From KELOLAND comes a story from democrat lefty former US Senator James Abourezk about how he was friends with evil, murdering communist dictator Fidel Castro who died this past week:
Former South Dakota U.S Senator Jim Abourezk thinks back to the year 1975 when he met Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
And…
The two formed a close bond through a six hour conversation focused on normalizing relations between Cuba and the US.
And..
His recent death has prompted a variety of mixed emotions around the world. For some, joy, yet for Abourezk, sorrow.
“I feel very sad because I considered Fidel a friend of mine,” Abourezk said.
And..
While he admits he doesn’t agree with every decision Castro made, Abourezk says he’ll continue to honor his legacy.
He’ll continue to honor his legacy? Which parts? The forced labor camps? Or Castro’s firing squads? Abourezk wanting to honor his legacy comes off as a sick joke.
A love of evil, murdering communist dictators must have been infectious around the Abourezk office, because if you recall, one of his staffers and her husband treasonously spied for Castro, and were caught, tried, and convicted in recent years:
The Washington Post reports Saturday morning that Walter Myers and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers pleaded guilty in federal court Friday “that they spied for Cuba over the past three decades, receiving coded instructions over a shortwave radio and passing along information to intelligence operatives in ‘dead drops’ and ‘hand to hand’ passes.” (See the full story by reporter Del Quinten Weber at www.washingtonpost.com.) Myers, age 72, gets life in prison, his wife, age 71, six to seven-plus years. The story says they agreed to become spies for Cuba while living in South Dakota.
According to a long piece reported by Toby Harnden and published earlier this fall by Washingtonian magazine, the couple met in Washington, D.C., while she worked on the staff of then-U.S. Sen. Jim Abourezk, a Democrat from South Dakota.
And…
Harnden wrote that she was working on Abourezk’s staff in Washington, D.C., within two years, the marriage dissolved. While there, she met Myers. The couple in turn met their initial Cuban contact at a gathering at the home of Wendy Greider, who was Abourezk’s staff member for foreign affairs.
And…
Myers took his first trip to Cuba in January 1979, staying about two weeks. A Cuban operative later traveled to Pierre and secured their agreement to spy for Cuba when they returned to Washington, according to Harnden’s story.
Somehow, reading Abourezk’s statements this weekend, none of it comes as a shock.
Heaping praise on a man who is responsible for killing between 10,000 to 100,000 people is a pretty shameful thing to do. And it’s compounded by the fact that this association helped lure a member of Abourezk’s staff and her husband to betray their country.
Abourezk wants to turn a blind eye and honor the legacy of a very bad man who killed tens of thousands of his people – including several Americans along the way?
Let history judge them both. I doubt it will do so kindly.
(BTW, I learned that Myers, the husband of the Abourezk staffer is currently incarcerated at the federal ADX Florence supermax facility in Colorado. And deservedly so.)
Frequently underemphasized or lost altogether in the whole dumb “anti-colonialist hero!” trope is that turd Castro traded one shitty imperialist power’s influence for another even shittier power’s chokehold. Screw much of the US’ garbage foreign policy wrt central america during the cold war, but also screw him and the rose-tinted glasses wearing people that apologize for him.
I feel like there was a time when mainstream leftists weren’t so damn lazy and that their entire IR/foreign policy framework was something other than *smug* “but the US did ___!”, but here we are.