Washington labels Havana "terrorist," despite the fact that the United States has launched thousands of terrorist missions against Cuba and has no evidence of Cuba initiating any retaliatory terrorist acts.
Between Spring 1961 and Fall 1962, the CIA dispatched hundreds of agents to Cuba to assassinate, blow up and burn property and cause mayhem. Terrorism against Cuba continued sporadically for decades -- well into the 1990s -- under the guise that somehow this would help the United States restore democracy to the island.
...Past presidents have accepted Pentagon estimates and discounted an invasion of Cuba as too costly....
But in the age of "full spectral dominance," the catch phrase from the 2002 White House National Security Plan, certain Administration heavies have made a case that the time has come to remove the 45 year old Cuban thorn in the side of the American empire. On January 6, the oratorical point man for this offensive, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs Roger Noriega, warned Cuba to stop destabilizing democratic Latin America and cautioned the governments of Argentina, Venezuela and even Brazil not to get close to Cuba or else....Secretary of State Colin Powell validated Noriega's remarks.
"I've been in senior national security positions on and off over the last 17 years. And through that whole period of time, Cuba has been trying to do everything it could to destabilize parts of the region," he said on January 8. This remarkable statement comes from a man who remembers how in 1965 US troops destabilized democracy in the Dominican Republic, destabilized Nicaragua in the 1980s through a decade long covert war and upset the entire Caribbean when in 1983 US troops invaded the tiny island republic of Grenada...
Powell has apologized for the US destabilization of Chile (1970-73), but through the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, Washington supported the most brutal military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Guatemala and El Salvador. In 1990 US troops invaded Panama to arrest one man, General Noriega, an agent of the CIA and DEA.
They always turn into trouble for us, don't they? Imagine that.
Armed with empty and righteous rhetoric, Washington's neo-con chicken hawks now sculpt a new axis of evil in Latin America (Cuba-Venezuela-Argentina). Some career national security staffers worry that the Bushies might actually try to provoke a conflict with Cuba or Venezuela in this hemisphere after the 2004 elections, of course.
I've been a little worried about that myself, as you no doubt noticed if you've been reading YWA.
"Before Bush," a former National Security staffer confided, "we understood that the post Vietnam War rule was in place: we don't fight anyone who can fight back. Then the neo-cons and their soldier of God partners seemed to infest the policy community. These characters...appear unconcerned with the consequences of starting a conflagration process with Cuba."
...In their new book, Richard Perle and David Frum, leading chicken hawk neo-cons, discuss leaders like Fidel Castro and state that "when it is in our power and in our interest, we should toss dictators aside with no more compunction than a police sharpshooter feels when he takes down a hostage taker."
You know, I imagine I'm hoping against hope, but I'd like to think that at least some police sharpshooters feel some compunction when "taking down" anybody. But the point here is "when it is in our power and in our interest". I can't begin to tell you how sick I am of this cowboy bully mentality that has swept up so much of America. What is it that makes people so full of hate and so ready to "take out" somebody else? I think it must be from a feeling of being powerless. Which makes me think that what Americans really need is to take back their own personal power as citizens from the corporate-military-political juggernaut that has them in a stranglehold and points to other causes as the reason they can't breathe. Maybe then we wouldn't feel so desperate to take out half the world.
Another of the mouth warriors, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton, has repeatedly accused Cuba of providing "dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states." In early January Bolton called Cuba a "rogue state" and voiced his concern that Cuba would share "such technology with other despised nations."
Bolton's neo con credentials include Senator Jesse Helms' March 2001 endorsement at his confirmation hearing as "the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final battle between good and evil".
The rhetoric from these people is just unbelievable.
In October, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL), warned Bush that Cuba was forging an "axis of evil" with Venezuela. National security officials leaked to a U.S. News & World Report journalist (Oct 6, 2003) material to "prove" that Castro's friend, President Chavez, was using Cuba as his model and had invited Islamic terrorists to train in camps in Venezuela. Chavez dismissed the report as absurd. Another national security-induced media story?
In what the White House called "Entering the Final Phase of Cuba's Inevitable Transition to Democracy" -- don't laugh -- Bolton's ugly charges morphed into dangerous deeds. In January the US canceled the regularly scheduled migration talks with Cuba, months after the President established a new Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to hasten a "peaceful transition to a representative democracy and a free market economy -- ending decades of an oppressive dictatorship."
...As the national security staffer said, in resignation, "these people [the Bushies] are capable of anything."
It makes you want to cry.
Or get the hell out.
But not just yet.
Click graphic and sign petition
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!