Year 501 Copyright © 1993 by Noam Chomsky. Published by South End Press.
Chapter 6: A "Ripe Fruit" Segment 4/6
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Immediately after the Bay of Pigs failure, Kennedy initiated a program of international terrorism to overthrow the regime, reaching quite remarkable dimensions. These atrocities are largely dismissed in the West, apart from some notice of the assassination attempts, one of them implemented on the very day of the Kennedy assassination. The terrorist operations were formally called off by Lyndon Johnson. They continued, however, and were escalated by Nixon. Subsequent actions are attributed to renegades beyond CIA control, whether accurately or not, we do not know; one high-level Pentagon official of the Kennedy-Johnson Administrations, Roswell Gilpatric, has expressed his doubts. The Carter Administration, with the support of US courts, condoned hijacking of Cuban ships in violation of the anti-hijacking convention that Castro was respecting. The Reaganites rejected Cuban initiatives for diplomatic settlement and imposed new sanctions on the most outlandish pretexts, often lying outright, a record reviewed by Wayne Smith, who resigned as head of the US Interests Section in Havana in protest.14

From the Cuban perspective, the Kennedy terror seemed to be a prelude to invasion. The CIA concluded in September 1962 -- before Russian missiles were detected in mid-October -- that "the main purpose of the present [Soviet] military buildup in Cuba is to strengthen the Communist regime there against what the Cubans and Soviets conceive to be a danger that the US may attempt by one means or another to overthrow it." In early October, the State Department confirmed this judgment, as did a later State Department study. How realistic these fears were, we may only speculate.

Of interest, in this connection, is Robert McNamara's reaction to the late Andrei Gromyko's allegation that Soviet missiles were sent to Cuba "to strengthen the defensive capability of Cuba -- that is all." In response, McNamara acknowledged that "If I had been a Cuban or Soviet official, I believe I would have shared the judgment you expressed that a U.S. invasion was probable" (a judgment that he says was inaccurate). The probability of nuclear war after a US invasion was "99 percent," McNamara added. Such an invasion was frighteningly close after JFK dismissed Khrushchev's offer of mutual withdrawal of missiles from Cuba and Turkey (the latter obsolete, already ordered withdrawn). Indeed, Cuba itself might have initiated nuclear war when a US terrorist (Mongoose) team blew up a factory, killing 400 people according to Castro, at one of the most tense moments of the crisis, when the Cubans may have had their fingers on the button.15

The March 1960 plan to overthrow Castro in favor of a regime "more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the U.S." remains in force in 1992 as the US pursues its venerable task of preventing Cuban independence, with 170 years of experience behind it. Also in force is the Eisenhower directive that the crime should be perpetrated "in such a manner as to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention."Accordingly, the ideological institutions must suppress the record of aggression, campaigns of terror, economic strangulation, and the other devices employed by the Lord of the hemisphere in its dedication to "the true interests of the Cuban people."

That dictate has been followed with loyalty perhaps beyond the norm. In respected scholarship, US terrorism against Cuba has been excised from the record in a display of servility that would impress the most dedicated totalitarian. In the media, Cuba's plight is regularly attributed to the demon Castro and "Cuban socialism" alone. Castro bears full responsibility for the "poverty, isolation and humbling dependence" on the USSR, the New York Times editors inform us, concluding triumphantly that "the Cuban dictator has painted himself into his own corner," without any help from us. That is true by virtue of doctrinal necessity, the ultimate authority. The editors conclude that we should not intervene directly as some "U.S. cold warriors" propose: "Fidel Castro's reign deserves to end in home-grown failure, not martyrdom." Taking their stand at the dovish extreme, the editors advise that we should continue to stand aside, watching in silence as we have been doing for 30 years, so the naive reader would learn from this (quite typical) version of history, crafted to satisfy the demands of authority.

News reports commonly observe the same conventions. Cuba is a basket case, Times Caribbean correspondent Howard French reports, "a Communist oddity in an increasingly free-market world," "a Communist dead end" struggling vainly against "economic realities." These "realities," we are to understand, are the failures of sterile Communist doctrine, unaffected by US terror and economic warfare. The former is passed over in silence. The latter is mentioned, but only as posing a tactical question: we must decide whether the embargo should be tightened, or simply maintained on the assumption that the "economic realities" alone will work "inexorably to bring about a dramatic transformation." Any opinion outside this spectrum is another "oddity," not to be sampled by a responsible journalist operating in the free market of ideas.

Boston Globe Latin America specialist Pamela Constable adopts the same conventions. Reviewing Miami Herald correspondent Andres Oppenheimer's Castro's Final Hour, she opens by explaining that he "is far from a rabid anticommunist, but his credentials as a seasoned journalistic observer of Latin America make his [book], a relentless exposure of the cynical, obsessive workings of Fidel Castro's aging socialist regime, all the more persuasive." He portrays Cuba "as a classic, decaying dictatorship, ruled by a man whose ideals have long succumbed to the hard logic of power," "clinging to a failed system with determined but fatal defiance." In "hilarious and tragic detail," Oppenheimer shows how "life for average Cubans has become a gantlet of woes and absurdities," which she recounts with much amusement. "Oppenheimer leaves little room for doubt that like other messianic tyrants, Castro has sown the seeds of his own destruction." The words "United States" do not appear; there is no hint of any US contribution to the "hilarious" trials of the average Cubans, or to the "failed system" or Castro's mad course of self-destruction. The "hard logic of power" is simply a fact of nature, evoking none of the passion aroused by Castro's evil nature. The norms are universal; Cuba is just a special case. Surveying the terrible decline of Nicaragua after the US-backed government took over, Constable writes that "Two problems underlie the disaster gripping this poor, tropical nation": "lingering hostility" between the Sandinistas and the right, and corruption. Could the rampages of a terrorist superpower have had some marginal effect on the "collapsed socialist economy" and US efforts to recreate the glories that preceded? The idea cannot be expressed, probably even thought, at the dissident extreme of the commissar culture.

The same book is reviewed in the New York Times by Clifford Krauss. Again, Cuba's plight is attributed to the crimes and lunacies of the demon alone. The US does receive an oblique mention, in one phrase: Castro (not Cuba) "has survived a host of calamities: the missile crisis, the trade embargo, the Mariel exodus, repeated harvest shortfalls and endless rationing." That concludes the US role. Oppenheimer is praised for describing Cuba's travail "with insight and wit" -- odd, how amusing it is to watch our victims suffer -- but more importantly, for having unearthed hitherto undreamt-of iniquity. Insatiable in his quest for power and love of violence, Castro sent "experienced officers" to train Nicaraguans to resist the terrorist army the US dispatched from its Honduran bases with orders to attack "soft targets" such as health clinics and agricultural cooperatives (with explicit approval of the State Department and left-liberal opinion, in the latter case). The monster even considered retaliation "in case the United States under Ronald Reagan invaded Nicaragua," and he was "far more involved than we knew" in supplying the army of Panama "in anticipation of the United States invasion."


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14 For a review of terrorist operations, see Blum, CIA. Nixon, Garthoff, Détente, 76n. See McClintock, Instruments, for recent discussion, including Gilpatric interview. Also Garthoff, Reflections and Smith, Closest of Enemies, for accounts from well-informed US government sources.

15 Paterson, op. cit.; Martin Tolchin, NYT, Jan. 15, 1992. Garthoff, Reflections, 17.