Guess who's off to Cuba, to cozy up to the superannuated Stalinist Fidel Castro? Why, Mr. Human Rights himself, the tiresome Jimmy Carter.

Carter comes in two versions.

Model A is the Carter who busybodys himself with domestic matters; National Review's Florence King has aptly described him as ceaselessly engaged in "building houses for the poor until we all understood that he is a carpenter with the initials J.C."

Model B is even less appealing: The Carter who truckles to one tyrannical regime or bloodyhanded old dictator after another while speaking ill of American foreign policy.

Once upon a time, it was another Stalinist state, North Korea. Then the Serbian dictator Milosevic. And now he plans to pay his respects to Castro.

It's no secret that for four decades Castro has imprisoned, tortured and murdered his countrymen for daring to oppose his Stalinist regime, or that thousands of Cubans have risked their lives to escape his island prison.

He has impoverished his own people while supporting Marxist movements with cash, arms and military advisers all over Africa and Latin America.

Yet Jimmy Carter, who as president cared so much about human rights that he mistakenly made them the centerpiece of his foreign policy, is going to Havana to make nice with this Bolshevik brute.

Carter's visit to Havana will serve only to give Castro more of the legitimacy he craves. Worse still, it will send a message of despair to the Cuban dissidents and political prisoners who even now are rotting in Castro's prisons.