President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are making me feel as if I’ve been transported back to the era of the Cold War—a scheme that successfully entrenched the U.S. national-security apparatus and its ever-expanding network of “defense” contractors as a permanent fixture in American society.
The State Department recently released a report straight from the Cold War’s old handbook. It alleges that Cuba’s communist government supports democratic socialist movements and radical leftist factions within the United States. Echoing this, Rubio spoke last week at a major State Department event, claiming Cuba’s “sprawling intelligence and ideological network helped to build the far left in our country and in our hemisphere.”
Put simply, the Reds are supposedly back to threaten us once more! Everyone is urged to look under their beds for Communist threats yet again! And Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores, is portrayed as the frontline force of an international communist plot aiming to take over America once again! It’s a shame Senator Joseph McCarthy isn’t around when we need him most.
First question for Rubio: Has the center of the international communist conspiracy shifted from Moscow to Beijing?
Second question for Rubio: Could socialist-communist Cuba also be behind his avid support for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, and other socialist programs in the U.S.?
The Cold War scheme was a boon for the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA—the three pillars of the American national-security state. By instilling fear of the Reds among Americans post-World War II, proponents of perpetual warfare succeeded in transforming the federal government from a limited republic into a national-security state resembling totalitarianism—and all this happened without any formal constitutional amendment.
That is how citizens now dwell under a government wielding near-absolute power—the kind that can assassinate, torture, and imprison people for life without due process or a jury trial.
It also explains why Americans experience continuous wars and endless crises.
Moreover, it’s why people live as if serfs, under a gigantic, omnipotent, and costly military-intelligence complex along with its ever-growing army of ravenous “defense” contractors.
The report also brings up Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of President Kennedy who denied responsibility and claimed he was framed as a “patsy.” Yet, notably absent is any mention that months before his murder, Kennedy made a major “breakthrough,” realizing the Cold War was a dangerous, destructive racket bringing the U.S. perilously close to nuclear war. That’s why JFK was determined to end this Cold War scheme and, in his words, to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”
Unsurprisingly, the report omits that Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis — which left Cuba firmly communist — his American University Peace Speech signaling an end to the Cold War intrigue, and his peace initiatives toward Cuba at the time of his assassination were the main reasons the national-security apparatus saw him as a severe “national security” threat that had to be removed.
What Rubio’s report also neglects to state is that the U.S. government, particularly its national-security branch, has historically been the aggressor against Cuba—not the other way around.
Recall the U.S. invasion attempt at the Bay of Pigs and the deceptions the CIA used to secure Kennedy’s backing for that operation.
Remember Operation Mongoose, a campaign of violent sabotage against Cuban economic targets.
Recall the CIA’s collaboration with the Mafia—arguably the world’s top criminal organization—in plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, a partnership that was later turned inward against Kennedy himself.
Remember CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles’s terrorist acts, including the bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed members of Cuba’s fencing team and attacks on Cuban hotels that claimed more innocent lives. The CIA has long claimed he was no longer affiliated when these atrocities occurred; if you accept that, I have a bridge in the Arizona desert to sell you. Why else did U.S. officials shield Posada from extradition to Venezuela, where he faced trial for terrorism against innocent Cubans aboard the airliner?
Furthermore, let’s not overlook the decades-long Cold War economic embargo aimed at— and still targeting— the Cuban people with death by starvation and disease. What’s the difference between dying from a terrorist attack or a plane crash and suffering death due to starvation or illness caused by an embargo? In all cases, the victims are still dead.
I will never forget Cuban leader Che Guevara’s response shortly after the Cuban revolution when asked what Cuba wanted from the U.S.: “Just leave us alone.”
Yet, the U.S. government has never managed to leave Cuba in peace. The Pentagon-CIA-NSA’s obsession with regime change in Cuba has endured for decades and clearly hasn’t ended with the Cold War’s close. U.S. officials remain committed to overthrowing Cuba’s communist government and installing another brutal right-wing dictatorship, such as Chile’s Augusto Pinochet or the corrupt, U.S.-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, whom Castro displaced. It might be worth noting that Batista was known for kidnapping underage Cuban girls to serve as sexual favors for Mafia casino gamblers in Havana. Also worth mentioning is that Rubio’s parents did not flee Cuba after the communist takeover, as he once claimed, but instead left while Batista was still in power.
The reality is that throughout the troubled history between Cuba and the U.S., it has always been the American government acting as the aggressor and terrorist. Sadly, that remains true today—demonstrated not only by the long-standing U.S. embargo but now reinforced by a harsh oil blockade designed to kill even more Cubans.
It is quite plain that Trump and Rubio are resurrecting the old Cold War scare tactic about the Reds returning to menace us, preparing the American public for a possible invasion of Cuba—assuming, of course, that they can first withdraw from their illegal and unconstitutional war against Iran.
Original article: fff.org
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