I was ecstatic when I read that George W. "Shrub Jr." Bush has urged Cuban citizens to "Demand freedom, and you've got a president who stands with you."  I can just see Little Shrub, his eyes squinted and arms folded to emphasize his displeasure with the Cuban government, sitting in the fortified White House and courageously delivering these stirring words.  What a guy!

To be sure, the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, is an authoritarian heel who deserves condemnation, resolute resistance, and eventual expulsion from civilized society, if not actual prosecution for crimes against humanity.  But has Shrub looked in the mirror any time in the last, oh, 20 years or so?  That's his reflection staring back, right next to Castro's.  A man who has taken a sacred oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of his country, but who violates his oath every day, sending armed government thugs into every corner of the lives of peaceful citizens, and riding roughshod over the entire world, with one finger on the nuclear trigger and another positioned to make clear his unwillingness to hear any voices but his own. 

Shall we reiterate a few of the worst crimes Shrub is guilty of here at home?  Why not start with the drug war, authorized nowhere in the Constitution, in which Mr. Bush's minions smash into the homes of cancer patients who have found relief from marijuana, not to mention healthy adults who are "guilty" of making their own life choices.  Off to jail with you, and by the way, to "send a message," we'll trash your house in the process.  And confiscate your assets, if you have any left when the cops and the IRS are done with you.  You naughty little slave, what WERE you thinking???  You will be a lesson to the others, lest they get the same uppity ideas.  We'll fill the prisons with people like you, even if murderers and rapists have to go free to make room.  You can die of your cancer there, in this "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave."

What next?  How about one of my favorites, the ban on accepting remuneration for organ donations.  Again, nowhere authorized in the Constitution, a document which states in black in white that the federal government is forbidden from meddling in anything other than the few specific things it lists.  Besides being unconstitutional, the organ law is a perfect example of the thousands that serve no purpose but to mandate death, in this case the deaths of thousands of people in the U.S. who expire every year waiting for transplants.  Surprise, surprise: When a free market is illegal, and prices are driven artificially low, supply does not meet demand.  Let them eat cake, let them wait in agony and die slowly, hoping against hope that they might reach the top of the government-approved list, for surely Shrub Bush would not consider it a serious option to respect his Constitutional duties and let people lead lives free from his Infinitely Wise guidance!

(Congress of course bears responsibility for these and many other absurd and unconstitutional laws, but I've never heard Shrub speak a word against them.  And now that he's president, it's his thugs who enforce them.  He is personally accountable for every brutish act his underlings commit.)

Mr. Bush also, last I've heard, supports the ongoing embargo by the United States against Cuba, an embargo whose effects fall overwhelmingly upon the poor and powerless, and without which Mr. Castro would have lacked his best bogeyman all these years.  It is an open question whether he could have stayed in power so long without the "help" of the U.S. government.

Shall we go on?  We could fill a volume, but most readers have already read the lists of usurpations (and have made lists of their own) many times over.  To anyone who is not asleep, the president's crimes are obvious, and his moral standing to point out shortcomings in anyone else on earth is nil.

But back to Castro.  Yes, let us celebrate the Shrub's call for the citizens of Cuba to demand an end to the repression they experience at the hands of their evil government!  Hip hip hooray!!  So please tell me, Mr. Bush, what exact methods of resistance are you recommending?  I want to take very careful notes here, because clearly what applies there must apply here in the U.S. as well.  You wouldn't by any chance be advocating - gasp! - FORCE, would you?  You know, like our brave forefathers used against the overbearing government of their day? 

If I were stuck in Cuba, though, I'd be very wary: This speech has a deja vu ring to it.  Shrub Senior did the same thing during his big Gulf War (aka Operation Desert Slaughter), in which he encouraged all those ethnic groups in Iraq to oppose Saddam, but then, - oops! - left them to die rather than following through with promised protection (not that it was a BAD death, of course.  Begin with a nerve gas-tipped missile, then if you survive that, the tender mercies of Saddam's hand-picked inquisitors).  Oh well.  At least Senior's real goal, getting re-elected in 1992, was achieved!  Or did that other guy win anyway?  Dang, all those deaths and nothing really important was accomplished. 

Like father, like son, I suppose.  Different year, different generation, same statist hypocrite who can see everybody's crimes but his own.  As for me, I will celebrate Fidel Castro's passing from power, just as I will celebrate Shrub Bush Junior's.  Let us hope that their successors are better men than the pathetic excuses for leaders they are replacing!