The resurrection of Dr. Strangelove bodes ill for Cuba

Printed on YellowTimes.org
Tuesday, May 21, 2002 @ 03:19:13 CDT

Witnessing the unfolding of present-day events is like watching something out of a grade-B, Hollywood, science-fiction horror flick, a lá Dr. Strangelove. However, the truly frightening part is that it's not a movie. The main character is a xeno- and ideophobic, hyperparanoid, power-hungry, self-delusional, trigger-happy leader run amok. He and his administrative warriors have convinced themselves that they have the right to launch nuclear missiles from their huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction not only in response to a chemical or biological attack, but also (more shockingly) in first, "pre-emptive" strikes against nations who are allegedly plotting terrorist attacks against their country. After all, according to their logic, nuclear bombs are really no different from conventional weapons. Besides, with its high-tech wizardry, know-how, and precision, their military would easily be able to minimize the consequences of nuclear fallout.

Welcome to the wonderful world of George W. Bush, et al.

Caught up in this maniacal zeal to take on and rule the whole world, U.S. President Bush's number three man, Undersecretary of State John Bolton, made public on May 6, in his "Beyond the Axis of Evil" speech to the Heritage Foundation, Washington's intentions to extend military action to three additional countries including, of all places, the small island-nation of Cuba. Therein, he boldly charges Cuba with developing bacteriological weapons and of selling to rogue nations "dual-use" biotechnologies which could theoretically be used against the USA in future terrorist acts.

In fact, his wild accusations are merely that, unsubstantiated suspicions. His speech amounts to a heap of propaganda whose sole purpose is to stir up anti-Cuban sentiments by manipulating and exploiting the post-September 11 fear factor in U.S. citizens in order to justify any future military incursions against that tiny country.

If the truth be known, under the guidance of Fidel Castro, Cuba has invested a great deal of resources and energy (10% of state spending) into medical research with the result that it boasts a sophisticated and well-developed health care system that covers ALL of its citizens (which is more than can be said for the United States). It has especially made progress in biotechnologies associated with treating heart attacks, viral diseases and the development of vaccines against meningitis, hepatitis B and other serious, life-threatening illnesses, according to a May 08 article in the BBC. Cuba has actively shared these technologies with a number of countries, especially Third World countries - some of which have more recently been arbitrarily designated as "rogue" nations by the Bush administration.

Time and again, disgruntled Cuban defectors have raised the same false accusation of Cuba's supposed biological warfare research and development programs. However, investigators from the Miami Herald, top officials at the U.S. State department, and Dr. Raymond Zilinskas, a senior scientist at the Center for Non-proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies each time have separately come to the same conclusion: "There's been no evidence they're doing anything; there's never been evidence; the stuff simply doesn't check out."

The Center for International Policy quotes a U.S. official interviewed in 1999 by Juan Tamayo of the Miami Herald: "Stuff that sophisticated always has dual use [medical and military], no way around it… But none of what we know adds up to Cuba having offensive biological warfare capabilities." After a current inspection of Cuba's medical research facilities, even former President Jimmy Carter vouches for Cuba's innocence of Bolton's far-fetched allegations.

So, what could possibly be the ulterior motive behind Bolton issuing a threat against Cuba? I suggest that the statement directly prefacing Bolton's allegation strongly hints at a more probable, underlying reason for threatening U.S. military aggression: "Cuba leads in the production of pharmaceuticals and various vaccines that are sold worldwide." Hmm, it sounds as if Cuba is unacceptably cutting into the sacred profits of U.S. pharmaceutical companies!

Another point that bears worthy consideration is that Castro has been a thorn in the side of the United States ever since his successful ouster in 1959 of the highly corrupt regime of "Washington's-most-favored-son," Batista.

Shortly after his rise to power, Castro earned the enmity of the United States by nationalizing U.S.-owned enterprises, one prime example being the Bacardi Rum distilleries. Unhappy with its loss of hegemonic influence, the United States initiated a series of terrorist actions against this struggling nation - unabated acts still being carried out today - that would claim the lives of thousands of Cubans over the next 42 years.

The infamous Bay of Pigs blunder in 1961 was backed, financed, planned, and carried out by CIA personnel with the blessings of Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy. This failed coup was followed by the largest assassination campaign in modern history against Fidel Castro, who is reputedly said to have survived over 630 attempts on his life.

Throughout the sixties, Cuba repeatedly suffered hundreds of acts of sabotage, terrorism and psychological warfare including sea and air commando raids by exiles; damage to oil refineries, chemical plants, railroad bridges, cane fields, sugar mills and warehouses; and pirate attacks on Cuban fishing boats and merchant ships.

In October 2001, Executive Intelligence Review exposed a horrifying account of the recently declassified CIA "Operation Northwoods" documents which were drawn up in 1962 in conjunction with officers within the highest level of the Pentagon whose arm of the project they named "Operation Mongoose." The top brass proposed and were ready to execute the idea of using U.S. military personnel to carry out pseudo-Cuban terrorist acts against the United States and U.S. military facilities in order to deceptively win over unconditional, U.S. public support and to create a pretext for a full-scale invasion of Cuba to overthrow Castro.

In an eerily familiar-sounding "wag the dog" scenario, some of the proposals included carrying out terror campaigns in Miami, other Florida cities and even Washington; blowing up ships, exploding plastic bombs, harassing and hijacking civil air and surface craft, the "simulated or real" sinking of boatloads of Cuban refugees, and the simulated shooting down of a chartered civil airliner in Cuban airspace.

All this was to be accompanied by the arrests of "Cuban agents" and the release of carefully prepared "documents" proving their guilt. If it weren't for the somewhat greater moral compass of President Kennedy, who refused to entertain such a diabolical plan, this nightmare perpetrated against unsuspecting U.S. citizens might have actually become a reality.

Throughout the past 40 years, the U.S. government has not only balked at taking steps to deter Miami-based Cuban exiles and terrorist organizations from carrying out acts of aggression against Cuba, but in fact, knowingly continues to harbor them. In 1976, Orlando Bosch, a CIA operative and Cuban exile, was arrested in Venezuela for blowing up a Cuban airline in which 73 people were killed. A comment from The Guardian on February 08, 2002, unveils the very real hypocrisy between U.S. foreign and domestic policy, "Amazingly, Bosch was granted a pardon by George Bush senior in 1990 and is now in Florida, apparently untroubled by the current president's commitment to rooting out terrorism in all its forms…he remains...protected by the same government that warns other countries that they are either for or against terrorism."

In 1984 while being tried on a homicide charge, Eduardo Arocena, leader of the Omega 7 terrorist group, admitted to having participated in a 1980 operation to introduce viruses as part of the war on Cuba. This offers a logical explanation for the four vastly destructive epidemics that emerged between 1979 and 1981 and seriously beleaguered the island: hemorrhagic conjunctivitis and dengue fever which afflicted over 340,000 people, resulting in the deaths of 158 people, 101 of them children, and sugarcane rust and tobacco blue mold which all but wiped out the island's two major export crops.

Only 5 years ago, Raul Ernesto Cruz León was arrested in Havana for a series of bombings in various hotels and in the famous Bodeguita del Medio restaurant that killed one Italian youth. As the New York Times stated in 1997, he confessed to being paid $3,000 for each bomb he planted by the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) - another Cuban-exile terrorist organization based in the United States.

Just a year ago in April 2001, three members of Miami's Alpha 66, an anti-Castro terrorist organization, were caught trying to land on Cuban soil. At the time of their arrest, they had in their possession a rather curious assortment of harmless tourist paraphernalia: four AK-47 assault rifles, one M-3 rifle with a silencer, three Makarov pistols, night goggles and communications equipment. They claim they were sent on a mission to indiscriminately kill Cuban civilians and sow terror on the island.

Castro's appeals for U.S. cooperation in rooting out the terrorist acts directed against Cuba from U.S. soil have constantly fallen on deaf ears. For years, Cuba has handed over detailed, well-documented information to various U.S. government agencies, up to the highest levels, complete with names and conclusive evidence of criminal acts of terrorism, yet U.S. officials have chosen to cast a blind eye - neither a single arrest has been made nor any investigation ever been initiated.

Instead, in June 2001, a Miami court convicted on trumped-up espionage charges five Cuban undercover agents who were monitoring Miami-based, right-wing terrorist groups in an effort to protect their homeland against future attacks. They were sentenced from 15 years to life in prison as a result of a controversial, highly-biased, political trial based on pure speculation, out-of-context excerpts of manipulated documents, and phony "expert" testimony. In a travesty of justice, the prosecutors in this mock trial used every means possible to successfully suppress over 90 percent of the defendants' documentation of innocence and the true purpose of their mission.

The United States' unrelenting assault on Cuba includes a series of punitive trade embargoes in food and medicine that have been in effect since 1960. When Cuba refused to roll over and die after the collapse in 1989 of its main trading partner, the USSR, the U.S. government enacted additional, more intensive trade embargoes in 1992 through the Torricelli Act and again in 1996 through the Helms-Burton Act. The latter not only attempts to extend U.S. sanctions against Cuba to a global level by threatening legal action, fines, and economic sanctions against American or U.S.-friendly industries that continued to do business with Cuba, but also allocates no less than $5 million to finance and support the activities of counterrevolutionary groups.

These latest rounds of U.S. sanctions have been universally condemned, with the UN having issued numerous resolutions calling for an end to the embargo against Cuba, first during 1992-95, and again in 1999. The words of world-renowned Dr. Benjamin Spock highlight the more insidious intentions of U.S. policy towards Cuba: "I believe very few Americans realize what our country is trying to do down there - starve people into submission and deprive children and old people of medicine." What could be more representative of a genuine act of terrorism and an international war crime than withholding and blockading life-essential food and medicine for a civilian population?

In his defense, René González Sehweret, one of the five Cubans recently convicted of "espionage," describes Cuba as "a nation of people whose only crime is having chosen their own path, and having defended that choice successfully, at the cost of enormous sacrifices..."

He goes on to issue a warning against ignorance and complacency within the American public towards U.S. foreign policy and unchecked military might: "...the hatred and ignorance we have seen here towards a small country, which nobody here knows, can be dangerous when combined with a blinding sense of power and false superiority."

For the United States government and its citizens, however, the most politically and morally significant question was posed by Ramón Labañino Salazar, a second of the five convicted Cubans, who defended his actions carried out within the U.S., a country not only unempathetic and unresponsive to, but, in essence, complicit in the continued assault on and suffering of the Cuban people: "How many more deaths of innocent human beings must we witness before this insane and absurd policy towards Cuba is ended?"

[ Columnist (United States) Doreen Miller lived, studied, worked and traveled abroad for several years, and is currently a Senior Lecturer and educator of international students. She dedicates part of her time to serving the elderly and Alzheimer patients. Mother, musician and poet, she pursues an avid interest in Buddhist and Eastern philosophy. She advocates human rights, social justice, fair trade, and environmental protection. Doreen lives in the United States.]

Doreen Miller encourages your comments.