Even before his adventures in totalitarianism, it has always frustrated me to no end how many on the left admire or even tolerate Fidel Castro. It's one thing to oppose sanctions on the grounds that it merely tightens Fidel's grip. It's another to try to say "Well, as bad as Cuba is, at least it has national health care" and make some insinuations and America's democratic and free system's superiority to the dreck rule of Fidel is subjective. As James Lileks onced asked, would you rather be poor and in need of emergency medical help in the United States of Cuba? I'd take the US any day. Considering the hundreds that have died trying to escape that island to make it here, I suspect that I am not alone. Many in the media try to portray the Cuban refugees in Florida as maniacs and fascists but they fail to ask why it is that those who know the most about Cuba also hate Castro the most. We are a nation of immigrants and most of our immigrants take great pride in their homeland. Irish Americans want us to appreciate Irish culture and Mexicans theirs as well. The Cubans want us to kick its leader's butt. For many on the left, it seems, all that matters is that Cubans lean rightward and Fidel is left and they immediately sympathize with the latter.

To their credit, with the exception of ANSWER and their ilk no one against the war has made excuses for Saddam Hussein. Those opposed to the war tried to convince us not to engage in it because they felt it a disproportionate response to a very minor threat or because it would make the rest of the world angry or a myriad of other reasons. None of which were "Saddam isn't so bad." For all the voices against the war, only the fringe ever actually defended Saddam on any moral or idealistic level.

Why is that? In a remarkably well-written post (go read the whole thing), fellow Houstonian Angie Schultz pinpoints the answer:

Your big mistake, Saddam old man, was not calling yourself a Communist. You could have had exactly the same power, exactly the same control, gassed exactly as many Kurds, and the Julie Burchills of the world would've defended your regime to the end. All you had to do was fly a few red flags and put up a few posters of Lenin. Maybe salted your rhetoric with a little "glorious workers' revolution". Would that have been too high a price to pay?