Cuba/Terrorism: US Hypocrisy
By Alvaro F. Fernandez (Progreso Weekly)
HAVANA TIMES — Cuba called the decision embarrassing. Let me add hypocritical. As expected, the U.S. Dept. of State announced last week (May 30) that Cuba would remain on the state sponsor of terrorism list published annually and where Cuba has appeared since 1982.
As per the Dept. of State website, when a country appears on the list it has been “determined by the Secretary of State [the country has] … repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism…
Currently there are four countries on the U.S. list: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. I don’t know about Iran, Sudan and Syria. What I am sure of is that Cuba does not belong on the list.
But it turns out that if the U.S. approves a terrorist, then they are labeled freedom fighters. Others… end up on the bully’s list.
I live in a city that provides (and provided) safe haven and aid to terrorists – persons who have publicly been honored by some of our members of congress. Goodfellas like Orlando Bosh, Luis Posada Carriles, Guillermo Novo Sampol, Pedro Remon et al.
Heck! Orlando Bosh was helped along the way by the Bush family, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and even Raoul G. Cantero, who later was named a Florida Supreme Court justice, appointed by – you guessed it – then Governor Jeb Bush.
But it goes beyond Miami… or what should we call the Guantanamo Bay gulag, where the U.S. does as it pleases with prisoners – including the use of torture?
For decades the U.S. has embraced our world in unique and dangerous ways. Here are just a few examples:
It is the only country to drop two atomic bombs decimating two cities (and those that surrounded them) in Japan killing and shattering the lives of millions in the process.
Who helped overthrow a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953? All for the almighty black gold! This disaster later led to an even bigger one – the 1979 Iranian revolution and the establishment of an Islamic republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The U.S. attacked small countries in Southeast Asia that had not done a thing to it. Our best and brightest determined the spread of communism around the world must be stopped. Or have we forgotten Vietnam and President Eisenhower’s Domino Theory?
Agent Orange, a chemical weapon, was used in Vietnam as part of the U.S. warfare program destroying the environment and killing hundreds of thousands along the way. And later we are outraged at others who use – chemical weapons!
Over more than half a century the U.S. has funded and trained those responsible for the hundreds if not thousands of terrorist forays into an island country in the Caribbean in the hopes of destabilizing and toppling Cuba’s government.
President Nixon and Henry Kissinger have blood on their hands in the overthrow of Salvador Allende, a democratically elected president, in Chile in 1973.
Have we forgotten that the U.S. trained and funded Osama bin Laden when he joined the mujahideen forces in Pakistan against the Soviets in Afghanistan helping to later create the world’s most wanted terrorist. And the terror of 9/11…
Then there’s President George W. Bush who lied to attack Iraq by saying they possessed weapons of mass destruction. This led to the killing of hundreds of thousands and helped to create greater instability in that region of the world. By the way, they’re still looking for the WMDs…
I am sure I’ve missed or forgotten (or don’t even know about) hundreds if not thousands of U.S. adventures around the world as they strive to bring U.S. imposed freedom to others.
Then there’s little Cuba just 90 miles from Key West, an island nation that for centuries has refused to bow before the giant to its north. And for that reason they are condemned as terrorists.
As I said at the beginning, I’ll call them hypocrites.
Allow me to rephrase that: the U.S. should look at itself in the mirror the next time it decides to put together a list of terrorist countries.
Oh man this is getting funny. When all the odds are against you, you go full-circle again… ‘if the facts are not what I want them to be, THEN they are internet babble’. BTW you recently agreed on a piece of propaganda from El País that utterly distorted our health ministry declaration regarding foreign doctors, AND tell ME that I should ‘not believe everything’ I read on the internet? HAHAHA, I mean, sorry, this is just pitiful.
You should not believe everything you read on the internet. Especially uncorroborated ‘facts’ like the ones presented in the article you referenced. You know better than that.
Your line of reasoning is circular ie, it doesn’t go anywhere. Your awful rationalization of ‘hardly innocent’ victims of both drone attacks and torture is nothing but a confirmation of the bogus axiom I stated before. You start from this axiom without even mentioning the words ‘Arabs’ or ‘Muslims’. Unless you don’t know what an ‘axiom’ is, you’re playing the fool.
Since both you and Griffin have reason against you on this, you appeal to LIES. For example, it’s not just ‘a few’ innocent people who get murdered by drone attacks, in fact, they are the majority of casualties of this new modus-operandi of a ‘dirty war’, which is indeed a form of terrorism:
http://www.policymic.com/articles/16949/predator-drone-strikes-50-civilians-are-killed-for-every-1-terrorist-and-the-cia-only-wants-to-up-drone-warfare
Most victims killed by US drone attacks are hardly innocent unarmed non-combatants. Sadly, a few innocent civilians have also been killed or injured by these attacks through their physical proximity to the intended and presumed guilty targets. This is most likely to occur when the guilty perpetrators choose to hide themselves among the general population and especially among their own family members. President Obama has been forthcoming about the process he demands in determining the targets for these attacks. GITMO detainees, like any prisoners of war, are also hardly victims of a terrorist act. I never said anything about Arabs or Muslims. Nor should you.
‘Terrorism = directed and unprovoked violence against unarmed non-combatants, regardless of budget intended to create confusion and fear for its own sake.’
Drone attacks and GITMO fits perfectly in this definition of ‘terrorism’. Unless you start from the bogus axiom that ‘Arab Muslims=terrorists’. Stop the denial doing so today is erasing the entire 2000’s from memory.
Jason, the Cuban government does not allow the Cuban people, as you naïvely wrote, to “decide how they want their government to serve them”. It’s the other way around. The Cuban government has decided how they want the Cuban people to serve them.
The US is far from innocent in international crimes & interventions. And yes, they have supported actions which can be called terrorism. But the author, typical of Leftists, omits the historical context which almost always includes an invasion or revolution by Communist armies which precipitated the US intervention. Further on that point, the critics leave out entirely the terrorism committed by these Communist regimes against their own people. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, the Kims of North Korea, Mengistu …the list goes on.
If only these Leftist apologist were at least be honest and said, ” OK, so the US imperialists and the Communist regimes all committed terrorism, genocides and war crimes, but I support the Communists, so their crimes don’t count.”
The author conveniently glides over cases of Syria, Iran and Sudan on the list of terrorism supporting nations. It must be noted that Syria and Iran have close relationships with the Cuban regime and it was only a few days ago that an envoy of the Syrian dictator Bashir el-Assad was visiting Havana. What was he doing in Cuba? What sort of business does Cuba have with the Syrian regime, currently embroiled in a life and death civil war in which the Syrian army stands accused of using chemical weapons?
There are also several factual errors in Alvaro’s diatribe. I will list them below, along with the corrections.
1. The US has not threatened Cuba for centuries, nor was Cuba a nation for centuries. It was a colony of Spain until the US intervened in Cuba in 1898. The US occupied Cuba until 1909, whereafter the US dominated Cuba until the revolution of 1959. The most one could say is a century plus a decade or two. Cuba is not on the US terrorist list because they “refused to bow before the giant to its north”. It’s on the list because they have supported terrorist organizations and operations in the past, and continue to provide safe haven to many wanted criminals and terrorists. In that context, Cuba’s ongoing relationships with other terrorist states, such as Syria and Iran, and their support of terrorist organizations such as FARC, ETA and the PFLP, justify their inclusion on the US’s list of states supporting terrorism. Cuba still refuses to join international-counterterrorism efforts.
2. Iraq did indeed have WMD, but not in the quantities the US, and every other foreign intelligence agency believed they had. Stocks of chemical weapons & equipment were shipped to Syria prior to the US invasion.
3. The US never funded or trained Osama bin Laden. British journalist Peter Bergen interviewed Bin Laden in 1998 and asked him if he had ever received help from the US. Bin Laden said never, and even if the US had offered help, he would have refused it. Bin Laden pointed out he had other sources of funding (ie. wealthy Arabs). The governments of Pakistan & Saudi Arabia also confirm that the US never supplied bin Laden with support. The US has always maintained they provided support only for native Afghan rebels fighting the Russians.
4. The US intervention in Iran in 1953 was as much about stopping the USSR from expanding to the Persian Gulf, as it was about oil. The US was concerned about Mossadegh leaning toward the Iranian Tudeh who were allied with Moscow. I don’t support or excuse the CIA backed coup, but it is important to understand the full context of the Cold War in this case. The Soviet occupation of northern Iran in 1941 and the establishment of puppet regimes in Iranian Azerbaijan and Gilan provinces were recent memories.
5. The use of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought a sudden end to WWII. As horrible as these weapons were, the only other alternative was for a long drawn out war in which millions for people would have been killed. For each of the 6 months prior to August 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army had killed some 500,000 civilians in China, Manchuria, Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines. The Japanese would have continued to slaughter those subject people on the same scale for months, perhaps years to come in a drawn out war. Millions of Japanese would have died in an invasion of the Japanese main islands. Critics who condemn the US for using 2 atom bombs (total deaths were 246,000), must somehow justify not using the bombs and accepting the ongoing war and slaughter of millions by the Japanese Imperial Army.
One can condemn the US as imperialists or terrorists. But their interventions were in the context of the Cold War in which the expansive communist dictatorship of the USSR was also committing interventions, supporting insurgencies and acts of terrorism. Consider the results: most of those countries where the US interventions were successful are free, independent & democratic (South Korea, Chile, Grenada, Guatemala). Those countries where US interventions failed, still suffer under oppressive Communist dictatorships (North Korea, Vietnam & Cuba).
What does “spirit of terror” mean? Terrorists aim to create a spirit of confusion and fear. Usually for the purpose of gaining moral, intellectual and ideological superiority. American foreign policy includes intervening economically and militarily in the sovereign affairs of other countries when non-intervention fails to secure our foreign policy ends. Most military interventions have been at the invitation of the government in power and the remainder largely due an overwhelming international consensus to intervene in order to save human lives. No one likes the cops until you need one. Ask the more than one million Syrian refugees if they want the US to just “worry about our problems”.
War = purposeful mutual violence between armed combatants.
Terrorism = directed and unprovoked violence against unarmed non-combatants, regardless of budget intended to create confusion and fear for its own sake.
There is a difference.
Denial, denial, denial.
‘However, the mature and reasoned definition for terrorism involves the
unprovoked attack and often murder of innocent non-combatants for
ideological purposes.’
The countless coups promoted by your country fits perfectly into this definition. Drone attacks also. And the list goes on, and on, and on.
The ‘ideological purpose’ of the US is to bring ‘freedom’ around the world, as you have stated yourself earlier.
And war is terrorism with a bigger budget.
Moses your argument that the actions don’t meet the technical definition of terror honestly does not support your position. Even if it is not the technical definition it’s still the spirit if terror. I don’t know why our government feels the need to be in everybody else’s business. Why don’t we worry about our problems and let Cuba decide how they want their government to serve them, and we stop trying to get them to be our servants.
It has increasingly become de rigueur for the extreme left to accuse the US on promoting ‘terrorism’. Doing so is an attempt to soften the impact of the word. It’s reminiscent of the name-calling game that children play on the schoolyard. They often chant “If I am a ******, then so are you.” In my youth we called it playing the dozens. It always ended in fisticuffs if someone brought someone’s mother into the game. These days, leftists such as this writer, Alvaro Fernandez, are trying to play this childish game with the word “terrorists”. However, the mature and reasoned middle-of-the-road definition for terrorism involves the unprovoked attack and often murder of innocent non-combatants for ideological purposes. The goal being to generate “terror” among the target population. In practical terms, this usually manifests in the bombing of public spaces or the kidnapping and assault on civilians, especially the press. The violent actions listed in this post rightfully blamed on the US government still do not fall within the layman’s definition of terrorists attacks. Even the direct involvement of US forces in the destabilization of unfriendly regimes should not be labeled acts of terrorism given the vast difference between a government’s ability to defend itself when compared to the vulnerability of marathon runners near a finish line or airline passengers inflight. Encouraging leftists government coups may draw the political ire of like-minded supporters but this is not terrorism. What it is and what it should be called should be left to debate. Holding a member of the press hostage in the name of religious fervor and filming that hostage’s decapitation is definitely terrorism. What the US has done is something else.