{"id":84104,"date":"2016-12-12T12:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=84104"},"modified":"2016-12-08T13:44:52","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T13:44:52","slug":"superpower-in-war-against-cuba-for-50-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/12\/superpower-in-war-against-cuba-for-50-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Superpower in War against Cuba for 50 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>27 Nov 2016 – <\/em>The Batista dictatorship was overthrown in January 1959 by Castro\u2019s guerrilla forces. In March, the National Security Council (NSC) considered means to institute regime change. In May, the CIA began to arm guerrillas inside Cuba. \u201cDuring the Winter of 1959-1960, there was a significant increase in CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary raids piloted by exiled Cubans\u201d based in the US. We need not tarry on what the US or its clients would do under such circumstances. Cuba, however, did not respond with violent actions within the United States for revenge or deterrence. Rather, it followed the procedure required by international law. In July 1960, Cuba called on the UN for help, providing the Security Council with records of some twenty bombings, including names of pilots, plane registration numbers, unexploded bombs, and other specific details, alleging considerable damage and casualties and calling for resolution of the conflict through diplomatic channels. US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge responded by giving his \u201cassurance [that] the United States has no aggressive purpose against Cuba.\u201d Four months before, in March 1960, his government had made a formal decision in secret to overthrow the Castro government, and preparations for the Bay of Pigs invasion were well advanced.<\/p>\n

Washington was concerned that Cubans might try to defend themselves. CIA chief Allen Dulles therefore urged Britain not to provide arms to Cuba. His \u201cmain reason,\u201d the British ambassador reported to London, \u201cwas that this might lead the Cubans to ask for Soviet or Soviet bloc arms,\u201d a move that \u201cwould have a tremendous effect,\u201d Dulles pointed out, allowing Washington to portray Cuba as a security threat to the hemisphere, following the script that had worked so well in Guatemala. Dulles was referring to Washington\u2019s successful demolition of Guatemala\u2019s first democratic experiment, a ten-year interlude of hope and progress, greatly feared in Washington because of the enormous popular support reported by US intelligence and the \u201cdemonstration effect\u201d of social and economic measures to benefit the large majority. The Soviet threat was routinely invoked, abetted by Guatemala\u2019s appeal to the Soviet bloc for arms after the US had threatened attack and cut off other sources of supply. The result was a half-century of horror, even worse than the US-backed tyranny that came before.<\/p>\n

For Cuba, the schemes devised by the doves were similar to those of CIA director Dulles. Warning President Kennedy about the \u201cinevitable political and diplomatic fall-out\u201d from the planned invasion of Cuba by a proxy army, Arthur Schlesinger suggested efforts to trap Castro in some action that could be used as a pretext for invasion: \u201cOne can conceive a black operation in, say, Haiti which might in time lure Castro into sending a few boatloads of men on to a Haitian beach in what could be portrayed as an effort to overthrow the Haitian regime, . . . then the moral issue would be clouded, and the anti-US campaign would be hobbled from the start.\u201d Reference is to the regime of the murderous dictator \u201cPapa Doc\u201d Duvalier, which was backed by the US (with some reservations), so that an effort to help Haitians overthrow it would be a crime.<\/p>\n

Eisenhower\u2019s March 1960 plan called for the overthrow of Castro in favor of a regime \u201cmore devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the U.S.,\u201d including support for \u201cmilitary operation on the island\u201d and \u201cdevelopment of an adequate paramilitary force outside of Cuba.\u201d Intelligence reported that popular support for Castro was high, but the US would determine the \u201ctrue interests of the Cuban people.\u201d The regime change was to be carried out \u201cin such a manner as to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention,\u201d because of the anticipated reaction in Latin America and the problems of doctrinal management at home.<\/p>\n

Operation Mongoose<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Bay of Pigs invasion came a year later, in April 1961, after Kennedy had taken office. It was authorized in an atmosphere of \u201chysteria\u201d over Cuba in the White House, Robert McNamara later testified before the Senate\u2019s Church Committee. At the first cabinet meeting after the failed invasion, the atmosphere was \u201calmost savage,\u201d Chester Bowles noted privately: \u201cthere was an almost frantic reaction for an action program.\u201d At an NSC meeting two days later, Bowles found the atmosphere \u201calmost as emotional\u201d and was struck by \u201cthe great lack of moral integrity\u201d that prevailed. The mood was reflected in Kennedy\u2019s public pronouncements: \u201cThe complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history. Only the strong . . . can possibly survive,\u201d he told the country, sounding a theme that would be used to good effect by the Reaganites during their own terrorist wars. Kennedy was aware that allies \u201cthink that we\u2019re slightly demented\u201d on the subject of Cuba, a perception that persists to the present.<\/p>\n

Kennedy implemented a crushing embargo that could scarcely be endured by a small country that had become a \u201cvirtual colony\u201d of the US in the sixty years following its \u201cliberation\u201d from Spain. He also ordered an intensification of the terrorist campaign: \u201cHe asked his brother, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, to lead the top-level interagency group that oversaw Operation Mongoose, a program of paramilitary operations, economic warfare, and sabotage he launched in late 1961 to visit the \u2018terrors of the earth\u2019 on Fidel Castro and, more prosaically, to topple him.\u201d<\/p>\n

The terrorist campaign was \u201cno laughing matter,\u201d Jorge Dominguez writes in a review of recently declassified materials on operations under Kennedy, materials that are \u201cheavily sanitized\u201d and \u201conly the tip of the iceberg,\u201d Piero Gleijeses adds.<\/p>\n

Operation Mongoose was \u201cthe centerpiece of American policy toward Cuba from late 1961 until the onset of the 1962 missile crisis,\u201d Mark White reports, the program on which the Kennedy brothers \u201ccame to pin their hopes.\u201d Robert Kennedy informed the CIA that the Cuban problem carries \u201cthe top priority in the United States Government \u2014 all else is secondary \u2014 no time, no effort, or manpower is to be spared\u201d in the effort to overthrow the Castro regime. The chief of Mongoose operations, Edward Lansdale, provided a timetable leading to \u201copen revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime\u201d in October 1962. The \u201cfinal definition\u201d of the program recognized that \u201cfinal success will require decisive U.S. military intervention,\u201d after terrorism and subversion had laid the basis. The implication is that US military intervention would take place in October 1962 \u2014 when the missile crisis erupted.<\/p>\n

In February 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff approved a plan more extreme than Schlesinger\u2019s: to use \u201ccovert means . . . to lure or provoke Castro, or an uncontrollable subordinate, into an overt hostile reaction against the United States; a reaction which would in turn create the justification for the US to not only retaliate but destroy Castro with speed, force and determination.\u201d In March, at the request of the DOD Cuba Project, the Joint Chiefs of Staff submitted a memorandum to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara outlining \u201cpretexts which they would consider would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba.\u201d The plan would be undertaken if \u201ca credible internal revolt is impossible of attainment during the next 9-10 months,\u201d but before Cuba could establish relations with Russia that might \u201cdirectly involve the Soviet Union.\u201d<\/p>\n

A prudent resort to terror should avoid risk to the perpetrator.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The March plan was to construct \u201cseemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression of Cuban rashness and responsibility on a large scale, directed at other countries as well as the United States,\u201d placing the US \u201cin the apparent position of suffering defensible grievances [and developing] an international image of Cuban threat to peace in the Western Hemisphere.\u201d Proposed measures included blowing up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay to create \u201ca \u2018Remember the Maine\u2019 incident,\u201d publishing casualty lists in US newspapers to \u201ccause a helpful wave of national indignation,\u201d portraying Cuban investigations as \u201cfairly compelling evidence that the ship was taken under attack,\u201d developing a \u201cCommunist Cuban terror campaign [in Florida] and even in Washington,\u201d using Soviet bloc incendiaries for cane-burning raids in neighboring countries, shooting down a drone aircraft with a pretense that it was a charter flight carrying college students on a holiday, and other similarly ingenious schemes \u2014 not implemented, but another sign of the \u201cfrantic\u201d and \u201csavage\u201d atmosphere that prevailed.<\/p>\n

On August 23 the president issued National Security Memorandum No. 181, \u201ca directive to engineer an internal revolt that would be followed by U.S. military intervention,\u201d involving \u201csignificant U.S. military plans, maneuvers, and movement of forces and equipment\u201d that were surely known to Cuba and Russia. Also in August, terrorist attacks were intensified, including speedboat strafing attacks on a Cuban seaside hotel \u201cwhere Soviet military technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans\u201d; attacks on British and Cuban cargo ships; the contamination of sugar shipments; and other atrocities and sabotage, mostly carried out by Cuban exile organizations permitted to operate freely in Florida. A few weeks later came \u201cthe most dangerous moment in human history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA bad press in some friendly countries\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Terrorist operations continued through the tensest moments of the missile crisis. They were formally canceled on October 30, several days after the Kennedy and Khrushchev agreement, but went on nonetheless. On November 8, \u201ca Cuban covert action sabotage team dispatched from the United States successfully blew up a Cuban industrial facility,\u201d killing 400 workers, according to the Cuban government. Raymond Garthoff writes that \u201cthe Soviets could only see [the attack] as an effort to backpedal on what was, for them, the key question remaining: American assurances not to attack Cuba.\u201d These and other actions reveal again, he concludes, \u201cthat the risk and danger to both sides could have been extreme, and catastrophe not excluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the crisis ended, Kennedy renewed the terrorist campaign. Ten days before his assassination he approved a CIA plan for \u201cdestruction operations\u201d by US proxy forces \u201cagainst a large oil refinery and storage facilities, a large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor facilities, and underwater demolition of docks and ships.\u201d A plot to kill Castro was initiated on the day of the Kennedy assassination. The campaign was called off in 1965, but \u201cone of Nixon\u2019s first acts in office in 1969 was to direct the CIA to intensify covert operations against Cuba.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of particular interest are the perceptions of the planners. In his review of recently released documents on Kennedy-era terror, Dominguez observes that \u201conly once in these nearly thousand pages of documentation did a U.S. official raise something that resembled a faint moral objection to U.S.-government sponsored terrorism\u201d: a member of the NSC staff suggested that it might lead to some Russian reaction, and raids that are \u201chaphazard and kill innocents . . . might mean a bad press in some friendly countries.\u201d The same attitudes prevail throughout the internal discussions, as when Robert Kennedy warned that a full-scale invasion of Cuba would \u201ckill an awful lot of people, and we\u2019re going to take an awful lot of heat on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terrorist activities continued under Nixon, peaking in the mid- 1970s, with attacks on fishing boats, embassies, and Cuban offices overseas, and the bombing of a Cubana airliner, killing all seventy-three passengers. These and subsequent terrorist operations were carried out from US territory, though by then they were regarded as criminal acts by the FBI.<\/p>\n

So matters proceeded, while Castro was condemned by editors for maintaining an \u201carmed camp, despite the security from attack promised by Washington in 1962.\u201d The promise should have sufficed, despite what followed; not to speak of the promises that preceded, by then well documented, along with information about how well they could be trusted: e.g., the \u201cLodge moment\u201d of July 1960.<\/p>\n

On the thirtieth anniversary of the missile crisis, Cuba protested a machine-gun attack against a Spanish-Cuban tourist hotel; responsibility was claimed by a group in Miami. Bombings in Cuba in 1997, which killed an Italian tourist, were traced back to Miami. The perpetrators were Salvadoran criminals operating under the direction of Luis Posada Carriles and financed in Miami. One of the most notorious international terrorists, Posada had escaped from a Venezuelan prison, where he had been held for the Cubana airliner bombing, with the aid of Jorge Mas Canosa, a Miami businessman who was the head of the tax-exempt Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF). Posada went from Venezuela to El Salvador, where he was put to work at the Ilopango military air base to help organize US terrorist attacks against Nicaragua under Oliver North\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

Posada has described in detail his terrorist activities and the funding for them from exiles and CANF in Miami, but felt secure that he would not be investigated by the FBI. He was a Bay of Pigs veteran, and his subsequent operations in the 1960s were directed by the CIA. When he later joined Venezuelan intelligence with CIA help, he was able to arrange for Orlando Bosch, an associate from his CIA days who had been convicted in the US for a bomb attack on a Cuba-bound freighter, to join him in Venezuela to organize further attacks against Cuba. An ex-CIA official familiar with the Cubana bombing identifies Posada and Bosch as the only suspects in the bombing, which Bosch defended as \u201ca legitimate act of war.\u201d Generally considered the \u201cmastermind\u201d of the airline bombing, Bosch was responsible for thirty other acts of terrorism, according to the FBI. He was granted a presidential pardon in 1989 by the incoming Bush I administration after intense lobbying by Jeb Bush and South Florida Cuban-American leaders, overruling the Justice Department, which had found the conclusion \u201cinescapable that it would be prejudicial to the public interest for the United States to provide a safe haven for Bosch [because] the security of this nation is affected by its ability to urge credibly other nations to refuse aid and shelter to terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Economic warfare<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cuban offers to cooperate in intelligence-sharing to prevent terrorist attacks have been rejected by Washington, though some did lead to US actions. \u201cSenior members of the FBI visited Cuba in 1998 to meet their Cuban counterparts, who gave [the FBI] dossiers about what they suggested was a Miami-based terrorist network: information which had been compiled in part by Cubans who had infiltrated exile groups.\u201d Three months later the FBI arrested Cubans who had infiltrated the US-based terrorist groups. Five were sentenced to long terms in prison.<\/p>\n

The national security pretext lost whatever shreds of credibility it might have had after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, though it was not until 1998 that US intelligence officially informed the country that Cuba no longer posed a threat to US national security. The Clinton administration, however, insisted that the military threat posed by Cuba be reduced to \u201cnegligible,\u201d but not completely removed. Even with this qualification, the intelligence assessment eliminated a danger that had been identified by the Mexican ambassador in 1961, when he rejected JFK\u2019s attempt to organize collective action against Cuba on the grounds that \u201cif we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fairness, however, it should be recognized that missiles in Cuba did pose a threat. In private discussions the Kennedy brothers expressed their fears that the presence of Russian missiles in Cuba might deter a US invasion of Venezuela. So \u201cthe Bay of Pigs was really right,\u201d JFK concluded.<\/p>\n

The Bush I administration reacted to the elimination of the security pretext by making the embargo much harsher, under pressure from Clinton, who outflanked Bush from the right during the 1992 election campaign. Economic warfare was made still more stringent in 1996, causing a furor even among the closest US allies. The embargo came under considerable domestic criticism as well, on the grounds that it harms US exporters and investors \u2014 the embargo\u2019s only victims, according to the standard picture in the US; Cubans are unaffected. Investigations by US specialists tell a different story. Thus, a detailed study by the American Association for World Health concluded that the embargo had severe health effects, and only Cuba\u2019s remarkable health care system had prevented a \u201chumanitarian catastrophe\u201d; this has received virtually no mention in the US.<\/p>\n

The embargo has effectively barred even food and medicine. In 1999 the Clinton administration eased such sanctions for all countries on the official list of \u201cterrorist states,\u201d apart from Cuba, singled out for unique punishment. Nevertheless, Cuba is not entirely alone in this regard. After a hurricane devastated West Indian islands in August 1980, President Carter refused to allow any aid unless Grenada was excluded, as punishment for some unspecified initiatives of the reformist Maurice Bishop government. When the stricken countries refused to agree to Grenada\u2019s exclusion, having failed to perceive the threat to survival posed by the nutmeg capital of the world, Carter withheld all aid. Similarly, when Nicaragua was struck by a hurricane in October 1988, bringing starvation and causing severe ecological damage, the current incumbents in Washington recognized that their terrorist war could benefit from the disaster, and therefore refused aid, even to the Atlantic Coast area with close links to the US and deep resentment against the Sandinistas. They followed suit when a tidal wave wiped out Nicaraguan fishing villages, leaving hundreds dead and missing in September 1992. In this case, there was a show of aid, but hidden in the small print was the fact that apart from an impressive donation of $25,000, the aid was deducted from assistance already scheduled. Congress was assured, however, that the pittance of aid would not affect the administration\u2019s suspension of over $100 million of aid because the US-backed Nicaraguan government had failed to demonstrate a sufficient degree of subservience.<\/p>\n

US economic warfare against Cuba has been strongly condemned in virtually every relevant international forum, even declared illegal by the Judicial Commission of the normally compliant Organization of American States. The European Union called on the World Trade Organization to condemn the embargo. The response of the Clinton administration was that \u201cEurope is challenging \u2018three decades of American Cuba policy that goes back to the Kennedy Administration,\u2019 and is aimed entirely at forcing a change of government in Havana.\u201d The administration also declared that the WTO has no competence to rule on US national security or to compel the US to change its laws. Washington then withdrew from the proceedings, rendering the matter moot.<\/p>\n

Successful defiance<\/strong><\/p>\n

The reasons for the international terrorist attacks against Cuba and the illegal economic embargo are spelled out in the internal record. And no one should be surprised to discover that they fit a familiar pattern \u2014 that of Guatemala a few years earlier, for example.<\/p>\n

From the timing alone, it is clear that concern over a Russian threat could not have been a major factor. The plans for forceful regime change were drawn up and implemented before there was any significant Russian connection, and punishment was intensified after the Russians disappeared from the scene. True, a Russian threat did develop, but that was more a consequence than a cause of US terrorism and economic warfare.<\/p>\n

In July 1961 the CIA warned that \u201cthe extensive influence of \u2018Castroism\u2019 is not a function of Cuban power. . . . Castro\u2019s shadow looms large because social and economic conditions throughout Latin America invite opposition to ruling authority and encourage agitation for radical change,\u201d for which Castro\u2019s Cuba provided a model. Earlier, Arthur Schlesinger had transmitted to the incoming President Kennedy his Latin American Mission report, which warned of the susceptibility of Latin Americans to \u201cthe Castro idea of taking matters into one\u2019s own hands.\u201d The report did identify a Kremlin connection: the Soviet Union \u201chovers in the wings, flourishing large development loans and presenting itself as the model for achieving modernization in a single generation.\u201d The dangers of the \u201cCastro idea\u201d are particularly grave, Schlesinger later elaborated, when \u201cthe distribution of land and other forms of national wealth greatly favors the propertied classes\u201d and \u201cthe poor and underprivileged, stimulated by the example of the Cuban revolution, are now demanding opportunities for a decent living.\u201d Kennedy feared that Russian aid might make Cuba a \u201cshowcase\u201d for development, giving the Soviets the upper hand throughout Latin America.<\/p>\n

In early 1964, the State Department Policy Planning Council expanded on these concerns: \u201cThe primary danger we face in Castro is . . . in the impact the very existence of his regime has upon the leftist movement in many Latin American countries. . . . The simple fact is that Castro represents a successful defiance of the US, a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half.\u201d To put it simply, Thomas Paterson writes, \u201cCuba, as symbol and reality, challenged U.S. hegemony in Latin America.\u201d International terrorism and economic warfare to bring about regime change are justified not by what Cuba does, but by its \u201cvery existence,\u201d its \u201csuccessful defiance\u201d of the proper master of the hemisphere. Defiance may justify even more violent actions, as in Serbia, as quietly conceded after the fact; or Iraq, as also recognized when pretexts had collapsed.<\/p>\n

Outrage over defiance goes far back in American history. Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson bitterly condemned France for its \u201cattitude of defiance\u201d in holding New Orleans, which he coveted. Jefferson warned that France\u2019s \u201ccharacter [is] placed in a point of eternal friction with our character, which though loving peace and the pursuit of wealth, is high-minded.\u201d France\u2019s \u201cdefiance [requires us to] marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation,\u201d Jefferson advised, reversing his earlier attitudes, which reflected France\u2019s crucial contribution to the liberation of the colonies from British rule. Thanks to Haiti\u2019s liberation struggle, unaided and almost universally opposed, France\u2019s defiance soon ended, but the guiding principles remain in force, determining friend and foe.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________<\/p>\n

Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, mass media,<\/em> US foreign policy, social issues, Latin American and European history, and more.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpted from <\/em>Hegemony or Survival, Metropolitan Books, 2003<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 defenddemocracy.press<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cDuring the Winter of 1959-1960, there was a significant increase in CIA-supervised bombing and incendiary raids piloted by exiled Cubans\u201d based in the US. Cuba, however, did not respond with violent actions within the US for revenge or deterrence but followed international law. In July 1960, Cuba called on the UN providing the Security Council with records of bombings, including names of pilots, plane registration numbers, unexploded bombs, and other specific details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-84104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84104\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}