More on Today's Wanker

Spencer makes Matt's basic point a bit more succintly, but there's an additional point. I think comparisons between Castro and Pinochet are largely specious. They aren't really the yin and yang of authoritarian dictators. But, since they're all the rage I'd suggest that what Hiatt misses is a key difference between Chile and Cuba has nothing to do with their nominal position on the left-right political axis, but rather the fact that Castro's dictatorship has long been propped up by the US's long isolation of that country, both during its time as a Soviet client state and after. Whatever the underlying motives for that basic policy, it certainly achieved the opposite of its stated goal of ending the Castro regime.