Che Guevara was hell on smiting his enemies, all right, thousands of them in fact, but only when they were bound, gagged and blindfolded. In anything like a fair fight Che was consistently routed, stomped and humiliated. Ineptitude in combat defined Che Guevara. In every conflict he was pounded like a gong. When he whimpered to his American-trained captors in Bolivia, "Don't shoot – I'm Che, I'm worth more to you alive than dead!" he had a point, but the Bolivians did not agree.
Cuban-American fighters who faced Che at the Bay of Pigs and later in the Congo still laugh. The Bay of Pigs invasion plan included a ruse where a little boat packing a huge fireworks show and tape recording of battle sounds landed in extreme western Cuba as a diversion. Sure enough, the wily Che immediately recognized this as an Anzio-type "second front." He snapped on his holster, cocked his beret at just the right angle, scowled for the camera and rushed over with a few thousand troops. He spent the whole battle there. It was the only thing in the invasion that went according to plan.
Che Guevara was sent to Africa and actually fought in a guerrilla war. Yes, where people shoot back and everything. Che eventually tried his hand at this novelty and well, we saw what happened. He was run out of Africa with his tail between his legs in months. Then in Bolivia he and his merry band of murders were betrayed, encircled and decimated in short order.
Real guerrillas had Che's number. Mao refused to see him when he visited China. He had him cool his heels in a reception room for two hours, then stood him up. Mao knew the truth.
Che the Lionhearted whose image is still ubiquitous on college campuses, but in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR, advertising – and especially – psychology departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of Sigmund Freud or P.T. Barnum. There’s one born every minute, Mr. Barnum? If only you'd lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, 10 are born every second.
Here's a New York Times "guerrilla hero" who in real life never really fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed.
Here's a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an "unnecessary bourgeois detail," who stressed that "revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate," who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment.