Growing up in South Florida, I was inundated with daily tales -- many apocryphal -- of the "heroic" exploits of a group of local anti-Castro freedom fighters who operated under the menacingly militaristic name "Alpha 66."
If you believed the stories frequently tossed around domino games in Jose Marti Park, the group was an elite unit of former Cuban soldiers who had dedicated themselves to waging war against the bearded devil to the south by any means necessary; in the eyes of Alpha 66, this moral imperative gave sanction to everything from fully-armed "training missions" in the Everglades to commando raids inside Cuba, to the extortion of "donations" from businesses in Little Havana -- businesses which quickly came to understand that failure to show vociferous public support for the group's antics would lead to a bomb mysteriously turning up on their doorsteps, sort of a "If You're Not with the Terrorists, You're with Castro" scenario.
And that's what these clowns really were: Terrorists. They were -- and still are despite their age -- a bunch of reckless, heavily-armed halfwits with dreams of former and future glory motivated by an insanely irrational hatred of Fidel Castro.
The thing is, comically inept though they may be, they're operating on U.S. soil -- right now.
And the government -- our White House which sees terrorists like ghosts under every bed and around every dark corner -- isn't doing a damn thing about it.
Guess one man's terrorist really is another's freedom fighter, particularly when the latter man is part of a powerful voting bloc.
(Salon.com: The Coddled "Terrorists" of South Florida)
For more on Miami's delusional anti-Castro hysteria:
(Deus Ex Malcontent: High In-Fidel-ity/8.3.06)
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