The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.
What what whaaaa??? I thought the US was a force for supreme goodness up until the millisecond that Trump became president.
This was most definitely the turning point. And just who were George Dubya, and Clinton, and Reagan, and Nixon, and goddamn Kissinger, and Robert McNamara, and the Dulles Brothers, and all the slave owners who founded the country?
A shining city upon a hill, manifest destiny, exceptionalism. Well-meaning promoters and protectors of democracy forever and always. Just what would the rest of the world do without you?
/s in case anyone actually needs it.