Should Mercedes-Benz Have Apologized for Che Guevara Ad Flap?

Whydid only Americans of Cuban heritage get miffed at Mercedes Benz for their Che promotional flap? From USA Today to Forbes and from the Miami Herald to The Blaze, it was the same story “Cuban-Americans angered.” Then “Mercedes apologizes to Cuban-Americans.”

In fact, Che Guevara’s hate-obsession was actually the U.S. He murdered Cubans because of their supposed affiliation with the U.S. (“U.S.–Backed” Batista, the CIA, etc.). As a public service to Americans of other ethnic heritages, here are some reasons, in the form of Che Guevara’s ravings, why Mercedes Benz (among many, many others) should also apologize to you:

“The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!”

“The U.S. is ‘a carnivorous animal feeding on the helpless!”

“Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination!”

“We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies’ (Americans) very home, to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy (Americans) must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him!”

“We must keep our hatred (against the U.S.) alive and fan it to paroxysm!”

“The U.S. is the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against all the peoples of the world!”

“If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.”

And here’s the probable reason–despite Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s genocidal lust–why many tens of thousands of Americans are alive today:

“What!” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28, 1962 upon a message from Cuba, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war?! That we launch missiles from Cuba?! But that is insane! Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens” (please note that Nikita Khrushchev’s own son, an eyewitness to the near calamity, presents a radically different version of the “solution” to the Cuban Missile Crisis than do Kennedy court scribes and publicists, most latterly in the form of Chris Matthews).

According to the Cuba Archive, the regime co-founded by Che Guevara-with firing squads, forced-labor camps, torture and drownings at sea-has caused an estimated 102,000 deaths, mostly Cuban of course. But whenever they could get their hands on an American “hyena” they really indulged. To wit:

When, during the summer of 1960, Castro and Che’s gunmen stormed into almost 6,000 U.S.-owned businesses and stole from them at Soviet gunpoint, a few owners resisted. One of these was Howard Anderson, who owned a filling station and Jeep dealership (not a casino or brothel, which were relatively rare in pre-Castro Cuba, by the way). I’ll quote from Anderson v. Republic of Cuba, No. 01-28628 (Miami-Dade Circuit Court, April 13, 2003). “In one final session of torture, Castro’s agents drained Howard Anderson’s body of blood before sending him to his death at the firing squad.”

Castro and Che’s blood-lust against Americans was such that they sent their torturers thousands of miles to get their hands on defenseless ones. According to the book Honor Bound, the tortures of U.S. POWs by Castro’s agents were “the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in Hanoi.”

Testimony during Congressional hearings titled “The Cuban Torture Program; Torture of American Prisoners by Cuban Agents” held on November 1999 provide some of the harrowing details.

For their experiment in torture, the Castroites chose twenty American POWs. One died: Lieutenant Colonel Earl Cobeil, an Air Force F-105 pilot. His death came slowly, in agonizing stages, under torture. Upon learning his Castroite Cuban affiliation, the American POWs nicknamed Cobeil’s Cuban torturer “Fidel.”

“The difference between the Vietnamese and ‘Fidel’ (the nickname for the Castroite torturer) was that once the Vietnamese got what they wanted they let up, at least for a while,” testified fellow POW Captain Ray Vohden USN. “Not so with the Cubans. Earl Cobeil had resisted ‘Fidel’ to the maximum. I heard the thud of the belt falling on Cobeil’s body again and again, as Fidel screamed “you son of a beech! I will show you! Kneel down!–KNEEL DOWN!” The Cubans unmercifully beat a mentally defenseless, sick American naval pilot to death.”

“Earl Cobeil was a complete physical disaster when we saw him,” testified another fellow POW, Col. Jack Bomar. “He had been tortured for days and days and days. His hands were almost severed from the manacles. He had bamboo in his shins. All kinds of welts up and down all over; his face was bloody. Then ‘Fidel’ began to beat him with a fan belt.”

In fact, I’m amazed that Mercedes-Benz bothered to apologize for this incident. “What’s the big deal?” their Chairman Dieter Zetsche had every reason to reply. “Why pick on us? Doesn’t half of Hollywood hail Che Guevara and Fidel Castro? Didn’t one of America’s most celebrated leading men, Robert Redford, produce a movie in Che Guevara’s honor in collaboration with the Stalinist regime Guevara co-founded? And didn’t this movie get a whooping, hollering standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival and the Academy awards?

“And didn’t Academy Award- winner Stephen Soderbergh recently one-up Redford with a four-hour hagiography on Che, also co-produced with the Stalinist regime Che co-founded?

“And after his speech at the UN where Che Guevara raved some of the insults cited above wasn’t he the guest of honor at ‘Bobo’ Rockefeller’s Manhattan suite, where cocktail guests from Norman Mailer to Eugene McCarthy lined up for his autograph?

“Did any of them apologize?

“And wasn’t Che Guevara’s partner in mass-murder, terrorism and nuclear-war-lust hailed as ‘The Toast of Manhattan!’ and ‘The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan!’ by Time and Newsweek owing to the social swirl that engulfed Fidel Castro on his 1995 visit to Manhattan which involved everyone from Robert McNamara to Mort Zuckerman to Mike Wallace and Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Barbara Walters and Diane Sawyer feting him and lining up for his autograph and photo-ops?

“And doesn’t Charles Rangel Bear-hug Fidel Castro on the racist mass-murderer’s every visit to Harlem?

“Did any of them apologize?

“And doesn’t a former U.S. President now known as the Democratic Party’s ‘Elder Statesman’ (Jimmy Carter) regard the Stalinist who issued Che Guevara’s every order for mass-murder and torture (Fidel Castro) as ‘an old friend’ who ‘has brought great healthcare to his people?’

“And doesn’t a former Democratic Presidential candidate now known as ‘The Conscience of the Democratic Party’ (George McGovern) also compliment Fidel Castro as ‘a man I consider a friend?’

“And weren’t posters of Che Guevara plastered on some campaign offices of the man who was overwhelmingly elected as your current President (Barack Obama)?

“And didn’t this president invite, as guests of honor to your White house, notorious Che Guevara Groupie Jay-Z?

“And didn’t the Time -Warner corporation (Time Magazine) magazine hail Che Guevara a ‘Hero and Icon of the Century,’ alongside Mother Theresa? And this in a long and detailed article. This was no ‘gaffe,’ no momentary screw-up like ours. Time’s reporter knew full well what he was doing.

“Did any of them apologize? So again, what’s the big deal with our little gaffe? And at least we apologized.”

Indeed, Herr Zetsche. All the items above are fully documented here.