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| Sunday, 28 December 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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US super power in the dock This article is published to mark the 45th Cuban National Day which falls on January 1. by W. I. R. D. Hemasiri, Ex-co member, Sri Lanka-Cuba Friendship Society Subsequent to the September 11th 2001 terrorist attack on the USA, addressing the US Congress on 20th September, President George W. Bush asked the very pertinent question, "Americans are asking why do they hate us", and answering the question himself he said, "they hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government". But the fact remains that the President Bush himself was actually elected by the US Supreme Court and so was the government elected by him. But it is an entirely different matter that can be left to the Americans themselves to decide. He is neither the first nor the last of Presidents in the US history who raised this very question. All of them tended to ponder over this question at one time or other, particularly at a crisis-ridden period of their tenures. Once the crisis is overcome employing traditional devious methods of overtly and covertly practised, well tested and perfected for decades in their so-called backyard - the happy hunting grounds of South America, they simply forget it and the issue get lost in local and global amnesia. But when a similar misfortune struck on the Chileans on 11th September 1973 - the US-backed military coup that killed President Salvador Allende and his democratically elected Chilean government toppled - Henry Kissinger, the then US National Security adviser congratulated General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, and said "You did a great service to West by overthrowing Allende". This notorious incident must have been haunting the successive US governments. Probably that may be the reason why the US Secretary of State Collin Powel was forced to acknowledge in February 2003 that the American role in Chile "is not a part of American history that we are proud of". Do the people world over really hate Americans, as claimed by the President Bush? Yes, they do hate the US ruling class but not the Americans at large. This was vividly manifested during the attack of 9/11 where the friends and foes of the US alike expressed their unreserved indignation and promptly extended their solidarity with the people of the USA. The people world over hail the American Revolution of 1775 as an epoch-making event that marked a spilt in the British Empire. But the fact remains that it had never been an anti-colonial liberation struggle. This fact remains true even today repeatedly been proved by the subsequent US history, the pedigree of which alone and nothing else being held against the successive US ruling clans. Yet the founding fathers of the United States of America still enjoy utmost respect of the people, world over. The cause of global resentment, however, towards the US ruling clans is well-known the world over. Today, the US has become the most vivid example of economic parasitism in world history. With 5% of the global population, it consumes up to 40% of all the world's resources. The main US commodity that it uses to earn in the world market is paper dollar and not technology or machinery. None possesses more weapons of mass destruction than the US - be they nuclear, chemical or biological. The global wave of sympathy that engulfed the US after 9/11 has now virtually given way to a global wave of hatred, and the Los Angeles Times reported on its issue of 23 March 2003 that the belief that President Bush "is a greater threat to peace than Saddam Hussein", has become the talk of every drawing room locally and abroad. The Talibans of Afghanistan, Al-Quida, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, the Miami-based anti-Cuban terrorist groups and several others have been funded and nurtured by the USA at one time or other and been used as instruments of the US policy home and abroad. It maintains altogether 750 military bases in 3/4 of the countries on earth and 31% of its wealth. In the name of freedom and democracy, the US condemns the peoples and nations all over the world to virtual slavery and eternal bondage. During the past 44 years, Cuba's achievement on human development indexes are truly amazing. The Nobel laurate economist Gunnar Myrdal and the Director WHO Dr. Haltdam Mahlar after a visit to Cuba jointly observed at a subsequent press conference that "Cuba is an outstanding success among underdeveloped countries. It is notable from an economic point of view for it has carried out the greater part of the transformations which I, as an economist, would recommend to developing countries. If any one were to ask me where there has been success in economic development, I would tell them to look at Cuba". Four decades of US sanctions further consolidated by extra-territorial laws such as Helms-Burton and Torricelli coupled with overt and covert multiple subversions could not stop the Cuba's march along its chosen path. In between, Cuba's international image has since been steadily growing. This is amply reflected, in my opinion, on the steadily changing voting pattern in the UN General Assembly whenever a resolution moved against US sanctions on Cuba. There have been 12 such resolutions in the recent past demanding the USA to end its four-decade old embargo. At the last UN General Assembly, such a resolution was carried over by a majority of votes, with only three members - the USA, Israel and Marshall Islands - opposing and only two abstaining. This voting pattern registers a steady increasing in favour of Cuba while the members opposing and abstaining dwindling to an unprecedented low. In parallel to this, the world-wide condemnation of the unfair prosecution of 6 Cuban patriots by the US on trump-up charges of espionage and the demand for their release is gaining momentum. There must be some reason why Cuba was re-elected in the UN Economic and Social Council for another three year-term. In UN Commission on Human Rights, Cuba has now been a member for 15 years at a stretch. The Democratic US Senator Clairbrone Pell once charged, "We invade them at Bay of Pigs; we strangle their economy; we try to assassinate their President; and then we wonder why Cuba is hostile to the USA". It is true that Cuba posed a threat to the USA but definitely not militarily but of a different kind. The Socialist Cuba is increasingly becoming for the oppressed, exploited and betrayed Caribean and Latin American people a shinning example, an inspiration and hope. The Cuban government was giving the lie to the often repeated dictum from Washington that "a Marxist model" held no future for them. In reality, revolutionary Cuba was posing an alternative socio-economic-political system which based not on dependent, distorted capitalism but on grassroots democratic, anti-imperialistic and socialist orientation. That is why the people all over the world celebrate the 45th Cuban National Day as one of their own. It is precisely this fact that drives the progressive people throughout the world to urge and demand the US authorities to lift forthwith the 40 year old US economic and trade blockades imposed on Cuba and let them decide their own destiny on their chosen path of development. |
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