Brad DeLong explains how Castro' policies really were massive economic failures, and Matt Yglesias draws the critical lesson for American foreign policy, which is that "for good reasons and for bad ones, the romance of thumbing one's nose at the USA has powerful and important resonance for a lot of people around the world. Under the circumstances, it rarely serves our interests to get into dramatic confrontations with leaders who are far too puny to objectively threaten our interests. After all, what significance would Castro have without his superpower adversary? US persecution of the Communist regime in Havana is really the only thing it has going for it." A corollary to that point is that the more unpopular America is, the more political appeal opposing us will have. So the more we do to stoke anti-American sentiment, the more we strengthen the domestic political hands of the very leaders we oppose. It's a vicious circle, and one the Bush administration has been pursuing with all the zeal of a kid who just discovered ring-around-the-rosie. Ahmadinejad has been able to cover up a lot of poor economic management by wrapping Iranians in the grand struggle against America who, of course, he can blame for his country's poor economic performance. Crazier yet, Bush has been eagerly accommodating Ahmadinejad's political strategy and treating him as a real threat to America who must be stopped. It's utterly bizarre.
