Obama just shook hands with RAUL CASTRO....

[thucythucy]

195. I'm not offended, so there's no reason

to apologize.

That said, I appreciate your willingness to engage, and given your responses understand a little better where you're coming from.

I've always thought that analogies make for bad history, and worse policy. And so arguing that Vietnam was like Munuch, or that fill-in-the-blank is like Hitler mostly gets us into trouble both analytically and politically.

I would assert that all of the various examples you cite arise from entirely different historical circumstances, with differing motivations and hence differing impacts calling for different responses. And that Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are indeed on a different level than the Castro brothers--not that these distinctions would matter much to the victims.

But I doubt we'll be able to sort this out here. You have a visceral reaction to the Castros, just as I have a visceral reaction to analogies drawn to Nazism. I'm sure both these reactions arise from perfectly reasonable experiences and subsequent thinking. Not having nearly as much background on Cuba as I do on Germany (or the Soviet Union), I don't know that I can intelligently add much to this discussion without a whole lot of further study. For instance, I certainly know about Isla de Pinos, but not nearly as much as I do about Auschwitz, Dachau, etc.

Of course, one might argue that contemporary American drone policy, as well as other foreign policy disasters with subsequent loss of innocent life--i.e. our continued occupation of Afghanistan, and our unwillingness as a society to confront the exact nature and details of our illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq--might make anyone more or less reluctant to shake hands with President Obama. But that too would take more time and energy than I have at the moment.

Have you read Alan Bullock's "Hitler and Stalin"? Bullock of course is the author of "Hitler: A Study in Tyranny." Anyway, the book is a very interesting juxtaposition of the two men, how they differed, how they were similar, how those similarities and differences arose and how they played out during their lives and in the context of their respective ideologies and the societies in which they lived.

If you have suggested reading of a similar nature on Cambodia, Rwanda, the "Cultural Revolution", and--I might add--Serbia/former Yugoslavia in the 1990s--please let me know. Also, what would you recommend in terms of reading about the Castro brothers?

Thanks again for engaging, and, again, no offense taken, though the apology is appreciated and accepted. (I've been taught ALWAYs to accept an apology as a matter of course).

Best wishes.