The U.S. Has an Unhealthy Obsession With Cuba

[Judi Lynn]

NOVEMBER 2, 2021

BY ROSA ELIZALDE

The piggy bank was rattled again. In September 2021, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) gave $6,669,000 in grants for projects aimed at “regime change” in Cuba, a euphemism to avoid saying “direct intervention by a foreign power.” The United States’ current Democratic administration has especially favored the International Republican Institute (IRI) with a bipartisan generosity that Donald Trump never had. Other groups in Miami, Washington and Madrid that have also received generous amounts have been among those calling for an invasion of the island. These groups paint an apocalyptic panorama in Havana to secure greater funding next year.

Public funding for the anti-Castro industry in the United States seems inexhaustible. In the last year, at least 54 organizations have benefitedfrom the State Department, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID programs for Cuba. In the last 20 years, this agency has given Creative Associates International, a CIA front, more than $1.8 billion for espionage, propaganda and the recruitment of agents of “change” including on the island. One of its best-known projects, the so-called “Cuban Twitter” or ZunZuneo, resulted in a superb failure that unveiled a plot of corruption and flagrant violations of U.S. law. ZunZuneo cost the USAID director his job, but Creative Associates International continues to operate, only now undercover.

The American researcher Tracey Eaton, who for years has followed the route of these funds, commented in a recent interview that many of the financing programs for “regime change” in Cuba are so stealthy that we will probably never know who all the recipients are or what the total amount is, and judging by the known millions, the subsidy must reach an even greater figure. According to letters from the State Department and USAID that Eaton has received, “democracy-building” strategies are considered “trade secrets” and are exempt from disclosure under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act.

The United States goes berserk at the alleged hint of Russian, Chinese or Islamic intrusion into local politics and online platforms. However, it does not hesitate for a minute to rudely intervene in Cuba, as exposed by the digital daily MintPress News, which documented how private Facebook groups instigated the July 11 riots in several Cuban cities. “The involvement of foreign nationals in the domestic affairs of Cuba is on a level that can scarcely be conceived of in the United States,” says the publication, adding: “the people who sparked the July 11 protests in Cuba are planning similar actions for October and November.”

The United States is a military superpower whose plans for political subversion are a shame and a scandal, and there is no indication that Washington will now achieve what it has failed to do in 60 years. In fact, the U.S. government’s obsession with Cuba is two centuries old, as Louis A. Pérez, a historian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has shown in a brilliant essay entitled “Cuba as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.”

More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/11/02/the-u-s-has-an-unhealthy-obsession-with-cuba/

[Buckeye_Democrat]

1. Of course. Cuba wasn't completed subjugated...

... by the USA, going back to at least the 1820's.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Wonderful short commentary on US/Cuban history. Love his remark you have to really try to not know!

That effort comes easily for the intentionally brain dead, doesn't it?

Thank you, so much, Buckeye Democrat.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Information referenced in original article: "Cuba as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder"

Cuba as an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Louis A. Pérez, Jr.
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

As a nation we seemed unable to maintain a sense of perspective about Cuba.
–Cyrus R. Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s
Foreign Policy (New York, 1983)

The rationale of the Cuba policy no longer commands credibility. No longer can the
policy be assumed to derive its raison d’être from the realm of the plausible. Disinterested
observers–which is to say, much of the world–are most assuredly correct to suspect that Cuba is a
peculiar American obsession. Eleven presidential administrations, including Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conservatives, have failed to resolve what must be considered a policy
anomaly of singular distinction: more than 50 years of political isolation and economic sanctions,
longer than the U.S. refusal to recognize the Soviet Union, longer than the hiatus of normal
relations with China, longer than it took to reconcile with post-war Vietnam. Cuba has been
under U. S. sanctions for almost half its national existence as an independent republic.

U.S. relations with Cuba–or perhaps more correctly, the U.S. relationship with Cuba–is a
complex matter. The subject of Cuba has rarely been a topic of reasoned disquisition. It defies
facile explanation, and certainly cannot be understood solely–or even principally–within the logic
of the policy calculus that otherwise serves to inform U.S. foreign relations, mostly because it is
not logical.

This is not to suggest that the policy of sanctions is without political constituencies, of
course. Considerations of domestic politics as a determinant of foreign policy are not without
precedent. Cuba is no exception. Influential Cuban-American interest groups have acted with
single-minded advocacy in behalf of the embargo. Lobbyists and political action committees,
including the Free Cuba Political Action Committee, the U.S.-Cuba Democracy Political Action
As a nation we seemed unable to maintain a sense of perspective about Cuba.
–Cyrus R. Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in America’s
Foreign Policy (New York, 1983)
2
Committee, and the Cuba Libre Political Action Committee, among others, have channeled
substantial financial resources into the electoral system in behalf of hard-line policies against
Cuba. That the state of Florida looms large in national elections, moreover, has further enhanced
the political importance of the Cuban-American vote, long presumed to favor continuation of
sanctions. Candidates for national office, whether in primary contests or general elections, tread
lightly on the subject of Cuba while campaigning in Florida, persuaded that the safe course is the
hard-line course so well-trodden by almost every presidential candidate to have visited the
Sunshine State for the last 50 years.

More:
https://sta.uwi.edu/iir/normangirvanlibrary/sites/default/files/normangirvanlibrary/images/Cuba_as_an_obsessive_compulsive_disorder.pdf

[Jilly_in_VA]

4. For real

It's a tiny little country. They are our neighbors, FFS. And honestly, how is "ignoring them" by the embargo etc. going to make them go away or subjugate them? Just normalize things already and get back to the business of living together. We have diplomatic and domestic relations (not to mention military!) with countries that are a thousand times worse --think Saudi Arabia--and don't bat an eyelash. Get over it.

And Rafaelito Cruz and Mosquito Rubio can go jump in the ocean. The younger generation of Cuban-Americans doesn't give a flying Wallenda and the older generation will never go back because they have it too good here.