Jon Lee Anderson

We're in a new era.

There are those Cubans who, when you ask about Sandro, it raises their hackles, especially the older generation.

They're furious that someone like him exists, and they just have to swallow it because they're aware that he's, of course, a Castro.

And that's why he's doing what he's doing, because other people can't do that.

And then, you know, I suppose amongst younger Cubans, they like the fact that there's someone doing that.

They may feel that it gives them shade, you know.

So there we are.

We're in the new Cuba.

You know, that's such a good question.

Nobody has asked me that until now.

Well...

Gosh, there are so many parallels and so many differences.

Let me just speak about Hamid Karzai, the man that we handpicked.

He was an Excel figure who we brought in after the Taliban and we supposedly empowered him to assemble this new country out of this place that had been at war for years and years and years.

Well, it didn't work out well.

And in my book and what I found in my reporting was that the main reason it didn't work out well was because we gave him, we did not respect him.

We did not invest that man with the sovereignty he needed in order to gain the respect of his people.

And it really fell apart.

It became like a bad public marriage where you go with your husband or your wife to the cocktail party and one or the other throws a scene.

It was like that.