of countries, and from my perspective, a person had to be deeply involved to have sufficient understanding of all that transpired, and why.

Agreed. My father was in the British Foreign Office in India (the Raj) and many parts of Africa where he met my mother and where I was born. Fair to say, he had a pretty good insight as did my mother from their two different vantage points of politics and life in Southern and Central Eastern Africa.

That's not counting my life separately in many different African countries.
 
See my previous comments and no, just because I did not widen discussion to Mozambique (where I once lived) or Ethiopia and Eritrea does not mean I don't know about them. :doh

I'm just tired of repeating what you don't know and what your lack of experience and point of view cannot allow you to see.

Your ideology is what hinders your understanding. If you had actually worked on these problems as I did, you would have learned a more practical view. I'm especially struck by your perception of what the Americans in your videos are saying. I'm sure they would be surprised by your claims.
 
~ I'm sure they would be surprised by your claims.

So they didn't really say that Cuba made a huge difference and deserved more credit for its actions and that payments were made to support anti communist forces as part of US policy.

No, that's just a figment of mine and the BBC programme maker's minds.
 
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