Reply #178: "But as threats of a new US invasion faced Castro anew" ...

[defendandprotect]

But as threats of a new invasion faced Castro anew, as the country shook to armed attacks from Cuban exile boats havened in Florida, and as our congressmen clamored for United States unilateral intervention in Cuba, Castro was again forced to beg Russia for more arms, more military instructors, more massive aid -- and, discovered later, missiles. This provoked many of our congressmen to demand an immediate United States Marine attack upon Cuba.

President Kennedy reacted calmly. He insisted that no such intervention would be contemplated so long as the Castro regime did not acquire an "offensive capability." However, after such previous promises had been followed by the Bay of Pips invasion, Castro obviously could not take us at our word. Furthermore, the Voice of America, a propaganda arm of our State Department, immediately broadcast that "the government of the United States threatens no nation and no people," which, as we have seen, is unfortunately false and which implied that it was Cuba that was doing the threatening. And many of our leading statesmen continued to demand an invasion to "stop Cuba's aggressive intentions." Anyone who can claim that tiny Cuba had or has such intentions when our Guantanamo base stares down its throat and when we have made it amply clear that we are anxiously awaiting an excuse to wipe Cuba clear of all Castroites is either insane or a liar. But then lies did get us to invade Cuba once before, in 1898.

In this atmosphere, then, Castro was perfectly justified to ask Russia for missiles, even with nuclear warheads. If you are convinced that your enemy is going to try to kill you, you are going to do your best to kill him too. Cuba will be destroyed by the Yankis, Castro could say, but maybe Cuba can get a shot at Washington too. And so Russian missiles were installed 90 miles from the United States -- to protect Cuba.

The fallacy, of course, was that the missiles were Russian, controlled by Russians and at the service of Russia -- not Cuba. As such, they did represent a threat to us. Objectively, one can point out that Russia was only giving us back some of our own medicine, since we have long pointed missiles at Russia from 35 bases in foreign countries. Nevertheless, Kennedy was perfectly right to denounce this as a breach in the balance of power, even if our definition of "balance" is plenty of United States bases around Russia, no Russian base around the United States.

http://www.ditext.com/gerassi/31.html


And then things got even worse for the elite warmongers and warmakers in America --

JFK and Kruschev alliance brought about DETENTE -- !!

But it was soon ended as the life of JFK was taken by the right wing political assassination --

not only of our president, but in taking our "people's" government.

And less than a year after that Kruschev was moved out --