Rapist USA stalks Cuba
I’m sorry if my choice of words seems inflammatory – you may even say extreme. My response is: what is not extreme about yet another war of aggression, launched by a global giant against a small, impoverished island nation? Listening to Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday signalling that a US war on Cuba is almost inevitable, sickens me.
The US indictment of the 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro also this week is a classic pre-invasion propaganda manoeuvre. Another recent example is the US charade about fighting for democracy in Iran before killing hundreds of Iranian children on the first day of the war and thousands of other civilians in the days that followed.
Luis Ernesto Morejón Rodríguez, Cuba’s ambassador to New Zealand, told me this week: “Cuba maintains that this accusation forms part of a broader escalation of political pressure and efforts to criminalize its historic leadership.”
It’s impossible to tell but is the US trying to create a distraction from its disastrous war of aggression against Iran by launching a war of aggression against Cuba?
The long US strangulation of Cuba started the year I was born – 1959 – and has continued my entire life. The crime Cuba committed is asserting sovereignty and refusing US domination. This determination was on full display recently – on May Day – when over 500,000 people marched in Havana to condemn the US pressure campaign and to celebrate Cuban sovereignty.
Rape, I was taught by my feminist friends in the 1970s, is primarily about power, not about sex. It is used by evil men (almost invariably men) to assert dominance, to hurt, to control, to impose their will on people who would rather be left alone. In this regard, the term is apt when looking at a USA that has no respect for anything that borders on decent human behaviour. The US-Israeli Rape of Gaza now stands in infamy alongside the Rape of Nanking, China, by Imperial Japanese forces in WWII. History, tragically, records many such crimes that rise to the level of Rape. It is what empires do.
Shame on the men and women who stand back and watch this latest American crime. Shame on Canadian PM Mark Carney for his fine speeches about international law that are now ringing hollow. Shame on all those Western leaders who have for decades turned a blind eye every time the Americans went abroad and did their evil work.
I remember when I was a child, not yet a teenager, learning of the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam where American soldiers raped hundreds of women and girls before killing them along with their fathers, sons, brothers and grandparents. So great was the American impunity that no-one faced serious consequences, no justice was done for the victims. So it has been throughout the centuries – 19th, 20th and now 21st – when America forced itself on country after country.
Marco Rubio, that ludicrous chameleon, that weathervane of immorality, says Cuba is a “national security threat” to the US. Laughable, if it weren’t the prelude to a crime. The reflexively mendacious Rubio said this week that the chances of a diplomatic outcome were slim: “I'm just being honest with you, you know, the likelihood of that happening, given who we're dealing with right now, is not high." Didn’t I hear all this before a dozen different US wars of aggression?
At the UN this year the overwhelming majority of nations, including my own, voted to support the resolution entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
The United Nations Charter is the document we should all turn to and respect in moments like these. As Ambassador Rodriguez told me: “Any threat or use of force against Cuba would constitute a direct violation of fundamental principles of international law.” He made specific reference to core articles of the Charter, specifically:
the sovereign equality of States
non-interference in internal affairs
the prohibition of the threat or use of force
respect for the territorial integrity and political independence of States
the inalienable right of peoples to self-determination.
Nowhere in the Charter does it say that our media should uncritically parrot whatever lies come out of Washington – suggesting Cuba somehow poses a clear and present danger to the country that has its knee on its neck.
Israel, according to global polling, is the most loathed country on the planet. The United States has seen its own standing in the world community of nations fall through the floor. Of the 68 countries surveyed in the Global Country Perceptions 2026 ranking, the US is 64th, just four above Israel. Nira surveys showed that globally people identify the United States as the main threat to humanity.
There is something creepy about the US, something to be shunned, feared and loathed by the global majority. Machiavelli may have said, “It is better to be feared than loved,” but he added “if you cannot be both." Hatred, he warned, can lead to resistance.
The people of the earth are sick of the insanity, the incoherence, the endless cruelty and violence, the brute stupidity of the American empire. Enough, already!
I weep for Palestine, I weep for Iran and for so many other countries that have suffered from American power. I fear for Cuba and the long-suffering Cuban people. I stand with the people of Cuba. I stand for the United Nations Charter and, above all, for respect for the territorial integrity of states.
The UN Charter tells us that the Cuban people, not the US, should determine the social, political and economic systems of their country.
¡Cuba Libre!
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts solidarity.co.nz.
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