2/28/96, Golem [PNews moderator, Hank Roth] wrote:
Was there another way for Cuba to handle this latest crisis? I think there must have been. They can't take the high ground on this one. I say it is immoral to defend the taking of lives by blowing them out of the sky. It was stupid, and it justifies the international condemnation it is getting. I can't support an immoral act, the flagrant murder of unarmed pilots whether over international or Cuban airspace.
If you look at the history of USA-initiated wars, going right back to the Mexican American War, there's a very frequent pattern. The U.S. provokes an incident which it can then react to. The media jumps in to sensationalize and demonize. After that, the actual motivation of the U.S. comes into play, and becomes the agenda for the war.
| War | Incident |
|---|---|
| Mexican | border conflict in Texas (caused by belligerent U.S. scouting parties) |
| Civil | Fort Sumter shelling |
| WWII | Pearl Harbor (forced by FDR oil blockade) |
| Vietnam | Gulf of Tonkin (provocative U.S. Navy maneouvers) |
| Grenada | an assassination (facilitated by the CIA) |
| Panama | shooting of a GI (wandering where it was inevitable) |
| Iraq | invasion of Kuwait (invited by Sec'y State) |
The U.S. has obviously been preparing to play the Cuba card for some time. This election year is the perfect time for Clinton to get his stripes. No private flight occurs over Cuba if it isn't part of CIA stragegy. The overflights were well-planned and timed provocations, whose outcome was predicatable, and which is now being exploited according to plan.
Hank's attitude is exactly what was intended. It is precisely the _opponents_ of a war that are the target of a provocation-incident propaganda exercise -- the incident is carefully selected accordingly. The flights would have persistently increased in frequency and blatancy for as long as it took to get Cuba to respond.
Stand by for the next in a series of USA neo-blitzkrieg rampages: Grenada, Panama, Iraq, and now Cuba.
Don't be duped,
-rkm
[Please Cc: rkmoore@iol.ie directly on replies.]