[News] Who's next?

[News at freedomarchives.org]

January 30, 2004  CounterPunch

Imperialists? Who Us?

Cuba High on Neo-Con Hit List

By SAUL LANDAU


"We must continue to stand with the brave people of Cuba, who for nearly 
half a century have endured tyrannies and repression."

President G.W. Bush,
Summit of the Americas,
Monterrey, January 12, 2004

Thanks to the Bush bravado, a new office pool game in Washington national 
security circles emerged. Organizers take bets on which country the United 
States will next invade. The inventors of this new boredom-cutting exercise 
still seek a name for their amusement: "Jeopardy" and "Survivor" are taken. 
How about: "Who's Next?"

In December 2003, Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi narrowed the 
possibilities by removing his nation from competition when he eschewed 
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons ambitions and invited UN 
inspectors to Tripoli. Office bets now range from Syria and Iran in the 
Middle East to North Korea in the Far East, to Cuba, ninety miles south of 
Key West.

These "rogue nations" share the characteristic of having refused to fall 
into line behind Washington's dictates. Using "rogue" to describe 
disobedience plays well at home. It allows the Administration to convert 
lies into axioms. For example, Washington labels Havana "terrorist," 
despite the fact that the United States has launched thousands of terrorist 
missions against Cuba and has no evidence of Cuba initiating any 
retaliatory terrorist acts.

Between Spring 1961 and Fall 1962, the CIA dispatched hundreds of agents to 
Cuba to assassinate, blow up and burn property and cause mayhem. Terrorism 
against Cuba continued sporadically for decades -- well into the 1990s -- 
under the guise that somehow this would help the United States restore 
democracy to the island.

In 1952, the US supported General Fulgencio Batista after he staged his 
electoral coup and removed democracy from the island's political structure. 
But serious national security mavens rarely ruffle their aggressive 
feathers with facts. By repeating cliches about US motives being noble and 
democratic while Presidents authorize illegal wars and overthrows of 
foreign governments, the Administration induces the mass media to follow 
the line whatever it is; at least temporarily.

Indeed, as Harold Innis once phrased it, American imperialism itself "has 
been made plausible and attractive in part by the insistence that it is not 
imperialistic."

Iranians and North Korean have learned the hard way about US behaviour. In 
1953 the CIA knocked over a democratic government in Iran and installed a 
pro-US ruler. Iranians revolted in 1979, tossing out The Shah, but not the 
hot memories of how his secret police had treated them. They took US CIA 
and State Department officials as hostages for more than a year.

North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950, after US-backed South Korea had 
made aggressive incursions into North Korea. US intervention in that war 
cost the North Koreans more than 2 million lives.

In 2002, President Bush placed Iran and North Korea with Iraq on his "axis 
of evil" list. He threatened both countries with pre-emptive nuclear 
strikes should US security demand it. Logically, both countries developed a 
nuclear weapons program as the only deterrent possible against the world's 
mightiest nuclear power.

The pro Israel lobby, which has pushed for US action against Iran and 
Syria, rejoiced when Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act in December. 
Iranian reformists complicated the political situation in that country by 
diluting the power of the fundamentalist mullahs, who also took a very 
strong anti-US line. And the December 26 earthquake in Bam that devastated 
that area certainly closed the window on military action. Given the weekly 
body count Bush encounters in Iraq, experts tend to disparage reports of 
invasions of any Middle East countries for the time being.

Cuba also appears on the "rogue" list. The Bush family owes the anti-Castro 
mafia in south Florida for its help in electing brother Jeb Governor. W 
himself got both vital money and strong arm support in Florida in 2000.

Past presidents have accepted Pentagon estimates and discounted an invasion 
of Cuba as too costly. Indeed, whenever friends would play Chicken Little 
over Cuba, I would remind them that the consequences of a US military 
attack on Cuba would far over shadow any successes that an aggressor could 
hope to achieve.

But in the age of "full spectral dominance," the catch phrase from the 2002 
White House National Security Plan, certain Administration heavies have 
made a case that the time has come to remove the 45 year old Cuban thorn in 
the side of the American empire. On January 6, the oratorical point man for 
this offensive, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter American Affairs 
Roger Noriega, warned Cuba to stop destabilizing democratic Latin America 
and cautioned the governments of Argentina, Venezuela and even Brazil not 
to get close to Cuba or else. Noriega said that Venezuelan President Hugo 
Chavez made his neighbors "very nervous when it comes to defending their 
institutional democracies." Never mind that the United States has invaded 
or intervened covertly in almost every Latin American country and 
overthrown dozens of elected governments, the voice of the ever servile 
Secretary of State Colin Powell validated Noriega's remarks.

"I've been in senior national security positions on and off over the last 
17 years. And through that whole period of time, Cuba has been trying to do 
everything it could to destabilize parts of the region," hesaid on January 
8. This remarkable statement comes from a man who remembers how in 1965 US 
troops destabilized democracy in the Dominican Republic, destabilized 
Nicaragua in the 1980s through a decade long covert war and upset the 
entire Caribbean when in 1983 US troops invaded the tiny island republic of 
Grenada because they could.

Powell has apologized for the US destabilization of Chile (1970-73), but 
through the decades of the 1970s and 1980s, Washington supported the most 
brutal military dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, 
Guatemala and El Salvador. In 1990 US troops invaded Panama to arrest one 
man, General Noriega, an agent of the CIA and DEA.

Armed with empty and righteous rhetoric, Washington's neo-con chicken hawks 
now sculpt a new axis of evil in Latin America (Cuba-Venezuela-Argentina). 
Some career national security staffers worry that the Bushies might 
actually try to provoke a conflict with Cuba or Venezuela in this 
hemisphere after the 2004 elections, of course.

"Before Bush," a former National Security staffer confided, "we understood 
that the post Vietnam War rule was in place: we don't fight anyone who can 
fight back. Then the neo-cons and their soldier of God partners seemed to 
infest the policy community. These characters, few if any have military 
experience, appear unconcerned with the consequences of starting a 
conflagration process with Cuba."

In their new book, Richard Perle and David Frum, leading chicken hawk 
neo-cons, discuss leaders like Fidel Castro and state that "when it is in 
our power and in our interest, we should toss dictators aside with no more 
compunction than a police sharpshooter feels when he takes down a hostage 
taker"

Another of the mouth warriors, Under Secretary for Arms Control and 
International Security John Bolton, has repeatedly accused Cuba of 
providing "dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states." In early January 
Bolton called Cuba a "rogue state" and voiced his concern that Cuba would 
share "such technology with other despised nations."

Bolton's neo con credentials include Senator Jesse Helms' March 2001 
endorsement at his confirmation hearing as "the kind of man with whom I 
would want to stand at Armageddon, or what the Bible describes as the final 
battle between good and evil" Just as Bush cited the potential of the Iraqi 
regime to unleash its weapons of mass destruction as the principal reason 
for going to war last March, Bolton now repeats similar charges against 
Cuba, which the Bush administration labels as a terrorist state.

In October, House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde 
(R-IL), warned Bush that Cuba was forging an "axis of evil" with Venezuela. 
National security officials leaked to a U.S. News & World Report journalist 
(Oct 6, 2003) material to "prove" that Castro's friend, President Chavez, 
was using Cuba as his model and had invited Islamic terrorists to train in 
camps in Venezuela. Chavez dismissed the report as absurd. Another national 
security-induced media story?

In what the White House called "Entering the Final Phase of Cuba's 
Inevitable Transition to Democracy" -- don't laugh -- Bolton's ugly charges 
morphed into dangerous deeds. In January the US canceled the regularly 
scheduled migration talks with Cuba, months after the President established 
a new Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba to hasten a "peaceful 
transition to a representative democracy and a free market economy -- 
ending decades of an oppressive dictatorship."

In addition, the White House used its power to overturn the will of 
Congress, which had voted to lift the travel ban to Cuba. Bush ordered the 
Homeland Security Department to harass travelers to the island and fine 
those traveling without licenses.

Such degrees of bellicosity go beyond the White House's pandering to the 
anti-Castro lobby. Words and deeds combined tend to accumulate and then 
roll down the metaphorical hill in the avalanche effect.

As the national security staffer said, in resignation, "these people [the 
Bushies] are capable of anything." Perhaps Cubans, as potential victims, 
could at least contribute to the national security betting game by 
providing it with a name -- something like "Don't Come Without an 
Invitation" or "We Can Make a Deal."

Saul Landau is a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies. He teaches at 
Cal Poly Pomona University. For Landau's writing in Spanish visit: 
www.rprogreso.com. His new book, PRE-EMPTIVE EMPIRE: A GUIDE TO BUSH S 
KINGDOM, has just been published by Pluto Press. He can be reached at: 
landau at counterpunch.org


The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20040131/cdd054d7/attachment.htm>