I don't see how I'm going to be able to write anything to top the last sentence of the preceding post...but here goes anyway.
Rather than give my opinion of Che Guevara in ideological terms, as there's quite enough of that already on this thread, let's go with comparisons. Che was a revolutionary, as several people have already mentioned. There's no real evidence he cared for any sort of ideology or government. He loved the bonfire, but didn't much care for the messy cleaning up afterward. Comparisons in the American Revolution: Thomas Paine, perhaps Sam Adams. Comparisons with the Bolshevik Revolution: no contest, Leon Trotsky. His type makes a big splash, then tends to become inconvenient after the "rev" goes out of the revolution, and then he is farmed out, or perhaps he is put on administrative leave by means of a small-caliber bullet in the back of the head. Paine returned to Europe whence he came, and attempted to play the same role in the French Revolution as in the American, and nearly had a date with Mme. la Guillotine for his efforts.Trotsky finally had to flee the Soviet Union and ended up in sunny Mexico, but he was still perceived as a threat by Stalin, who sent an assassin to put an end to Trotsky's annoying revolutionary pen. Che's fate seems the same- he was sent off to build a fire under another revolution, but, as has been previously recounted, that didn't work out. There's nothing like a little perceived martyrdom, no matter what the individual's actual track record, to elevate him to sainthood, even if only on a t-shirt.
