While the CIA’s and the Pentagon’s assets within the U.S. mainstream press continue to portray Russia as the aggressor in the Ukraine matter, they continue to ignore, or, even worse, support, the U.S. government’s evil actions against Cuba for the past 60-plus years.
It would be difficult to find a better example of evil, or to use Hannah Arendt’s term, the “banality of evil,” than what U.S. officials have done to the Cuban people for the past six decades. After all, let’s keep something important in mind: The Cuban people have never initiated force against the United States, and neither has their government. It has been the U.S. government that has always, without exception, been the aggressor against the Cuban people and the Cuban government.
Consider the brutal economic embargo that U.S. officials have been enforcing against the Cuban people for all those 60-plus years. It is one of the most harshly enforced embargoes in U.S. history. Its purpose is to bring death and impoverishment to the Cuban people. The hope has always been that faced with death and impoverishment, the Cuban people would revolt against the communist regime in Cuba and replace it with another pro-U.S. puppet dictatorship, one just like the Batista regime that the communist revolution succeeded in ousting from power in 1959.
In the process, it has never mattered to U.S. officials how many Cuban people would die in such a revolution. What has always mattered is regaining U.S. dictatorial control over Cuba.
Consider the CIA’s assassination plots against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. How can those be described in any way other than evil? Castro never committed any criminal act against the United States. His government never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. He always made it clear that he just wanted Cuba to be left alone by U.S. officials.
Nonetheless, the CIA targeted him with assassination, which is really just a form of legalized murder. Why shouldn’t murder be considered evil, even when it is committed by officials who wear a U.S. flag on their sleeves?
CIA officials claim that they had the legitimate authority to assassinate Castro because he was a communist. Oh really? Since when does a person’s economic or political philosophy justify his murder? Does that mean that American citizens also have the right to assassinate people who believe in communism or socialism? Will judges permit them to use that as a defense in their murder trials? How can murdering anyone because of his economic or political views be considered as anything less than evil?
Consider the acts of terrorism and sabotage that the CIA has committed in Cuba. Don’t U.S. officials say that terrorists and saboteurs are “bad guys”? How come that appellation doesn’t apply to U.S. officials who have committed or supported acts of terrorism or sabotage in Cuba?
The Pentagon is claiming that Russia is planning a false-flag operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine. The Pentagon knows a lot about false-flag operations. Let’s not forget Operation Northwoods, which is one the most notorious false-flag schemes in history. Unanimously supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, it called for terrorist attacks and attacks on U.S. airliners by U.S. agents posing as Cuban communists, in order to provide a pretext for invading Cuba. To his everlasting credit, President Kennedy rejected this evil scheme. Not surprisingly, the U.S. mainstream press has never condemned or even just mildly criticized Operation Northwoods. They know that the the Pentagon and the CIA would not approve.
Don’t forget GItmo, the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s torture and prison center in Cuba. It was acquired after the U.S. government deceived the Cuban people during the Spanish-American War, which enabled U.S. officials to acquire control over the island and secure their illegitimate imperialist lease of Cuban territory. The Pentagon and the CIA have no more business owning and operating a torture and prison center in Cuba than Cuba has in operating that type of enterprise here in the United States.
Why have U.S. officials insisted on the continuation of their evil embargo against Cuba? Two reasons:
One, the anti-Cuban animus goes back to Castro’s defeat of the CIA’s invasion at the Bay of Pigs. The CIA has never — and will never — get over that humiliation. Imagine: Fidel Castro and his rag-tag third-world army defeating the big, powerful, rich CIA and its proxy army consisting of Cuban exiles. In the eyes of the CIA, that was a sin that could never be forgotten or pardoned. That’s one reason that the embargo persists, more than 30 years after the ostensible end of the Cold War.
Two, Cuban officials established a policy of friendship with Russia. That was considered as grave a threat to U.S. “national security” as it is today.
As much as the U.S mainstream press claims that the Cold War ended in 1989, that’s just not the case, at least not from the standpoint of U.S. officials. That’s demonstrated perfectly by the Cuban embargo, which is still being harshly and brutally enforced today. It’s also demonstrated by the brutal trade war against Red China. And of course, it’s also perfectly demonstrated by the decision to keep that old Cold War dinosaur NATO in existence and have it gobbling up former members of the Warsaw Pact and moving U.S. missiles, troops, and tanks ever closer to Russia’s borders. What better way to ensure ever-increasing taxpayer largess flooding into the coffers of the U.S. national-security establishment and its army of well-heeled “defense” contractors?
The CIA’s and the Pentagon’s acolytes can exclaim all they want against what Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing in response to NATO’s threat to absorb Ukraine. But why can’t they focus at least a bit of their attention on the evil committed by U.S. officials against the people of Cuba for the past 60-plus years and continuing today?