CUBA-USA: THE OBAMA PLAN AGAINST CUBA
By: Dr. Néstor García Iturbe
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
November 25, 2015
At the end of November this year, The New York Times published an editorial referring to US actions against Cuba, entitled, “In Cuba, Misadventures in Regime Change” . It explains the views of the newspaper on a series of activities that have been organized and financed against Cuba by U.S. administrations that have been in the White House for the last fifty years.
In that article, the Editorial Board of the newspaper said that the so-called Cuban democracy funds “have been a magnet for charlatans and swindlers” and concludes that “it is more likely to come about through stronger diplomatic relations than subterfuge” and counterproductive initiatives.
The article said that in 1996, spurred by an appetite for revenge, U.S. lawmakers passed a bill spelling out a strategy to overthrow the government in Havana and “assist the Cuban people in regaining their freedom”.
This project, signed into law as the Helms-Burton Act by President Bill Clinton, has served as the foundation for the $264 million the United States has spent in the last 18 years trying to overthrow the Cuban Revolution.
The Clinton administration tried to implement its purposes by using the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which was responsible for running the various aggressive designs against Cuba.
During the Bush administration, from 2001, the agency increased its activities substantially. This meant increasing the budget for this purpose in a few million dollars –more than twenty million per year– which were delivered to Cuban exile groups without much oversight as to where the money went and what the expenses were used fo.
The General Accounting Office, responsible for auditing the expenditure of U.S. government agencies, on several occasions warned of the havoc with which the funds were being used –in most cases, for the personal benefit of the so-called leaders of the organizations in exile– and not fully destined for political work in Cuba for the development of U.S. interests and the help to U.S. supporters who were in prison.
Despite the warnings expressed in audits and some famous cases that came to light, such as that of Adolfo Franco, USAID Director for Latin America, in 2008, Congress authorized the record amount of $ 45 million dollars for projects against Cuba.
In the early years of the Obama administration, it continued wasting hundreds of millions of dollars trying to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. The efforts included the famous program called ZunZuneo which tried to build a platform to disseminate messages to a mass audience in preparation for a “Cuban Spring,” and ended with the imprisonment of Alan Gross.
We must consider the statement by the Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama on December 17, 2014, in which he expressed the view that the failure of U.S. policy toward Cuba during the past fifty years would not bring about a change in policy, but new methods that would make the policy successful and finally achieve the goal of overthrowing the Cuban Revolution.
What are the actions being undertaken by the Obama administration to try to ensure that its Cuba policy is successful in erasing the Cuban Revolution from the map?
Opening an embassy to increase the physical presence of the U.S. government in the island.
Establishing links with Cuba in every way possible, including trade and tourism, so that Cubans have to seriously think whether they are ready to reject these possibilities now open to them and which were closed for over fifty years.
This should give some freedom to “U.S. diplomats” for their contacts with Cuban dissidents and other forces that could be attracted.
Maintaining the U.S. presence in Guantanamo Naval Base.
Maintaining Radio and Television Martí whose budget for 2016 will be $30 million.
Maintaining the State Department´s project of $15 million to finance the opposition in Cuba.
Implementing the project of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, for a million dollars, to hire journalists who would travel to the island and link with dissidents, young persons and human rights groups.
Continuing imposing fines to any financial institution that is involved in transactions related to Cuba.
Maintaining actions against governments friendly to Cuba to change them, in order to make Cuba lose the resources that enable it to survive.
This is in a nutshell the Obama Plan.
We must not think that the Cuban Revolution is a problem for the Nobel Peace Prize, or of whoever undertakes the U.S. presidency after him; it is a problem of the dominant class in the United States. They cannot forgive the fact –as Fidel said– that we have made a socialist revolution under their noses.
