By Rosa Miriam Elizalde on March 6, 2022
photo: Sputnik
Nothing is more frightening than to see U.S. officials discussing international law and war crimes. Live and on air, Harris Faulkner, host of Fox News, has told Condoleezza Rice that “when you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime”. The former head of U.S. diplomacy, one of the architects of the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, not only nodded in agreement, but responded, “It certainly goes against every principle of international law and international order.”
Condoleeza is credited with the concept of “preventive war” which she actually borrowed from the 1945 defense of the top Third Reich rulers indicted at the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. She was one of the imperialist voices saying that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein had mobile laboratories, that he had bought uranium from Niger and that he was preparing for large-scale military action. All lies.
One should read the reactions to this dialogue between Faulkner (nothing to do with the writer) and Rice. The predominant feeling is one of disgust or nausea.
Most prefer the lying Condoleezza to the cynical one, after all, lying needs someone to swindle -that is why it creates social bonds-, while cynicism does not take into account or need the other and openly despises the memory that people may have.
It assumes, for example, that everyone is an imbecile and does not know that the deterioration of international law has its most dangerous germ, not so much in the violation of its norms, but in forgetting them. What international law sustains the blockade of a sovereign and peaceful country for 60 years? What legal justification has allowed the United States to usurp Guantanamo and use that territory to hold and torture prisoners? Where is the legal norm that sustains the premise of the siege on Cuba, which is to “provoke hunger and desperation”, as Undersecretary of State Lester Mallory said in a cynical memorandum in 1960 and never more topical than now?
Not to mention another sentiment that accompanies cynicism: revenge. Juan Gonzalez, Joseph Biden’s special advisor for Latin America, said last Friday that the international sanctions imposed against Russia are designed to squeeze Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In statements to Voice of America, he added that Havana, Caracas and Managua “will feel the squeeze”, despite the fact that none of these countries have anything to do with the decisions made by the Kremlin. What Gonzalez does not say is that sanctions against Russia do impact Europe and the United States, even though they are not intended to.
But the Ministry of Vengeance decides that Cuba and anyone who moves in line opposed to Washington’s decisions is not the collateral damage, but the target. It does not matter if the confrontation scenario is miles away, the anti-Castro industry in Florida got the message of Juan Gonzalez very well and immediately called the White House not to delay any longer the decision to reprimand Cuba, because “in a war you do not respond with dialogue, but with bombs” (sic). In 2003, something similar happened. In Miami alone there was a massive demonstration in support of the US “war against terrorism”, whose most striking signs and choruses read: “Iraq now, Cuba later”.
What is happening between Russia and Ukraine fuels the revanchist loop from Washington to Florida and vice versa. The relationship between the Democrats in the White House and the Trumpists in the southern state is in a drift of estrangement and used to harm each other, with Cuba as a bargaining chip. Miami Republicans will not vote for the Democrats, no matter what the latter does, but both actors take advantage of McCarthyism and at this point, twinned by the Russophobic atmosphere and the new Cold War, find themselves in a situation of self- and inter-regeneration, like two bodies that have to exchange their blood cells in order to continue living. Of course, in the name of international law and with Condoleezza as fairy godmother.
Although we have been through this many times, the cynicism of the West now reaches savage heights. Live and direct, with plots and subplots of a new war that nobody knows where it will lead, the question is pertinent: how to defend ourselves from the excessive, murderous hatred, from that global desire for revenge that always martyrs the same people?
Source: Cuba en Resumen