The Washington establishment is agog over the arrest of Kendall and Gwendolyn Myers on charges of spying for Cuba. He’s the great-grandson of Alexander Graham Bell who worked for 30 years at the State Department, and she’s a housewife turned political activist.
According to a front-page article in the New York Times today, “American officials say they are still trying to determine what secrets were stolen and the consequences for the nation’s security.”
May I hazard a guess as to what was stolen? I suspect that what was stolen involved U.S. regime-change schemes against Cuba, including such things as assassinations, embargoes, sanctions, invasions, and acts of terrorism within Cuba. And I also suspect that the items stolen had absolutely nothing to do with U.S. “national security” and instead everything to do with Cuba’s “national security.”
After all, no one is going to seriously contend that Cuba has ever had any plans to attack, invade, conquer, and occupy the United States.
Instead, it’s the exact opposite. It is the U.S. government that has been obsessively committed to regime change in Cuba ever since Fidel Castro confirmed that he would not be a puppet or stooge for the U.S. Empire, as was his predecessor, Fulgencio Batista.
For decades, the U.S. government has imposed and enforced a brutal embargo against the Cuban people, in the hope that Cubans would suffer so much economically that they would finally overthrow the Castro regime and install a U.S.-approved regime in its stead.
There was the disastrous CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba, again with the aim of ousting Castro from power and installing a U.S. stooge or puppet in his stead.
There were also the numerous assassination attempts on Castro by the CIA.
News reports indicate that the Myerses visited Cuba many years ago and fell in love with the country. While in Cuba, they visited a museum devoted to showing the bad things that the CIA has done to Cuba. The news reports also indicate that the couple was deeply enamored with Fidel Castro and his socialist economic policies.
In 1999 I visited Cuba. I must confess that unlike the Myerses, I wasn’t enamored with Cuba’s socialist society but I did fall in love with the Cuban people, who generally speaking were among the most genuine and friendly people I’ve ever encountered.
I asked a Cuban taxi driver, “Why are Cubans so nice to me after what my government has done to them with its embargo.” His answer: “What responsibility do you have for what your government has done to us?”
Another time, a young Cuban man, about 20, approached me and said to me in a low voice, “I know you are an American. I just want you to know that I love everything the United States stands for. My biggest dream in life is to visit New York City so that I can just lay my eyes on the Statue of Liberty.”
My impression was that the Cuban people hate socialism but that they revere Fidel Castro for his courage in maintaining Cuba’s political independence from the United States.
The irony is that it’s not just the Myerses and Castro who embrace socialism. Many Americans, including people in Congress and the Obama administration, fully embrace socialism. The core elements of Castro’s socialism are free public schooling and free government-provided health care for everyone. How many Americans, including Barack Obama, oppose those socialist programs?
U.S. officials are also making a big deal out of the Myerses’ embrace of Fidel Castro. That’s ironic because U.S. officials embrace dictators all the time. Examples include: Saddam Hussein, Pervez Musharraf, the shah of Iran, Augusto Pinochet, Muammar Qaddafi, a long line of military dictators in Latin America, and authoritarian dictators in the Middle East who torture people on behalf of U.S. officials. The Myerses’ crime is in embracing a dictator that the U.S. government doesn’t like because he won’t obey orders of the U.S. government, as his predecessor Batista did.
While I was in Havana, I visited the same CIA museum that the Myerses visited. Like them, I was repelled over the things that my own government had done in Cuba, including assassination attempts, a military invasion, and a brutal embargo that has squeezed the life out of the Cuban people. The U.S. government’s actions against Cuba have been morally abhorrent and are deserving of contempt and condemnation.
The reason that I wasn’t enamored with Cuban society is that it’s a socialist system. The state owns most everything, and most everyone works for the government. It is a gray, depressing place where there is a dullness in people’s eyes and a lack of vibrancy in their activities.
Unlike the Myerses, I wouldn’t be too welcome if I returned to Cuba. After my return to the United States, I wrote a series of articles that were critical of the CIA, the U.S. embargo, and Cuba’s socialist system. My criticism of Cuban socialism resulted in a very nasty letter being sent to me from an official in Cuba’s Special Interest Section in Washington. I imagine, of course, that any U.S. officials who happen to have read my criticism of the CIA and the U.S. embargo against Cuba would be just as unhappy with me as that Cuban official.
If you would like to read my account of my trip to Cuba click here.
