Which is what one is tempted to deduce from President Bush's invocation of divine intervention to achieve US' as-yet-unfructified goal, when he said, “One day the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away”.

Castro has seen it all, faced it all and survived it all ever since he took leadership of Cuba following the 1959 revolution. To the CIA's own admission, it had worked with American mobsters to assassinate him in the years that followed his ascension to power. Castro's latest claim is that the present President, George Bush, has himself added his bit to the plot by ordering a new attempt on his life. A pertinent question is, should it be anybody's business to go about eliminating heads of state who refuse to be ordered about from outside — be it by way of assassinations, organising internal unrest and uprising, or by setting up of Kangaroo courts? In the least, this cannot be the way one spreads the ideals of democracy and freedom around the world.

Fidel Castro might not be the best bet as a leader, but the fact is also that he is revered by millions at home for the way he sought to develop a society on socialistic lines. This even as the progress there is slow-paced, thanks also due to the kind of resistance that he had to face from powerful forces in his immediate neighbourhood. His revolutionary movement has been able to withstand odds and provocations, and the fact is also that Castro has refused to bend and bow even as he has pitched his nation at a stone's throw away from the Super Power.