Amidst the horrific US abuse of foreigners through the use of tariffs and police-state enforcement of immigration controls, it’s easy to forget that the US government abuses foreigners in other ways, such as sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, torture, indefinite detention, and state-sponsored assassinations.
Perhaps the longest-lasting, continuous example of this foreigner-abuse syndrome is the US government’s horrific abuse of the Cuban people, which has gone on for more than 60 years. Given that there is no good reason for abusing the Cuban people — and there never has been one — this would be a good place to begin breaking with the longstanding, ongoing US policy of abusing foreigners.
It’s worth pointing out that Cuba has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, the US government has always been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around.
For more than 60 years, the US government has imposed and enforced a cruel and brutal economic embargo against Cuba. The embargo is designed to inflict maximum economic harm on the Cuban people with the intent of impoverishing them and even killing them through starvation.
The aim of this embargo is one that has been standard for many decades within the US Empire: regime change. Ever since the Cuban revolution, US officials have been obsessed with ousting the communist regime that controls Cuba and replacing it with a pro-US dictatorial regime — that is, one that will be a loyal, obedient servant of the US Empire, much like the current dictatorial regime in El Salvador. The idea has always been that to avoid death by starvation, the Cuban people can rise up and violently revolt against their regime.
The embargo strategy is much like the thinking that undergirds terrorism. Terrorists kill innocent people as a way to pressure a regime into changing its political system or behavior. That’s what the US embargo against Cuba does also.
But it’s worth mentioning that the US embargo is not the only way that the US Empire has inflicted abuse on Cubans. During the early 1960s, the Empire also engaged in real acts of terrorism against commercial facilities inside Cuba.
That’s not all. US officials, in partnership with the Mafia, also engaged in secret state-sponsored assassination attempts against Cuba’s first president, Fidel Castro. US officials maintained that such assassination attempts were morally justified because Castro was a communist. However, it is difficult to understand how that would morally justify murdering someone. It’s also worth noting that the US Constitution makes it illegal for US officials to murder anyone, including foreigners.
Needless to say, the US embargo against Cuba has never worked. For one thing, many Cubans hate the US government. Moreover, many of Cubans who hate Cuba’s communist and socialist systems hate the thought of being under the control of the US government even more. For another thing, there is a strict system of gun control in Cuba, which means that the Cuban people lack the means to violently overthrow their government. Thus, all that the US embargo has accomplished for the past six and a half decades is extreme economic suffering among the Cuban people.
Proponents of the embargo do their best to avoid personal responsibility for this intentional infliction of suffering on innocent people by focusing exclusively on the harm caused by Cuba’s socialist system. What they avoid confronting is that the US government’s embargo is the other side of an economic vise that, in combination with Cuba’s socialist system, succeeds in squeezing the lifeblood out of the Cuban people. What these embargo proponents also fail to confront is that while Cuban socialism inflicts harm on the Cuban people, it’s misguided harm. The harm inflicted by the embargo is fully intentional and deliberate.
Finally, it’s worth noting that the embargo against Cuba has contributed to the destruction of fundamental rights of the American people, such as economic liberty, liberty of contract, freedom of travel, and freedom of association. In a genuinely free society, people have the right to travel wherever they want, spend their money anyway they want, sell whatever they want to whomever they want, and associate with whomever they want. Yet, if an American sells things to Cubans, buys things from Cubans, or travels to Cuba and spends money there, he is immediately arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated by US officials upon returning to his own country. He is also condemned as a “bad person” by US officials for exercising fundamental rights.
Inflicting abuse on foreigners does not make a country great. It actually does the opposite. It produces a weak, frightened, contemptible country. A great country treats everyone, including foreigners, with decency and respect. A great way for America to start becoming great again would be by lifting the decades-old cruel, brutal, and unjustifiable US embargo against the Cuban people.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
