(Note: Today’s announced swap of three members of the “Cuba 5” for jailed US operative Alan Gross, who is mentioned in the below article, makes this article all the more relevant and prescient. Strong forces in the US — including in the CIA — will continue to vigorously resist any thaw in US-Cuba relations. -editor)
In the midst of the CIA’s torture scandal, continues its obsessive Cold War activity against Cuba, in a desperate attempt to finally, once and for all, oust the Castro regime from power and install another pro-U.S. dictatorship.
Yes, I know how a conservative would immediately respond: “Jacob, the CIA and USAID are two separate and distinct entities. Why are you bringing them up in the same sentence?”
Yeah, right, and I have a nice piece of fertile swampland in the Everglades I’d like to sell that conservative. USAID is one of the CIA’s favorite front organizations. By taking over some of the CIA’s regime-change operations under the guise of promoting “civil society,” USAID provides the CIA with “plausible deniability” with respect to its never-ending Cold War obsession over Cuba and other socialist regimes.
The latest regime-change fiasco involves a pathetically comical attempt to secretly infiltrate Cuba’s hip-hop scene. According to an article in The Guardian, “The idea was to use Cuba’s rappers ‘to break the information blockade’ and build a network of young people seeking ‘social change’ to spark a youth movement against the government of Raul Castro.”
Wouldn’t you think that after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the horrific terrorist attacks within Cuba, the failed murder attempts on Fidel Castro in partnership with the Mafia, the decades-old economic embargo that has intentionally inflicted untold harm on the Cuban people, and the end of the Cold War some 20 years ago, the CIA and USAID would be ashamed to still be trying to effect regime change in Cuba?
Clearly, there is no shame at all. Despite the end of the Cold War in 1991, they just can’t let go of the longtime obsession with Cuba.
In fact, wouldn’t you think that the extended period of time that U.S. contractor Alan Gross is spending in a Cuban jail for illegal regime-change activity would dissuade the CIA and USAID to finally leave Cuba alone?
They obviously considered the 65-year-old Gross to be expendable. But it’s also obvious that these Cold Warriors are willing to use young people as pawns in their never-ending Cold War games. Imagine if Castro’s agents were to discover that Cuban students were operating as agents or assets of the CIA or USAID. They would be treated in the same way that the U.S. government treats people at Gitmo on its other side of Cuba — arrest, indefinite incarceration without trial, torture, and possibly execution.
And the CIA and USAID couldn’t care less. It would be considered “worth it,” the term used by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright when asked if the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children were worth the regime change effort when Saddam Hussein was in charge of the Iraqi government. She said that, yes, that the deaths of those young people was, in fact, “worth it.”
And let’s not forget the USAID twitter program named Zunzuneo that was uncovered just a few years ago. USAID recruited students from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Peru to go into Cuba and rouse opposition among young people to the Castro regime.
What would have happened if the Castro regime had discovered what those students were up to? The same thing that the U.S. government does to people at Gitmo.
But hey, why use paid and trained CIA agents when you can use some expendable, idealistic students who need the money and who are convinced that the CIA is a “pro-freedom” organization? Who cares what happens to them? Certainly not USAID and the CIA. Hey, we’re at war, remember? The Cold War against those commies who are spreading throughout Latin America and coming to get us. Why, I can already see those faraway dominoes starting to fall.
Let’s be honest. For the U.S. national-security state, the Cold War never ended. There was never a possibility that U.S. officials in the deep state would accept peaceful coexistence with communist or socialist regimes that refuse to cow-tow to the Pentagon and the CIA, such as the regimes in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and elsewhere.
Of course, USAID and the CIA and all the other “pro-democracy” NGOs that serve as fronts for the CIA would innocently reply that they’re just interested in advancing “freedom and democracy.”
Really?
How about Egypt? How much freedom and democracy is there in that country? I don’t see USAID and the CIA protesting the U.S. government ‘s support of one of the most brutal military dictatorships in history. Indeed, the U.S. government continues to flood Egypt’s dictatorial brutes with billions of dollars in aid to fortify the dictatorship’s tyrannical regime, with the full and enthusiastic support of the CIA and USAID. After all, Egypt’s dictator is our dictator, just like Fulgencio Batista, the pro-US Cuban dictator who preceded Castro.
Consider Ukraine, where expansion on the part of the Cold War’s NATO organization, along with CIA regime-change activity in Ukraine, has succeeded in bringing about one heckuva good crisis against Russia, one that is certain to keep billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money flooding into the coffers of the CIA, USAID, the Pentagon, NSA, the army of “defense” contractors, and the rest of the national-security state apparatus. To paraphrase former U.S. Secretary of State John Hay and Gen. Smedley Butler, what a splendid little racket!
This is all about dinosaur Cold War activities on the part of the U.S. national-security state in countries like Cuba, Ukraine, and Venezuela. They’ve never let go of the Cold War and, as long as these agencies are permitted to remain in existence, it is obvious that they will never be able to let go of it.
Haven’t these people done enough damage to our country and others around the world, not only with the torture schemes and their regime-change operations but also with their invasions, embargoes, sanctions, occupations, wars of aggression, surveillance schemes, kidnappings, renditions, support of brutal dictatorships, and other totalitarian-like methods?
The Cold War is over. It’s time to ditch all the Cold War agencies, departments, and entities. A good place to start would be with the CIA and USAID.
Reprinted with permission from the Future of Freedom Foundation.
