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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   27877 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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The Aztec empire could field hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Cuba was not even a regional power.

Castro got crushed, imprisoned and was only released thanks to the mercy of his opponents. There was no Noche Triste where Castro fought his way out of the capital to regroup, he only got out of prison because some politician thought it might be a good look. Then he had an opportunity to come back and start an insurgency.

Castro's leadership during the invasion should not be judged based on the fact that his opponents released him from prison at some point before that. That makes no sense. It would be like discounting Hitler's political feat of raising the Nazi Party to total rule of Germany because he had gotten released from prison after the Beer Hall Putsch.

Taking control of an island of millions of people that is ruled by a government that is supported by the strongest country in the world and which is only about 200 miles away, with only about 80 men, is pretty impressive!

Hitler's coup-launching and general martial abilities were poor. He was very charismatic, as was Castro (and Cortes for that matter). But what were his military feats? I'm focused purely on that. In Hitler's case, it was his generals who did the fighting, he directed grand strategy and messed things up, failing to sufficiently mobilize the German war economy until it was too late.

Castro managed a revolution in a poor, coup-prone country. The US pulled away from Batista the moment he was seriously threatened. They had Cantillo launch another coup against him, the whole thing was a shambles. He didn't face really substantial opposition like Giap did.

I'm not arguing that Hitler was a military genius. He certainly had his moments, for example he correctly sided with the Ardennes option during the planning of the invasion of France. But his track record as a military leader is mixed. My point, and the reason why I brought Hitler up, is that judging Castro's achievements in the Cuban Revolution based on the fact that he had been let out of jail by his opponents at some point in the past does not make sense.

I don't understand why you don't want to admit that invading Cuba with 80 men, getting most of them killed on the first day, fleeing to the mountains with 20 men, and then building a base of support that allows you to conquer the whole island two years later, is not a great feat of generalship.

I do want to admit that it's not great generalship! That's my whole argument.

The reasons Castro won were predominantly political, not military. Throughout his whole life, he displayed military ineptitude. He got released from prison after failing his first attempt at revolution, losing the battle. He fumbled his landing attempt, arriving late:

The plan had been for the crossing to take five days, and on the Granma's scheduled day of arrival, 30 November, MR-26-7 members under Frank País led an armed uprising in Santiago and Manzanillo. However, the Granma's journey ultimately lasted seven days, and with Castro and his men unable to provide reinforcements, País and his militants dispersed after two days of intermittent attacks.

He lost 75% of his men in the first few days of landing. Cortes didn't do that! As I read further, Castro even gets support from the CIA! So much for defeating the strongest government in the world...

In the Sierra Maestra mountains, Castro was joined by Frank Sturgis who offered to train Castro's troops in guerrilla warfare. Castro accepted the offer, but he also had an immediate need for guns and ammunition, so Sturgis became a gunrunner. Sturgis purchased boatloads of weapons and ammunition from Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) weapons expert Samuel Cummings' International Armament Corporation in Alexandria, Virginia. Sturgis opened a training camp in the Sierra Maestra mountains, where he taught Che Guevara and other 26 July Movement rebel soldiers guerrilla warfare.

Castro won because apparently everyone, US deep state goons included, favoured him over the disintegrating Bastillo regime. He was charismatic, not a great military leader. And even if he had beaten the Cuban government solely with force of arms, that still wouldn't make him a great leader. Beating a weak Cuban government is not a sufficient feat to put you up there with Cortes.

Cortes beat an utterly hated Aztec Empire that probably had less support from the population it ruled than Batista's government had from its. And like Castro, Cortez also came within a hair's breadth of being destroyed at one point. Plus Cortez was going up against an empire that had technology equivalent to the European Bronze Age, whereas Castro was going up against a country that had the same level of technology that he did.

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