Except For CUBA We Agree!!
The letter to Mr. Will concluded on:
{Wednesday, March 20th, 2019}
Of the over 1,000 essays on Cubaninsider, this is one of my last and it's my most personal. I am pleased that as of today {March 20, 2019} Alexa Rank says Cubaninsider has a world ranking under 500,000 and a USA ranking right at the 100,000 mark although, to my surprise, readers in France or Norway sometimes top USA readers. I have been to Cuba and I've studied U.S.-Cuban relations daily {nightly too} since the 1980s. I've NEVER made a penny off of it from ads or donations because I want to be totally unbiased, and no one else has ever influenced or written a single word on this blog. Most of my adult years were spent as a broadcast journalist...a mediocre one, at best...but in a long semi-retirement I have relished being what I consider a fair-minded critic of both broadcast and print journalists in the USA...and even Cuba where my two favorites are talented young television anchors Rosy Amaro and Cristina Escobar. My all-time idol in broadcast journalism: Walter Cronkite. My all-time idol in print journalism: George Will. Mr. Will has been a Pulitzer prize-winning Superstar columnist syndicated across the USA and beyond since 1974 by the omnipotent WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP. I choose not to divulge my age but I am 11 months older than Mr. Will, who turns 78 on May 4th, 2019. And now I will reveal in detail my OPEN LETTER TO GEORGE WILL.
"Dear Mr. Will:
Permit me to start by saying that I would never make public a letter I am writing to a great journalist {whom I deeply admire} if it did not relate to a topic very dear to me -- the U. S. democracy.
Your last nationally {even internationally} syndicated column just appeared in my small, local newspaper. You suggested, I believe, that America's greatest sin has been its near-toleration of the sexual assaults by Catholic priests on generations of children. I agree with you, of course, about the unspeakable magnitude of any sexual attack on anyone, especially children. But I disagree that the NEAR-toleration of such crimes against nature is America's greatest sin. I happen to believe that the ALMOST TOTAL-toleration of the USA's criminal and anti-democracy Cuban policies since 1898 have been and are America's greatest continuous sin...and I further believe that the primary culprit in that nefarious endeavor is the mainstream U. S. media of which you are an indelible example.
I'll herewith explain why I happen to believe that one overriding issue, an overwhelming thirst by greedy and scandalous USA right-wingers to dominate the island of Cuba, has done more to harm America and its democracy than any other entity since 1776. If that is not so, explain to me that there is some other topic that could possibly attain a 191-to-0 condemnation of the United States in the United Nations, which the U. S. got for its Cuban policy in 2016, the last year a non-Republican president was in the White House...a president who happened to agree with that unique unanimity. But that's only one of many facts that convince me that the weakest link in the U. S. democracy, and the primary threat to it, is the deterioration of the mainstream U. S. media, of which you are a specific paradigm as my print idol.
I discount highly funded right-wing rags such as Breitbart, which are propaganda tools for idiots, but when the mainstream media evolves from being a vital overall news-gathering source to merely a highly effective propaganda-fueled force, I believe that is dire cause for democracy-lovers to be concerned.
For many decades, unwittingly the Caribbean island of Cuba has represented the prime prism or focal point revealing how a propaganda-obsessed mainstream USA media can help provide the energy that pushes even a great and powerful democracy into a precipitous but avoidable decline. I fully realize it is not politically or socially correct to project little Cuba into such a prominent position, but it happens to be so...as I will hereby attempt to document.
But first I'll return to the determinable and detrimental part your profession, the mainstream media, has come to play in the Founding Fathers' experiment in democracy. Beyond what he wrote in the Declaration of Independence, I believe Thomas Jefferson's quotation he included in a Jan. 16-1787 letter he wrote from Paris to a Virginia friend named Edward Carrington was equally as prophetic and pertinent. In that letter Mr. Jefferson opined that a free and vibrant media, meaning newspapers, was the most vital element to the democracy he helped craft. In fact, Mr. Jefferson believed that viable and sincere news-gathering newspapers were more important than the democratic government itself. In that vein, throughout America's post-Revolutionary history and at least dating back to the John Adams presidency, the ungodly thirst to dominate Cuba has shone a glaring spotlight on illuminating democracy's most salient and greediest weakness.
For example, the term "Yellow Journalism" originated in 1898 when the USA's two most powerful newspaper publishers, Pulitzer and Hearst, shamefully campaigned for a pretext to attack and to conquer CUBA. That vicious, anti-American "Yellow Journalism" campaign produced the pretext -- blowing up the U. S. warship Maine in Havana Harbor -- that murdered a couple hundred young U. S. sailors, after which the blame was solely attributed to Spain to ignite the Spanish-American War.
From the "Yellow Journalism" of 1898 to the "Fake News" phenomenon of today, the issue of little Cuba, incredibly, has played the most significant role in what I call the illumination of democracy's greatest weakness, an ineffective mainstream media. AGAIN, if that is not so, explain to me how and why the Cuban Conundrum has been allowed to meekly proselytize and then to strongly propagandize Americans into believing...IT'S ALRIGHT to blow up your own ship and kill hundreds of innocent young Americans {IF that's what likely happened in Havana} IF it provides the excuse, or pretext, to capture Cuba on behalf of a few rich Americans. And then, once "Remember the Maine" turned out to be a rousing success related to Cuba, it spawned a multitude of endless IT'S ALRIGHT shenanigans to be perpetrated against the U. S. democracy on behalf of a few rich USA deceitful-minded crooks. That anti-democratic transition that began in 1898 has, of course, best been documented by America's continuing unmitigated criminal actions associated with a little nation that should otherwise be most notable for being the largest and arguably the most beautiful and most promising Caribbean island. Now permit me to enumerate a few more IT'S ALRIGHT USA criminal and anti-democracy episodes tied uniquely to the USA's tar-baby -- the island nation of Cuba.
IT'S ALRIGHT, once you've conquered Cuba from Spain, to steal Cuba's lush Guantanamo Bay in "perpetuity" and construct on it an unneeded, unwanted, and expensive military base that has shamed the USA from 1903 to today;
IT'S ALRIGHT not to bring democracy to Cuba starting in 1898 because democracy in a little nation would result in most of its resources benefiting its own citizens as opposed to almost exclusively benefiting a few already rich imperialist foreigners;
IT'S ALRIGHT in 1952 to sic the top Mafia kingpins...Lucky Luciano, etc...on Cuba if it will help rich Americans ransack the island better via financial kick-backs to the ruthless Batista-Mafia dictatorship;
IT'S ALRIGHT for the U. S. government and U. S. citizens to ignore front-page articles in the NY Times by the great Herbert L. Matthews telling about such things as the routine murders of Cuban children by Batista-Mafia thugs to supposedly quell dissent from the majority peasants;
IT'S ALRIGHT, once such extreme brutality as well as the total disregard for the health and educational needs of the majority Cuban peasants became known in the USA, for the U. S. government...abetted by the U. S. media...to inform U. S. citizens that the Batistiano-Mafiosi U.S.-friendly killer-thieves were the GOOD guys and all those Cuban mothers marching in the streets to protest the murders of their children were the BAD guys, AND THUS U. S. citizens were advised that their dollars and their democracy-loving reputations would be used to wipe out the supposedly minor Cuban Revolution;
IT'S ALRIGHT, after the startling triumph of the Cuban Revolution on the first day of 1959, that the Batista-Mafia leaders would be allowed to use their U.S. support and all their Mafiosi loot to overwhelm Miami and Newark while creating a new capital, Little Havana in Miami;
IT'S ALRIGHT that the most vile Cuban exiles were immediately sent to the then secretive Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning in Georgia to train for the military attack designed to recapture Cuba;
IT'S ALRIGHT the U. S. democracy by that time had the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning to train soldiers from vile U.S.-friendly dictatorships such as Batista in Cuba, Somoza in Nicaragua, Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, etc., etc., and then send the heavily-armed soldiers back to protect those vile dictators who were helping a few rich Americans get richer;
IT'S ALRIGHT that the U. S. democracy grossly lied to the American people about the Army School of the Americas from the 1950s until great journalists such as James Bamford revealed its existence and its purpose during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s, after which Clinton held one news conference to say the name {at least} had been changed and henceforth Americans were not to believe that any such entity ever existed;
IT'S ALRIGHT that the expensive and secretive Army School of the Americas trained the infamous Brigade 2506 that attacked Cuba with U. S. air-and-sea military support in April of 1961 in a bloody but failed effort to recapture Cuba;
IT'S ALRIGHT that every Republican president from Nixon to Ford to the Bushes to Trump and every major Republican political candidate is required to go to Little Havana and bow before a huge Brigade 2506 banner and pledge allegiance to its sanctity and to the recapture of Cuba;
IT'S ALRIGHT that even while that famed 1961 Bay of Pigs attack was UNDERWAY the U. S. democracy had the decent but unaware and shamefully duped Adlai Stevenson at the UN lie to the world that only Cubans on the island, not the USA "in any fashion," were involved in the cowardly attack;
IT'S ALRIGHT, once it was revealed that the U. S. democracy was TOTALLY involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, that Cubans protecting their island and their newly gained sovereignty would BE BLAMED for their successful defense of their nation while the thugs in Washington would make sure the losing attackers were labeled as heroic Miami Freedom Fighters to make sure that propagandized Americans would continue to support FUTURE attacks and TERRORISM against Cuba;
IT'S ALRIGHT that many of the Cuban extremists who graduated from the Army School of the Americas at Fort Benning would become highly paid CIA and military operatives involved in obsessive and lifelong military and terrorist attacks against Cubans on the island, including perhaps Latin America's all-time most infamous and self-admitted terrorist, the Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles;
IT'S ALRIGHT that the mainstream U. S. media was used as a prime ploy to excuse the terrorist bombing by CIA/Miami-related Cuban terrorists that killed all aboard the civilian CUBANA FLIGHT 455;
IT'S ALRIGHT that the mainstream U. S. media was used to excuse deadly terrorist hotel bombings in Havana designed to discourage tourism to the island, attacks that Posada admitted and bragged about in a famous NY Times article written by Anne Louise Bardach, an article in which Posada praised the U. S. government and the most renowned U.S.-backed Miami Counter Revolutionary, Jorge Mas Canosa, for their support.
IT'S ALRIGHT that the mainstream U. S. media was used to help terrorist Speed Boaters with tripod-mounted cannon celebrate back on Miami docks after blasting away in the dead of night at coastal Cuban fishing cabins, with the most famous such attack killing two adult fishermen as they slept, and the same attack totally sliced off the lower right leg of 15-year-old NANCY PAVON as she slept beside her 13-year-old sister who was also seriously wounded;
IT'S ALRIGHT that U. S. federal and state courts in Florida can sue Cuba for whatever Counter Revolutionary Cubans want to accuse unrepresented Cuba of, but the U. S. will not allow its courts OR international courts to allow Cuba to sue for such things as the theft of Guantanamo Bay, the 6-decades-old ILLEGAL economic embargo against Cuba, the terrorist-related deaths of totally innocent Cubans, or the suffering that still-living Cubans such as NANCY PAVON have endured all their adult lives at great expense to the Cuban government, etc., etc.
IT'S ALRIGHT that powerful Republican entities, such as the Bush dynasty, can enjoy decades of economic and political rewards from tight alignments with only the most extreme Cuban exiles, including the most famed terrorists such as Posada and Orlando Bosch, AND NEVER be held accountable by the mainstream U. S. media;
IT'S ALRIGHT when, after 9/11, President George W. Bush proclaimed that harboring a terrorist is the same as being a terrorist while AT THE VERY SAME TIME the Bush dynasty was making sure that the likes of Posada & Bosch would live out their long lives harbored as celebrated and well-known citizens in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood;
IT'S ALRIGHT within the bowels of the U. S. democracy that Republican presidents could essentially anoint Cuban dictators on U. S. soil such as Army School of the Americas graduate and future billionaire Jorge Mas Canosa by the Reagan-Bush administration and, even more incredibly, Little Havana's Marco Rubio by the current Trump administration;
IT'S ALRIGHT within the bowels of the U. S. democracy for only a handful of the most extremist Counter Revolutionary Cubans be allowed to actually write vicious U. S. laws such as the Torricelli Bill or the Helms-Burton Act designed to legally and severely punish Cubans on the island AND TO severely enrich Cubans in Miami with tons of uncontested tax dollars;
IT'S ALRIGHT for Cuban extremists to construct permanently legal laws in the U. S. Congress, backed by all Republican White Houses, that create such things as the LONGEST AND CRUELEST {1962 till today} economic embargo EVER imposed by a strong nation against a weak nation, while the propagandized U. S. citizens and the intimidated mainstream U. S. media are sanctimoniously condemning nations like Russia or China for doing the same thing to citizens in small nations even for a week or so;
IT'S ALRIGHT for U. S. citizens and the mainstream U. S. media to condemn the murders of journalists in other countries BUT not have the guts to condemn the car-bombing of a decent Cuban-American newsman in Miami, EMILIO MILIAN, because he had the courage to condemn Cuban terrorists in Miami for terrorizing innocent Cubans as well as innocent Americans, such as VIVIAN MANNERUD VERBLE who had a Miami business that had a small and very legal involvement with Cuba;
IT'S ALRIGHT within the bowels of the U. S. democracy for school children to be taught, by history books and by the mainstream U. S. media, that EVERYTHING the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia thugs did in Cuba and are doing in Little Havana was/is justified while, on the other hand, EACH AND EVERYTHING Revolutionary Cuba has done since Jan. 1-1959 has been criminal and illegal;
IT'S ALRIGHT for even the mainstream U. S. media to pretend that the U. S., because of its unique military and economic superpower status, has a right to punish, decade after decade, totally innocent everyday citizens in a much-weaker nation as long as that nation doesn't submit to being dominated by U.S.-backed exiles booted out of that weaker nation LONG-AGO for what can be easily documented as JUST CAUSE;
IT'S ALRIGHT...etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.!!!!!
Above are just a few of the "IT'S ALRIGHT" assaults on Cuba and on Democracy that the mainstream U. S. media has permitted the U. S. government and a relatively small contingent of rich and powerful Cuban exiles to get away with. This, I believe, has demeaned America and Democracy since 1898 and especially since 1952 and 1959. And I also believe that my favorite print journalist {you, sir} have been a part of that continuing insult to two precious and cherished American ideals -- Journalism and Democracy.
In conclusion, Mr. Will, I could easily continue with a plethora of striking examples that reveal that Cuba says a heck of a lot more about the USA than it says about Cuba. It says, more poignantly than any other U. S. involvement or relationship, that it is alright for rogues high up in the U. S. government to use murder as fabricated pretexts to capture or recapture Cuba and, failing that, to assault, starve or otherwise punish generations of totally innocent men, women, and children on the island to sate the revenge, economic, and political whims of a handful of thuggish exiles and their self-serving Torricelli-like or Helms-like or Bush-like sycophants. If blowing up a U. S. warship and killing hundreds of young Americans sailors is disputed as the pretext for the 1898 Spanish-American War, fine...and maybe you deny that "Yellow Journalism" in that era didn't predicate that no-holds-barred quest to control Cuba. But what about after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution when the U.S.-aligned Mafiosi was booted off the island? That's when, decades after more criminality and chicanery fueled the USA's Cuban policies, truly great investigative journalists like James Bamford revealed that famous U. S. politicians or war-mongers...including General Lyman Lymnitzer and the six other Joint Chiefs of Staff members...concocted Operation Northwoods, which tried desperately to convince neophyte President JFK to approve the wholesale murder of Americans so it could be blamed on Revolutionary Cuba as a pretext for an all-out military attack. If people like Lymnitzer and all those other well-known Americans are never remotely held accountable even when such reports finally see the light of day, what does that say about the Cuban-related decline of America and Democracy...especially when even the mainstream media doesn't have the guts or the integrity to call a Spade a Spade? When decades of "Yellow Journalism" that has since evolved into propaganda fueled "Fake News" daily spotlights how terrible a government Revolutionary Cuba has been since 1959, perhaps, Mr. Will, someone like you, powerfully backed by the omnipotent Washington Post, should at least balance things out with some of the truths depicting the other side of the two-sided U.S.-Cuban conundrum. {As a democracy-loving American, I say that for America's sake, not Cuba's}.
Mr. Will, your bosses at the Washington Post have rightfully railed against a rogue "U.S.-friendly" nation apparently murdering, allegedly on orders from its Trump-friendly leader, a Post journalist. Fine, but why not rail about journalists like the car-bombed Emilio Milian, the Miami newsman targeted for complaining about Cuban extremists targeting innocent Cubans in Cuba and in Miami? With both the U. S. government and the mainstream U. S. media harboring the best known and self-admitted Cuban American terrorists in Miami, such as Posada and Bosch, why not at least admit that all aboard the civilian Cubana Flight 455 were innocent victims and that their murderers should have been held accountable, not protected?
If the Trump administration on behalf of Little Havana's most extremists Counter Revolutionaries can proclaim that anybody can sue Revolutionary Cuba for anything, why can't Cuba sue in an unbiased U. S. or world court for such things as...the theft from 1903 till today of plush Guantanamo Bay, Cubana Flight 455, deadly hotel bombings in Havana to discourage tourism to the island, deadly cannon-fire from Miami speed-boats that blasted harmless fishing cabins along the Cuban coasts, etc., etc. Or, to be more specific, I know of a Cuban lady named Nancy Pavon who has had her lower right leg missing since 1971. At age 15 she was sleeping beside her 13-year-old sister in a coastal fishing cabin when cannon-fire in the dead of night killed two adults and severely injured the two Pavon sisters. There are newspaper clippings that say the perpetrators radioed back to Miami so the news media could meet them on the dock to report on the celebration connected to that successful raid. The one-legged Nancy Pavon today is a well-spoken Cuban lady. Is there any chance she could sue some culpable person or entity for what happened to her and her family...and could the Cuban government, which has provided free healthcare for Nancy since 1971, possibly sue SOMEBODY to recover some of its expenses related to her terrorist-provoked injury? Rhetorical questions to be sure, but worth asking in regards to the U.S.-Cuban conundrum that says a lot more about the U.S., including U. S. journalism, than it says about Cuba or Cuban journalism.
For example, in Miami a young woman named Ana Martinez took note of how many court cases...and there have been MANY...were successfully suing unrepresented Cuba for whatever anybody wanted to sue Cuba for. Well, Ana's homesick husband Juan left her and returned to Cuba. So, fortuitously, Ana sued Cuba...AND, of course, WON BIG. She didn't accuse Juan of having raped her during their marriage but she blamed Cuba. Some have labeled the episode "The Country That raped Me" but, frankly, I don't think it is at all funny; I think the joke is on America and on Democracy -- LIKE SO MANY OTHER EGREGIOUS EVENTS, large and small, SINCE 1898...SINCE 1952...AND ESPECIALLY SINCE 1959 when the Cuban Revolution unwittingly chased the Batista-Mafia dictatorship off the island -- all the way to Little Havana in Miami, as it turned out.
And so, Mr. Will, I think 1959...more than 1898 and more than 1952...began what I called the CubaNIzation of the great American democracy. Understand, sir, that I have great admiration for the vast majority of Cubans on the island and Cuban-Americans in the USA. I am just appalled that a mere handful of U.S./Mafia-backed Cubans in Cuba in the 1950s and then in Miami and Newark and Washington since 1959 have been allowed to dictate FIRST to the island nation of Cuba and THEN to U.S.-Cuban relations.
Moreover, as clearly indicated by the current Trump administration, whenever a Republican happens to be President, Cuban Counter Revolutionary extremists like Rubio, Claver-Carone, and the Diaz-Balart brothers from Little Havana and from Washington can actually dictate the totality of the USA's Caribbean, Western Hemisphere, and Latin American foreign policy. And, all the while, of course, the mainstream U. S. media, of which you are an integral part, refuses to address such undeniable issues. And, sir, if the fear of a Emilio Milian-type car-bomb is a factor or a reason, I don't accept that as an excuse because the USA didn't become the world's greatest Democracy with a mainstream media that was TOO AFRAID to report certain aspect of the news that American need in order to govern democratically.
And lastly, Mr. Will, permit me to conclude by mentioning perhaps the most salient fall-out from the USA's Cuban thirst that has, at least since 1898, shamed America, the Founding Fathers, and Democracy. All along the way, mere handfuls of the greediest and most vile players...Americans, Cubans, the Mafia, etc...have been lushly rewarded by both their "legal" and illegal designs on Cuba -- all, incredibly, supported by the almighty U. S. government itself and largely by the mainstream U. S. media, which Thomas Jefferson said was even more important than the government itself IF the democratic experiment was to endure.
Take, for example, two decent, brilliant, and saintly women -- Emily Mendrala and Candace Johnson. Emily Mendrala is the Executive Director of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas...and she is a renowned Cuban expert and has worked for the U. S. government in that capacity. Because Ms. Mendrala now works tirelessly to bring sanity and decency to U.S.-Cuban relations, the mainstream U. S. media pretends neither she nor her excellent organization even exists. But, of course, if Marco Rubio or Mauricio Claver-Carone or the Diaz-Balart brothers {whose father was a key Minister in the Batista dictatorship and one of the richest founders of Little Havana} surge ahead benefiting economically and politically from using the might of the U. S. government to starve innocent women and children on the island, the U. S. mainstream media joins hugely funded right-wing rags like Breitbart to make Rubio, Claver-Carone, the Diaz-Balarts, Bob Menendez, etc., out to be wonderful Freedom Fighters -- like Posada and Bosch.
Or take Candace Johnson. As head of the famed Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, Ms. Johnson fights the U. S. embargo in order to secure for her cancer patients a famed Cuban vaccine that she, and other cancer experts, believe is the world's best treatment for lung cancer. Recently there have been headlines about "Americans Risk Jail Time to Travel to Cuba for Cancer Treatment." Likewise, Cuba has a diabetic treatment known to prevent foot amputations that U. S. doctors want access to. When a Candace Johnson or a Emily Mendrala lose their battles against the likes of Rubio and the Diaz-Balarts, I sincerely believe, Mr. Will, that the mainstream U. S. media is at fault for not supporting them or at least for not informing Americans about their heroic and just struggles so Americans can decide whether decent, honest Americans like Emily Mendrala and Candace Johnson should win their battles on behalf of Americans and Cuban-Americans against a few greedy miscreants from one generation to another.
As I have said, sir, I deeply admire you as my idol when it comes to print journalism...except for what I perceive as your cowardice regarding Cuba. Below I will include some photos to illustrate just a few of the points I have made.
Sincerely,
Rich Haney"
Emilio Milian before his Miami car-bombing.
Clockwise from left-bottom: Nancy Pavon; the coastal fishing cabin where she was shot by cannon-fire that actually sliced off her lower-right leg as she slept on the night of Oct. 12, 1971; Nancy at 15 in a wheelchair; and Nancy unconscious in the hospital the day after the shooting...and the day after the shooters had bragged about the attack in the Miami media.
Can Nancy sue in a Miami courtroom?
Ana Martinez, rich lady who sued Cuba in Miami.
The Diaz-Balart brothers.
The thirteen images
Directly above
Concluded my
"Dear Mr. Will"
Open Letter.
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