Vijay Prashad
Before discussing the “state sponsor of terrorism” label being applied to Cuba, let’s talk about what the United States is doing today — sending two-thousand-pound bombs to Israel, with which Israel is wiping out Palestinians in Gaza. Israel is conducting acts of terror, and the US is backing them. Don’t take my word — Leon Panetta, ex–CIA director, said that the pager attack that Israel carried out in Lebanon was an act of terror.
There are so many examples of the United States supporting, encouraging, and sometimes financing acts of terror against the Cuban Revolution, whereas Cuba never exercised any impulse to commit violence against the US government.
In the 1980s, the US supported apartheid South Africa, a terrorist regime, yet it was the Cubans who actually sent troops and intelligence officers into Angola to help liberation forces.
It’s worth noting that the Cuban Revolution happened in 1959, yet the United States didn’t label Cuba a “state sponsor of terrorism” until 1982. What changed? Under Reagan, the US was waging dirty wars in Central America, funneling illegal money into the Iran-Contra affair, despite congressional restrictions, to conduct massacres in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala. At that time, the Cuban government was training revolutionaries from all over Latin America, but Cuba was not intervening with troops or supplying weapons. Conditions in some countries got so ghastly that, in fact, the social democratic Venezuelan government intervened to provide air support to some of the guerrilla groups. Yet Venezuela was never labeled a state sponsor of terror.
In the 1980s, the United States supported apartheid South Africa, a terrorist regime, yet it was the Cubans who actually sent troops and intelligence officers into Angola to help liberation forces. With the defeat of South Africa at the…
Auteur: Vijay Prashad
