[NYTr] WSWS on Bush's Awful Diatribe Against Cuba
 
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 20:26:11 -0500 (CDT)

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
[forgot to include this in the coverage last week of Bush's Cuba
Fandango
Day, Oct 24. -NYTr]

World Socialist Web Site - Oct 25, 2007
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/oct2007/cuba-o25.shtml

Bush threatens escalation of aggression against Cuba

By Bill Van Auken

When it comes to profaning the name of freedom, there have been few
speeches given anywhere that could seriously compete with the diatribe
on Cuba that President George W. Bush delivered at the State Department
Wednesday.

Bush used the word 25 times in a brief address that called for the
continued tightening of the 47-year-old US economic blockade of Cuba
and implicitly promoted violent upheavals, a possible military coup and
stepped-up US aggression against the island nation.

The speech was timed to fall between Cubabs recent municipal
electionsbthe first held since the ailing Fidel Castro relinquished the
reins of powerband next weekbs vote in the United General Assembly on a
resolution condemning the trade embargo that the US has employed in an
attempt to strangle Cubabs economy since shortly after the 1959
revolution. A similar resolution was passed by a vote of 183 to 4 last
year, and this time Washington can expect to be similarly humiliated.

Once again Bush demonized the Cuban regime as one that has bdenied
their citizens basic rights,b bbought generations of misery,b and
boffered Cubans rat-infested prisons and a police state.b Not content
with these denunciations, Bush assured his audience of State Department
flunkies and members of the Miami-based, right-wing Cuban exile mafia:
bCubabs regime no doubt has other horrors still unknown to the rest of
the world. Once revealed, they will shock the conscience of humanity.b

The immediate question raised by the US presidentbs speech is: who the
hell is he to lecture anyone about democracy, freedom and human rights?
If anything has bshocked the conscience of humanityb in the present
period, it is an American president who came to power through the
fraudulent overturning of an election, has waged unprovoked wars of
aggressionbkilling over a million peoplebrejected the most fundamental
democratic rights, and defended the use of torture.

As for prisons in Cuba where innocent people are held without charges
and subjected to brutality, Bush should certainly know whereof he
speaks, as he has run one for nearly six years at GuantC!namo Bay.

Deriding Cubabs economy, Bush declared, bHousing for many ordinary
Cubans is in very poor condition, while the ruling class lives in
mansions.b Apparently, this is the only country in the world where the
American president has been able to detect the existence of a bruling
class,b as he presides over an American economy that has produced what
is arguably the greatest polarization between wealth and poverty in the
world.

The thrust of Bushbs message, however, was one of violence. This is
hardly a new element in US-Cuban relations, which has seen the abortive
CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, several hundred
assassination attempts against Castro and innumerable terrorist
attacks. The latter include the murder of 73 people in the 1976 bombing
of a civilian aircraft by Luis Posada Carriles, the CIA-trained
terrorist who is now being harbored by the Bush administration in
violation of extradition treaties with Venezuela, where he is wanted
for trial.

Bushbs rhetoric invoked armed uprisings and violent repression. bThe
operative word in our future dealings with Cuba is not bstability,bb he
said. bThe operative word is bfreedom,bb which in his Orwellian usage
means bringing the island back under US domination by force.

He addressed himself directly to the Cuban military and security
forces, declaring: bYoubve got to make a choice. Will you defend a
disgraced and dying order by using force against your own people? Or
will you embrace your peoplebs desire for change?b

For more than a year, since Fidel Castro formally relinquished power to
a provisional government headed by his brother Raul Castro, Washington
and the right-wing exile groups in Miami have been envisioning
upheavals and the massive flight of exiles, neither of which have
materialized. This political reality lent an air of desperation and
seemingly irrational provocation to Bushbs speech.

Pointing towards Washingtonbs real aims, Bush announced his intention
to set up an binternational multibillion-dollar Freedom Fund for Cubab
to bhelp the Cuban people rebuild their economy and make the transition
to democracy.b The fund, he said, would be used to give loans to bCuban
entrepreneurs.b

A precondition for this fund, he added, was the brestoration of ...
basic freedoms.b Principal among them was that the Cuban government end
its bstranglehold on private economic activity.b

The brestorationb that Washington seeks is the US semi-colonial
domination of Cuba and its economy. It wants a return to the conditions
that existed prior to the 1959 revolution, when three-quarters of the
countrybs arable land as well as the lionbs share of its industry and
banking were all in American hands.

The growing indications that Cuba may be sitting on significant
offshore oil reserves no doubt contribute to Washingtonbs desires to
restore the country to what it once referred to as its bbackyard.b

American capitalismbs economic rivals are hardly likely to be lining up
to contribute to Bushbs proposed restoration fund. Europe, China,
Canada and other countries have all concluded major trade and
investment deals with Cubabdespite US attempts to impose punitive
sanctions on foreign companies doing business there.

It is this factbin addition to the immensely disproportionate role
played by the anti-Castro Cuban exile groups in American politicsbthat
underlies the Bush administrationbs opposition to any form of gradual
political transition in Cuba and its support for a violent
counterrevolution. It sees in such an upheaval a means of abrogating
contracts and economic relations established between Havana and other
major capitalist powers and restoring unchallenged American hegemony
over the island.

Cubabs foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, described Bushbs speech as
ba call to violenceb and an birresponsible actb that indicated the
American presidentbs blevel of frustration, of desperation and of
personal hatred toward Cuba.b He said that the Cuban people opposed the
restoration of US domination and that the predictions of a US-backed
popular revolt were a bfantasyb and bpolitically impossible.b

On the eve of the speech, with its general line already all too
predictable, Fidel Castro, 81, published his own short essay entitled
bBush, hunger and death.b

Castro warned that Bush would bannounce that he is adopting new
measures to speed up the bperiod of transitionb in our country, which
means the reconquest of Cuba by force.b

He charged that the US president was bthreatening humanity with a third
world war, which this time would be with atomic weapons.b

The question posed by Bushbs provocative speech is whether, as part of
this war, the administration in Washington is preparing to launch a
bpreemptiveb attack on Cuba.

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