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| Sunday, 6 June 2004 |
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Bush's blueprint for an invasion of Cuba by W. I. R. D. Hemasiri, Exco-member, Sri Lanka-Cuba Friendship Society Beginning with President Nixon, there have been several scandalous state affairs in the political history of the USA where successive US incumbents have had to pay dearly for their stupidities. Since Nixon's "Watergate", there followed other gates such as "Iran-Contragate", "Levinskygate", "Salt Water Lakegate", to quote a few, which almost brought several US Presidents virtual disaster in their political as well as personal lives. The roulette of scandalous stupidities of US Presidents has started spinning again. This time it is the turn of President George W. Bush. Beginning with his foreign policy adventure in the invasion of Iraq, followed by the world-wide exposure of unbelievable inhuman torture and mistreatment of prisoners of Iraq at the Abu Ghraib and detainees at Guantanamo which the New York Times recently revealed that acts similar to those in the Abu Ghraib pictures are regularly practiced in US prisons. Never before has a US President flouted international laws, the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and other international conventions to the extent which the US President George W. Bush did. An utter stupidity displayed by him in handling of the US Foreign Policy is unprecedented in US history, the latest being the invasion of Iraq. This, in fact, not only reduced the USA to a virtual leper within the international community, particularly at the United Nations and other international fora, but also brought its foreign policy to utter ridicule. Having bogged-down in his "Iraqgate" - US invasion of Iraq - , reaching his popularity rate within the US to the lowest ever, particularly at a time where the US Presidential Elections are around the corner, Bush has had to devise some other stupidity to turn the wheel of fortune in his favour. Hence, now Bush turned to Cuba to try his luck, with an immense cost to US Taxpayers, in desperation of a second term with more vigour and vitality following the dead-ropes supplied by his "New American Centurians" led by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Perly, Jeb Bush, Elliott Abrams and Zalmay Khalilzad, to the last letter. The case in point is the announcement made by US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere wherein he revealed details of a report given to the President George W. Bush by the "Commission for Assistance to Free Cuba" of which a copy found its way to the international media. Among the strategic measures for the overthrow of Fidel Castro and his government" the Executive Report" recommends a series of measures in increasing support to internal counter-revolutionary elements and stepping up an international campaign against Cuba. It also formulated harsh and brutal measurers that in addition to the 45 years-old continuous blocade on Cuba, aiming at suffocating Cuba's economy and reducing its hard currency reserves to a minimum which is indispensable to meet Cubans needs of food, healthcare, and educational services and other basic essentials. The six-chaptered fourteen paged "Commission For Assistance to a Free Cuba Executive Report" contains "Selected Recommendations" at the end of every Chapter. For instance, take "Chapter 1: Hastening Cuba's transition" - which makes no bones of its real motives; "President Geoge W. Bush mandated that the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba identify additional means by which the United States can help the Cuban people bring about an expeditious end to the Castro dictatorship". The Executive Report also did not fail to "Illuminate the Reality of Castro's Cuba: The current survival of the regime is, in part, dependent upon its projection of a benign international image. Cuba presents itself internationally as a prime tourist destination, as a centre for bio-technological innovation, and as a successful socialist state that has improved the standard of living of its people and that it is a model for education, healthcare, and race relations for the world". The Executive Report also "Provides an additional $29 million (to augment the current Cuba Programme Budget of $7 million) to the State Department, USAID, and other appropriate US government agencies", for the purpose. It further "Provides an additional $5 million for US Embassy public diplomacy initiatives to: Disseminate information abroad about US foreign policy specifically regarding human rights and other developments in Cuba; including Castro's record of harbouring terrorists, committing espionage against the United States and other countries, fermenting subversion of democratically elected governments in Latin America, and the US government's belief that Cuba has at least a limited developmental offensive biological weapons research and development effort". So Bush has cooked up a case and a "pretext" to justify to overthrow and effect a change of regime in Cuba, similarly as in the case of Iraq. In Iraq it was weapons of mass destruction and for Cuba he has chosen biological weapons. The pretext did not hold any water in Iraq and for Cuba, he would find it extremely difficult to convince the world at all. The Executive Report has neither overlooked the long standing US grievance over the nationalisation of US assets in Cuba by the Cuban government after its revolution of 1959 with compensation paid and thus recommends: "The United State government should encourage a Free Cuba to settle outstanding claims issues as expeditiously as possible, bearing in mind that a long, complicated process is not in Cuba's best economic interests". The overall, "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba Executive report" at its face value, looks a list of christmas gifts from the US Santa Claus, but when you go through the report between the lines, what you find is a comprehensive, well formulated programme of action with essential logistics and infrastructure of an occupying power, a blueprint for permanent occupation of Cuba by a foreign power - ie. a free Cuba under the occupation of the United States of America. Having learned some bitter lessons from the US occupation of Iraq which Senator Edward Kennedy resembled to a "Bush's Vietnam" the present Executive Report, no doubt, has been further perfected so that Cubans' unlike Iraqis, would definitely welcome the US forces either throwing rose petals or an empty bottle of Havana Club on their face. The Bush administration makes no secret that it sees the Iraq war as the prototype for future conflicts, indeed, the US has enshrined the idea in its official national security strategy documents and if any state or country found to be unpalatable to their neo-conservative agenda, a process at regime change may be on the cards. This is what awaits Cuba in case the "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba Executive Report" succeeds. Kennedy's Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba ended in a fiasco. Numerous assassination attempts on Fidel Castro and other Cuban leaders have failed miserably. Continuous radio-piracy, highjacking of air planes and blowing up of Cuban passenger planes in mid-air and sabotages of Cuban State enterprises and institutions abroad, the abduction, killing of Cuban state officials and prosecution of five cuban patriots now languishing in US jails on trumped-up charges who were defending not only Cuba, which is their motherland, they also went to defend the United States of America, as observed by the Journalist Max Lesnik, and by adoption of Anti-Cuban resolutions in Geneva accusing her of violating human rights, and above all, the most inhuman economic and trade blocade imposed on Cuba continuously for almost 45 years, could not bring down Cuba and its heroic people to their knees. Instead, what actually happened was that Fidel Castro, the President and his government of the Republic of Cuba, outlived a generation of US Presidents starting from Eisenhover to George W. Bush. In my opinion, all these infamous overt and covert actions on the part of the US against Cuba were purely generated and commissioned by obsolete Cold War tactics, which in fact boomeranged on the US itself while the international image of the Republic of Cuba reaced unprecedented heights. This was magnificently displayed at the changing voting pattern of the UN General Assembly annually in favour of Cuba for the last dozen or more times when the resolution condemning the US blocade in Cuba was taken up. In this desperate situation Bush and his neo-conservative clique is left with only one choice - that is a virtual suicidal invasion of Cuba. But invasion of Cuba would definitely be "Bush's Vietnam". |
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