The road not taken with Fidel and the people of Cuba 1959

[tetedur]

Fidel came uninvited by the US government to America in 1959 after the revolution. He wanted to speak to Eisenhower but Eisenhower snubbed him. Nixon spoke with him and basically said Fidel was naive about Communism and slammed the door on him. Instead of America offering assistance to the people of Cuba, the USSR offered help.

This failure to begin a dialogue escalated into the Bay of Pigs fiasco and then Cuban Missile Crisis.

Fortunately JFK and Khrushchev were able to dial back the nuclear war threat because they did manage to communicate in October 1962.

The people suffer and struggle when their leaders do not treat other leaders with respect. America was lucky, JFK was president and not interested in destroying the world to save us from Communism. If Nixon had won the election in 1960, the world may have turned an entirely different corner.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. American following a pattern.

A young nationalist from Vietnam came to Paris in 1919 to petition President Woodrow Wilson for assistance in attaining independence for his country from France. He was refused a meeting repeatedly.

That nationalist's name: Ho Chi Minh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ho_Chi_Minh