Fidel Castro was not interested in personal enrichment. His supporters say he deployed his enormous authority on behalf of health, education and welfare programs that brought Cuba attention around the world.

The letter writers span the spectrum from left to right. Members say they don't want this to become a partisan political issue. In fact, there are reasons administration officials have been cautious in making a genocide declaration.

When ISIS last year called for the destruction of the Yazidi people, President Obama said that would constitute genocide and he ordered U.S. forces to keep it from happening. Human rights advocates say Christians now face a similar threat Nina Shea directs the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute.

Administration officials, in fact, have repeatedly condemned ISIS for its treatment of religious minorities, including Christians. But a bipartisan resolution now moving through Congress calls on the administration to go further and say ISIS is guilty of genocide.

Many who later lost faith in Fidel Castro can remember how they once admired the man who needed just a dozen men to launch the Cuban revolution.

The collapse of the Soviet bloc ended the massive subsidies that had kept the Cuban economy afloat. The once-vaunted education and health care systems fell into disrepair. Fidel Castro's stubbornness, meanwhile, made political and economic change difficult in Cuba.

Fidel Castro was a born rebel.