SIGHTINGS


 
China And Cuba Making
The Most Of Our Time
In Yugoslavia
Published in The Orlando Sentinel
www.orlandosentinel.com
5-6-99
 
 
 
 
While the United States is committing a crime against Yugoslavia, where we have no legitimate strategic or national interests, President Clinton's Chinese friends have been busy little bees, 90 miles from our shores.
 
Chi Haotian, minister of national defense, got together with Raul Castro, big brother Fidel's minister of defense, and decided that working together was a very good idea.
 
Right next door to the still-active Russian electronic spy base, the Chinese will help Fidel build a brand-new electronic spy facility of his own and train his people. In return, the Chinese will have permanent presence and will share the intelligence data collected by the Cubans.
 
The Tibetan killers also will modernize Cuba's satellite-tracking base at Jaruco, where some of the parabolic dishes are about 40 meters in diameter. They will also modernize the equipment of Castro's telecommunications-monitoring base at Paseo and 13th Street in Havana. As you might guess, all telephone calls in Cuba are three-party calls -- the third party being Castro's secret police.
 
Out in Santiago, on the eastern end of the island, the Cubans are helping to construct an antenna farm. Just what the facility will do -- increase the range and power of Cuba's propaganda broadcasts or be involved in military intelligence -- is unclear at this point.
 
There's talk that the Chinese agreed to supply spare parts for Castro's Russian-built war planes and to supply other military equipment for the American left's favorite Stalinist dictator. Who knows? Maybe they will give the graybeard a few missiles one day. After all, China intends to incorporate Taiwan into its mainland government, by force if necessary, and when that day comes, China will want to have the means ready to make the United States timid.
 
You can expect to see Chinese investments in Cuba, and you will see Castro join forces with the Communist Chinese to drive Taiwanese interests and businesses out of Latin America and the Caribbean.
 
As they say, much is afoot to the south of us. It makes you wonder why the United States is bogging itself down in the no-win mire of the Balkans. My guess is that flawed decision can be attributed to the fact that underneath his mask of sanity, President Clinton has a screw loose. I suspect that before his term ends the cowardly Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate who chose partisanship over duty will regret they missed their opportunity to get this captain off the ship.
 
Probably what will shock most Americans in the months ahead is the discovery that the United States has few to no friends in Latin America, and among the few, the fervor is faint to absent. That is our own fault. Our nation has always treated Latin America as a poor backyard neighbor barely worthy of notice. We will reap a harvest of indifference or hostility.
 
Castro is a criminal psychopath with a pathological hatred of North America. He has a Hitlerian case of megalomania. I think one of the most revealing things I ever read about Castro was in a book written by a high-ranking official who defected after a lifetime in a Marxist society.
 
He wrote that Castro, on one of his tours, stopped at a school and challenged a 10-year-old to a game of ping pong. The 10-year-old beat him, and, instead of laughing and hugging the child, as a normal man would, Castro flew into a rage and sulked.
 
Ideology and politics aside, it's a good idea to keep the nuts out of power all the time and everywhere. Unfortunately, neither the Cubans nor we Americans have had much success in that regard.





SIGHTINGS HOMEPAGE