American conservatives, especially the Pentagon and the CIA, have to be in a state of ecstasy over an article about Cuba that appeared in last Sunday’s Washington Post. The article stated that “in a nation plagued by malnutrition,” there is no milk for the Cuban people to purchase. The article points out that Cuba “careens through its worst economic crisis in 30 years” and that Cubans “have been hit by mass shortages of dairy and other basic goods.”
Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista
Why would other people’s suffering put conservatives in a state of ecstasy? Because ever since the Cuban revolution, this is what they have been dreaming of and striving for. Their aim has always been to target the Cuban populace with deep economic suffering and even death in the hope that they will rise up and revolt against Cuba’s communist regime. Then, the hope is that they will install another conservative pro-U.S. puppet who will do the bidding of the Pentagon and the CIA, much like the one that the revolution ousted in 1959, Fulgencio Batista.
That’s been the goal of the U.S. embargo on Cuba ever since it was first imposed in the early 1960s — to bring as much economic impoverishment and even death by starvation or illness to the Cuban people in order to achieve regime change on the island. Never mind that it also, at the same time, destroyed the fundamental, natural, God-given rights of the American people of freedom of travel, freedom of association, freedom of trade, economic liberty, and monetary liberty.
Now, mind you, I say conservatives are undoubtedly in a state of ecstasy, but in actuality they aren’t the only ones who would be feeling happy these days over the situation in Cuba. For some 60 years liberals (i.e., progressives) have also done their part to keep the U.S. embargo in effect. But liberals have an empathy toward the other cause of Cuba’s economic suffering, which is Cuba’s socialist economic system. I suppose you could say that conservatives are experiencing extreme ecstasy over the suffering while liberals are just experiencing great happiness.
What fascinates me about this phenomenon is that so many Americans fail to recognize it for the evil it is. After all, what could be more evil than to target innocent people with death and suffering as a way to achieve a political end? Isn’t that why we condemn terrorism? And how could any reasonable person feel ecstasy or happiness over such suffering?
As I point out in my new book An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, the driving force behind the embargo was the extreme anti-communist animus that has driven America ever since the federal government was converted from a limited-government republic to a national-security state after World War II. That was when the Pentagon, the vast and permanent military-industrial-congressional complex, the CIA, and the NSA came into existence. It’s also when the Cold War began, which itself was driven by the extreme anti-Russia, anti-communist animus that ultimately led to U.S. interventionism in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, countless other foreign interventions, an empire of foreign and domestic military bases, ever-increasing budgets for the “defense” establishment, and omnipotent government in the form of dark-side, non-reviewable, totalitarian-like powers, including the power of engaging in secret state-sponsored assassinations.
As I also point out in my new book, it was that extreme anti-Russia, anti-communist animus that President John F. Kennedy was determined to bring to an end, which ultimately led to his assassination.
As we are learning with Ukraine, for the Pentagon and the CIA the Cold War never really came to an end. That was why they kept that old Cold War dinosaur NATO in existence and, even worse, began moving its jurisdiction eastward, knowing full-well that Russia would never countenance the installation of nuclear missiles in Ukraine pointed at Moscow and other Russian cities.
But an equally good example of this phenomenon is the continuation of the Cold War against Cuba. U.S. officials could have — and should have — lifted that embargo decades ago. But they didn’t. Instead, they have strengthened it and reinforced it, in the sordid hope that they could finally say, “Our embargo has finally succeeded. We have brought regime change to Cuba.”
Never mind how much suffering and death have been inflicted on the Cuban people in the meantime. That doesn’t matter, any more than the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children from the sanctions on Iraq mattered.
Who in Washington or in the mainstream press ever dares to ask the critical question: Under what legal and moral authority did the U.S. government impose the embargo in the first place? Cuba never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Instead, in the long history of hostility between the two nations, it has always been the U.S. government — specifically the Pentagon and the CIA — that has been the aggressor, much like Russia is the aggressor in Ukraine today.
Two aggressive regimes — the Russian regime and the U.S. regime. The problem is that while Americans can easily recognize the Russian regime as evil, all too many of them have a blind spot when it comes to recognizing the evil within their own regime. If they were able to recognize the evil in their own regime, they would be rising up and demanding that their own regime lift its cruel, brutal, and deadly embargo against the Cuban people, much as they are rising up and demanding that Russia cease its war in Ukraine.
As I also point out in my new book, Americans are afflicted with a stultification of conscience. That’s what the Cold War and the national-security state form of government did to Americans. The Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA have become their triune god, one to which they automatically defer because it is ostensibly protecting them and keeping them “safe.” Who needs a conscience when there is automatic deference to whatever the military-intelligence god says?
Consider this sentence from that Washington Post article: “[Fidel Castro] was such a dairy nut that the CIA once tried to poison his daily milkshake.”
Do you notice the nonchalance in that sentence? There is not even the hint of shock, abhorrence, disapproval, or condemnation. That’s because CIA assassinations have become a normal part of American life, even if all too many Americans still do not wish to acknowledge and confront them.
But state-sponsored assassinations are not normal, not when they are committed against foreign political leaders and not when they are committed against American political leaders. State-sponsored assassinations go the heart of the evil within communist, totalitarian, and authoritarian regimes overseas but they are also the heart of the evil that lies at the center of the rot of the U.S. regime.
As I have pointed out over the years, what we need in America is a revival of conscience and consciousness. When that day comes, the evil embargo against the Cuban people will be lifted and America will be back on the road toward liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world.
Purchase: An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story at Amazon. Kindle version: $9.95. Print version: $14.95.