The overwhelming support for the current anti-terrorist military campaign that the U.S. is receiving from the international community as well as the American people, including Arab Americans, contrasts with the feelings and actions of the forces of darkness that support anti-American terrorism.

The odd man out in our hemisphere is Castro. He is the most decrepit, recalcitrant and criminal of all tyrants in the history of the Americas. Without doubt, Castro has been public enemy # 1 of the U.S. for a long time. These are not just unsupported words, since the 1940s his anti-American record was made very clear by his words and his actions.

He was a rabid U.S. hater even before the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations clashed with his plans to convert Cuba into his absolute domain. He joined the herd of terrorist fanatics long ago. And now, in conjunction with them, still insists on blasting the U.S.

The record shows that this strident anti-American tyrant, in October 1962, asked Soviet Prime Minister Khrushchev to launch an atomic attack against the U.S. – never mind the millions of Americans, Cubans, Russians and other nationality deaths that would have resulted from such irrational action.

However, the U.S. media and his reactionary unconditional supporters in the U.S., like the former Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana during the Carter administration, Wayne S. Smith, herald him for expressing his "sincerest condolences to the American people" for the brutal terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which afforded him lots of kind press at an emotional time. Castro’s execution and death record shows he doesn’t even care about the lives of Cubans, much less for the Americans he berates with gusto at every opportunity. What credibility can we afford to Castro or his American apologists and supporters?

After President Bush announced his resolve - responding to the desire of the American people - to put an end to the terrorist’s scourge and made statements attacking all countries harboring such criminals, Castro (knowing of his decades of involvement with terrorism) got worried. So, he placed his military on high alert in Cuba. In his speech of September 22, he clearly warned the Bush administration not to attack Cuba.

Afterwards, the latest twist in his scheme to deviate attention from his terrorist activities while generating hatred toward Cuban Americans, he unleashed a campaign of character assassination against them by accusing the Miami community of being "terrorists."

This smear campaign immediately found fertile ground in the U.S. media as demonstrated by the September 25, 2001 article in The Washington Post, followed by others of the same tenor in the Chicago Tribune and even in reports by the Associated Press, among others. This campaign was also echoed in two articles by the long-time, loyal pro-Castroite, Wayne S. Smith. The articles follow Castro’s new strategy and are simply based on the same propaganda emanating from Cuba.

How can Americans feel any admiration or friendship for a left-wing Fascist tyrant like Castro? After all, it is well documented that Castro’s real heroes were Hitler and Mussolini. Why are the U.S. media and Smith so willing to participate in the distribution of Castro’s misinformation in this time of war?

Castro is also engaged in a campaign to discredit the real meaning and goals of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. For example, Granma, the only newspaper in Cuba and Castro’s mouthpiece, said in the October 8, 2001 editorial The War has Begun, that the war against terrorism that the U.S. is staging in Afghanistan is in reality "against the natives, not against the terrorists. No matter what the pretext is, it is a technological and highly sophisticated war against an illiterate people. It is a war that will favor terrorism because its military operations will encourage retaliatory terrorist activities. A remedy worse that the disease." To describe the U.S. war against terrorism the Granma uses the word "massacre," and the actions of the U.S. as "terrorism by the state," and refers to the American soldiers as "terrorists dressed as freedom fighters."

Granma (Castro) maliciously forecasted that the military campaigns in Afghanistan would expose the U.S. "arrogance and spirit of cultural and racial superiority." Those editorial comments appear to be made in order to incite more terrorist fanatic actions against the U.S. They don’t show any concern for the safety of the American people.

That is why it is very difficult to believe the way Castro is portrayed in the latest article by ally Wayne S. Smith titled Keeping Things in Perspective: Is Cuba a Terrorist Nation?, published on October 11, 2001 at the Center For International Policy’s website (http://ciponline.org/cuba/main/perpectiveonterrorism.htm). According to Smith, the U.S. policy is mainly at fault in relation to Castro and it should be changed. He also says that the U.S. should cooperate with Castro’s Cuba. It is clear to Smith that it is the U.S. that must change unconditionally, not Castro.

This article is based, as usual for Smith, on Castro’s words and versions of events, and on the assumption that Castro does not lie. However, at the very beginning, Castro categorically stated to The New York Times’ Herbert Matthews in the Sierra Maestra Mountains in 1957 and other American newsreels of that era, as well as in a filmed press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. in 1959 that he was "not a communist." What he did afterward proved beyond any reasonable doubt that he was a liar. He has since found that the technique continues to serve him well.

When we examine the motivations for this deceptive article, we must not overlook the history of Smith’s friendship with the tyrant of Cuba. While Smith was Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, roughly from 1977 to 1982, Castro used to pick him up in his Jeep to go fishing together, and they talked and talked. Smith genuinely seems to like him. Apparently it is immaterial to Smith that before and during his tenure at the U.S. Interests Section that his friend executed and assassinated some 26 U.S. citizens. To date, the toll amounts to 30 - Smith has no comment about that. The names of all U.S. citizens executed and assassinated by Castro’s Cuba are well documented by Dr. Armando Lago.

In spite of the murdering of his fellow U.S. citizens, Smith travels to visit Castro with regularity and brings guests to Havana. He is part of the show-and-tell effort of the "accomplishments" of Castro’s revolution. (Those "accomplishments" are well documented to be fallacious.) The outcome of these trips is to win more experts and defenders of Castro’s paradise as well as to bring businessmen to keep his friend afloat in detriment of the oppressed Cuban people. A very "humanitarian" mission indeed.

Of note is the long list of Smith’s apologetic articles about Castro and his constant derogatory labeling of Cuban Americans. He, an exponent of the left-wing fringe views, always manages to add a negative connotation, for example, "right-wing fringe," "virulently anti-Castro," "fiercely anti-Communist," "hard-line exiles," "strident anti-Castroite," "Miami Mafia" and other epithets.

Obviously Smith is fiercely pro-Castro. But Castro claims to be a communist. Does it follow that Smith is fiercely pro-Communist, too?

But Smith, whatever he is, made a profitable career as a "Cuba Expert" on radio and television, where he does not miss a single chance to continue his negative labeling of Cuban Americans. That is why, here, for this one article, I have purposely used similar labels attached to his persona.

Smith, apparently an extremist who pretends not to represent "a single special-interest group" in the U.S. (but, could it be Castro?), made some recommendations at the end of his latest article. Among them, "It [U.S.] should also remove Cuba from the list of terrorist nations and move toward a new and more cooperative relationship with the Cuban government. And in the process, it should take a clear and uncompromising stand against terrorism emanating from extremist exiles in Miami."

To stress Castro’s credibility for the uninformed reader, the far-left Smith quotes Castro saying Cuba is "opposed to terrorism but also opposed to war." This is the quote of the millenium. For decades, the evidence to the contrary is quite convincing. Castro has been involved with terrorist groups from the Puerto Rican Macheteros and other groups in Latin America, Spain, Ireland, Africa to the most violent ones in the Middle East.

And in relation to wars, Castro has been involved in all the wars of "liberation" in Latin America, Africa (where he sent hundreds of thousands of Cuban soldiers and introduced bacteriological arms to kill blacks) and the Middle East. Blinded by his fanaticism, Smith ignores all the records in order to advance Castro’s agenda of misinforming the American people in his attempt to turn public opinion in his favor.

If you do not have a solid background or access to hard facts, after reading Smith’s propaganda article you are left with the impression that Castro is a great man and that he wants the best for the Cuban and American people.

The Center for International Policy, which published Smith’s recent article, as well as the Institute for Policy Study that he is connected to, are notorious for their pro-Castro projects. Both of these organizations have received thousands of dollars from the also notoriously pro-Castro Arca Foundation for projects that advance Castro’s goals. There is a special report by Pablo Alfonso published on July 5, 1998 in The Miami Herald titled U.S. Groups Spend Millions in Push to Ease Embargo, Build Ties to Cuba, exposing the Arca Foundation.

Also, according to a paper by scholar Irving Louis Horowitz, the Arca Foundation is a "highly pro-Castro and partisan," grant-giving agency. From 1994 to date, Arca Foundation awarded more than $2,000,000 for pro-Castro projects.

Smith’s article attempts to discard the information presented in my previous carefully documented articles published by NewsMax, Judicial Watch, The Washington Dispatch, The Idler and other websites. He gives the impression that I am some sort of fanatic bothering people on the Internet. Apparently, when you write the facts about Cuba (in his "unbiased" estimation) you are some sort of a nut, therefore, you should be derided and dismissed, as he unsuccessfully tries to do. He dismissed me with a mere "Hmmm."

To my amusement, he says, "Agustin Blazquez, of Miami," – of course I have to be a Miami Cuban in his eyes to be dragged through the mud with impunity as the record shows he does with Cuban Americans. But unfortunately for Smith I have never lived in Miami. That city is too hot for me. So, that is another inaccuracy of his propaganda piece. But do I now qualify as an "Honorary Miamian"?

For sure I refuse to collaborate with the enemy. And for it, I proudly carry the badge of honor of gaining the wrath of a tyrant, and the zeal of his fanatic and vociferous friends.

My love and appreciation of freedom and democracy are more important. In spite of the envy and hatred that many sick souls feel for America, I am proud to be part of it and to say that the U.S. is the best country on earth.

It is wonderful to raise your head and be free. It is an extraordinary relief to disassociate from a despicable tyranny. The U.S. is the light in this struggle for freedom. The countries that sponsor, promote and offer safe heaven to terrorists are the dark forces of evil. I hope that the U.S. is victorious in this fight against evil, and freedom and liberty prevails.

© 2001 ABIP