Busting the Myth of the Ends Justifying the Means (in Cuba)
BUSTING MYTHS AND EXPOSING LIES:
THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS IN CUBA
For the past 66 years, the United States has been strangling the people of Cuba. This is not an incendiary accusation made recklessly without overwhelming evidence. Cuban citizens have suffered for many decades. And now, they are suffering, and in some cases dying, because of deliberate hostile and unjustified actions by the United States. This comes at the direct command of the Trump Regime. This cruelty is intentional.
The goal is regime change. It comes under the old guise of — “the ends justify the means.”
America’s grotesquely hypocritical hostility towards Cuba is nothing new, of course. Since 1959, the island nation has been cut-off, isolated, embargoed, and even blockaded. Cuba’s government and national economy have been sabotaged. Cuba’s longtime leader was repeatedly targeted for ruthless assassination several times (remember the CIA’s exploding cigar plot?). The United States even launched an land invasion and coup attempt (at the Bay of Pigs in 1961), which proved to be a humiliating and embarrassing failure, which almost led to nuclear annihilation a year later.
By any metric whatsoever, United States foreign policy towards Cuba has been disastrous — for BOTH nations. None of the stated objectives have succeeded. All have failed. Early on, Cuba was supposed to fall and be “liberated” way back in the 1960s. That never happened. America’s hardline policies continued into the 1970s and 1980s. Those policies failed, too. Cuba survived well into the 1990s, then endured into a new century as the ultimate small-nation *David vs. Goliath* survivor against the bullying of a superpower. By the time of his death of natural causes in 2017, Cuban President Fidel Castro had become the longest-serving premier in the history of the Western Hemisphere. It’s hard to conceive of a worse outcome of a misguided policy than U.S. posturing towards Cuba over this disastrous period. It failed politically and economically, and was paid senseless human suffering.
Now, the Trump regime is doubling down in cruelty and violating all international norms regarding national sovereignty. The U.S. has effectively cut off all oil, energy, and vital resources desperately needed in Cuba. Ships are not being allowed in, or out. America is suffocating an entire nation of 10.3 million people. Hospital patients are in danger. Retirement homes resemble Third-World conditions. Children are malnourished. Food stocks are running low. People are hungry. All of this imposed suffering is — INTENTIONAL. I suppose bombing elementary schools on the other side of the world in an unprovoked war (Iran) can be argued to be an “accident.” But the American government is DELIBERATELY harming Cubans, and creating misery for millions. So-called “liberation” is the purported *end*, allegedly justifying the *means* of suffering unleashed upon innocents.
Previously, I used the word “hypocritical” to describe U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba. Why is our policy hypocritical? I’ll explain.
The United States has outlawed virtually all trade with Cuba. That applies to our country, and many others pressured into joining America’s strict trade embargo. That’s the reason we can’t buy Cuban products here, including what would be very popular items like Cuban cigars and rum not to mention vast natural resources. For decades, Americans have even been prevented from visiting Cuba, even though the island is only 90 miles away from U.S. shores. Americans couldn’t import nor carry in Cuban products, risking fines and/or prosecution. That’s an extreme level of hostility towards a small relatively benign nation that seems both disproportionate and irrational.
So why did this undeclared “war on Cuba” happen?
— Cuba’s communist government can’t be the reason for U.S. hostilities, can it? The U.S. trades freely and enthusiastically with the world’s largest Communist country — China (and others also, including Vietnam). So, that can’t be it.
— Cuba’s bad human right’s record can’t be the reason for U.S. hostilities, can it? The U.S. has way-too cozy relationships with many nations with appalling human rights records (Saudi Arabia, Israel, and many others). So, that can’t be it.
— Cuba posing a threat to the U.S. can’t be the reason for U.S. hostilities, can it? Fact is, Cuba poses absolutely no threat to the United States, and never has (except for the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis which was triggered by the Bay of Pigs invasion a year earlier–who can blame them?). Cuba has no territorial ambitions on the U.S.Despite our differences, Cuba has always wanted normal trade and a working relationship with it’s giant neighbor to the north. So, that can’t be it.
So, why is the U.S. so determined to overthrow the Cuban government?
When dictator Fulgencio Batista’s extreme Right-wing regime was toppled in 1959, many affluent Cubans (and many more associated with mass agrarian exploitation and affiliated with organized crime) looted the country, packed up their bags, and fled for the United States. Most exiles initially settled in Florida. This rabid Cuban exile community, which is largely comprised of the old remnants of Batista’s henchmen who once terrorized the country (and their children and grandchildren), have blocked every attempt to normalize relations between the two nations. Like sticks in the mud, they have held peace and normal relations hostage. They have become an all-too powerful voting block, and also lean heavily Republican. So, despite progress made to normalize trade and relations during various administrations, Trump’s first presidential term threw down the gauntlet.
Now in the midst of his second term, the Trump regime sees an opportunity to inflict mass misery on the Cuban nation by denying it access to oil and energy vital for power. This redux of hostilities appears close to “succeeding,” though forced regime change through an open *war* on civilians represents an appalling transformation and slide into the abyss for the United States, which has suddenly turned into the world’s most aggressive and hostile nation, utterly disregarding international laws and universally-acknowledged rights to national sovereignty.
In short, just because we don’t like a nation’s government doesn’t give us the right to invade and overthrow it.
Indeed, the reason foreign policy and international relations exists at all is to avoid a world at perpetual war. Otherwise, the entire globe is up for grabs to any nation strong enough to invade and conquer. Call it tribal warfare. Might makes right. Under those auspices, ANY invasion and takeover can be justified. Russia invading Ukraine-check. Japan invading Manchuria-check. Italy invading Ethiopia-check. Germany invading Poland-check. The world becomes a much more dangerous place when international relations, agreements, and treaties are violated and ignored. Under the Trump regime, the U.S has joined an ugly fraternity of bad-guy thugs. Invading Venezuela and stealing its oil. Launching an unprovoked reckless war in Iran. Supplying, and financing in part Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza and now Lebanon. Threatening to invade Greenland, territory of a NATO ally. Repeatedly insulting Canada with insane talk of taking it over and making it part of the United States. Saber rattling over the Panama Canal. And then, there’s Cuba. These are clearly the actions of an aggressor.
Most Americans, both Left and Right, would dearly love to see a “free” Cuba. Myself included. It’s really a question of *how* to achieve that objective in a way that respects diplomatic norms and preserves international relations, though any regime change should be determined by the Cubans themselves who actually live there (not the extremist exiles here in the U.S., who in many cases have never lived in or visited Cuba), If real native Cubans rise up and overthrow their own government, good for them.
Critics of Cuba and its authoritarian government will correctly point out their economy is in shambles. That’s undoubtedly true, though the primary reasons behind this are rarely discussed. Cutting off Cuba from all trade and isolating it from neighbors and much of the world created mass poverty and suffering. Using a example we can all understand for comparison, if we decided back in 1959 to cut off and isolate the state of *Arkansas* from all trade and travel and essentially attempt to turn it into a ghetto state, guess what would happen? Arkansas would end up looking like……..Cuba (or Arkansas–gasp!). It would become a wreck of old cars, broken down trailer parks, and widespread poverty. Impose the same exact draconian restrictions on Arkansas (or anyplace else) as we’ve done in Cuba for 66 years, and it would become an economic basket case, as well. That’s for certain.
To be clear, Cuba (and specifically the Castro government and successors) deserves a significant amount of blame. Fidel Castro was once a courageous revolutionary (1953-1959) and was one of the truly great leaders of Latin America up until the mid-1960s, when things changed and he began exhibiting dangerous self-defeating signs of megalomania. Within a relatively short time frame, the Cuban Revolution was betrayed, and that’s Castro’s own failure. A dictatorship ruled (though the number of Cubans killed in the past 60 years by the government is about the same as in Batista’s rule which lasted only 7 years–according to most historians). Castro’s Cuba committed appalling human rights violations and deserves no sympathy, though we must wonder if some other form of government would have been any better. Consider the ongoing disaster of Haiti close by, which has turned into a wreck of a nation, ruled for decades by a harsh Right-wing dictatorship. Haiti enjoyed free trade and good relations with the U.S., and it’s STILL a mess. So, removing “communism” from the equation is no guarantee of prosperity.
Back in 2015, President Obama opened up some heavy doors into Cuba. Old padlocks were broken. Failed embargoes ended. This was the smart and constructive policy and path towards full normalization, to our mutual benefit, and perhaps even the impetus for an eventual change in government in Cuba. Hotel giants made big deals with Cuba, pledging to build new resorts and bolster international tourism. Shipping magnates saw Cuba as an ideal destination and transfer point for billions in goods and resources. Even the Rolling Stones arrived in Cuba and played a rock concert. Cuba seemed on the brink of being reborn again. Cuba was “opening up.”
This very likely *would* have happened, without all the mass suffering, that is, until Trump was elected in 2016 and instantly reversed American policy, returning once again to old Cold War hostilities. All the work, all the advances, all the progress that might have been good for the U.S. and for Cuba was trashed. Yet, even the return to old failed ways of doing things didn’t work. Apparently, Trump and his hardline Cuban exile backers have never understood the maxim, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Now, here were are a decade later and Cubans are suffering, and some are even dying.
Do the ends justify the means in Cuba? I don’t believe so, Becoming a rogue nation callous enough to impose mass suffering on an entire population which poses ZERO threat the U.S. or its power in any way is immoral, unethical, and in the long run destroys American credibility and tarnishes goodwill, though that’s been exacerbated by American aggression all over the world.
The U.S. cannot be the direct cause of so much human misery and mass suffering due to its nearly seven decades of *open economic warfare* and then wash its hands and point to how bad Cuba is, and how the nation is falling apart. In part, we’re responsible for this disastrous outcome for having pursued such a hypocritical, senseless, cruel, and clearly failed strategy for the past 66 years.
