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(Part
One)
These
reflections are self-explanatory.
In that
already famous Super Tuesday, a day of the week when a
number of States of the Union were selecting the candidate
of their choice for the presidency of the United States from
among a group of contenders, one of the likely candidates to
replace George W. Bush was John McCain. Due to of his
pre-packaged hero image, and his alliance with strong
contenders such as Rudy Giuliani, the former governor of the
state of New York, other candidates had already gladly
endorsed him. The intense propaganda of social, economic and
political factors having great significance in his country,
and his personal style had turned him into the frontrunner.
Only the extreme Republican right represented by Mitt Romney
and Mike Huckabee, in disagreement with some insignificant
McCain concessions, was still offering some resistance on
February 5th. Subsequently, Romney would also
withdraw in favor of McCain. Huckabee is still in the
contest.
On the
other hand, the struggle for the Democratic Party candidate
is much tougher. Even though we are dealing, as usual, with
an active part of the enfranchised population that tends to
be a minority, we are already hearing all kinds of opinions
and speculations about the consequences of the final outcome
of the electoral battle for the country and the world, if
mankind escapes the warmongering adventures of Bush.
It is
not up to me to talk about the history of a candidate for
the Presidency of the United States. I have never done so,
and perhaps I would never have. Why should I be doing it at
this time?
McCain
has said that some of his comrades were tortured by Cuban
agents in Vietnam. His advocates and publicity experts tend
to emphasize that McCain himself suffered such torture at
the hands of the Cubans.
I hope
that the U.S. people will understand that I consider it my
obligation to enter into a detailed analysis of this
Republican candidate and to respond to him. I shall do so on
the basis of ethical considerations.
The
McCain file shows that he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam
from October 26, 1967.
As he
tells it himself, he was 31 years old at the time and flying
his 23rd bombing mission. His plane, an A-4E
Skyhawk was shot down over Hanoi by an anti-aircraft
missile. Because of the hit, he lost control and ejected
over Truc Bach Lake, in the middle of the city, suffering
fractures in both arms and one knee. A patriotic crowd,
seeing an aggressor come down, gave him a hostile reception.
McCain himself says he was relieved at that moment to see
the arrival of an army squad.
The
bombing of Vietnam, begun in 1965, shocked international
opinion, very sensitized to air attacks by the superpower
against a small third world country which had been turned
into a French colony, thousands of miles away from distant
Europe. The Vietnamese people fought against Japanese
occupation forces during World War II and, when that war
ended, France once again took control. Ho Chi Minh, the
modest leader who was much loved by all, and Nguyen Giap,
his military commander, were internationally admired
figures. The famous French Foreign Legion had been defeated.
In trying to avoid that, the aggressor powers were at the
point of using a nuclear weapon at Diên Biên Phu.
The
noble “anamitas”, as José Martí affectionately called them,
holders of millenary culture and values were portrayed, to
U.S. public opinion, as a barbarian people unworthy of
existence. In terms of suspense and commercial advertising,
nobody can compete with the American specialists. The
specialty was used unrestrictedly in the case of the POWs,
and particularly in the case of McCain.
Going
along with that, McCain later said that the fact that his
father was an Admiral and commanded the U.S. forces in the
Pacific led the Vietnamese Resistance to offer him early
liberation if he would admit that he had committed war
crimes; he refused, arguing that the Military Code provides
that prisoners be liberated in the order they were captured,
and that meant five years of prison, beatings and torture in
a prison area the Americans called the “Hanoi Hilton.”
The
final pull out from Vietnam was disastrous. An army which
was half a million strong, trained and armed to the teeth,
could not hold back the thrust of the Vietnamese patriots.
Saigon, the colonial capital, today called Ho Chi Minh City,
was embarrassingly abandoned by the occupation forces and
their accomplices, some of them holding to helicopters. The
United States lost more than 50 thousand of their precious
sons and daughters, not counting those that were wounded.
They had spent 500 billion dollars in that war without
taxes, always distasteful in their own right. Nixon
unilaterally revoked the commitments of Bretton Woods
setting the foundations of today’s financial crisis. Their
only achievement was a Republican Presidential candidate 41
years later.
McCain,
one of the many U.S. pilots shot down and wounded in the
declared, or undeclared, wars of their country, was
decorated with the Silver Star, Legion of Merit,
Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal and the Purple
Heart.
A TV
movie based on his memoirs of the experiences as a POW was
broadcast on Memorial Day of 2005 and he became famous for
videos and speeches on the subject.
The
worst statement he made regarding our country was that Cuban
interrogators had been regularly torturing American
prisoners.
As a
reaction to McCain’s incredible words, I became interested
in the matter. I wanted to know where such a strange legend
had come from. I asked that someone find information on the
attribution. I was informed that there was a highly promoted
book which was the basis for the movie. This was written by
McCain and Mark Salter, his Senate administrative advisor,
who continues to work and write with him. I asked for it to
be translated. This was done, as on other occasions, very
quickly by qualified staff. The title of the book: Faith
of My Fathers, 349 pages, published in 1999.
His
accusation against internationalist Cuban revolutionaries
--using the nickname Fidel to identify one of them who was
capable of “torturing a prisoner to death”-- is totally
lacking in any ethics.
Allow
me to remind you, Mr. McCain: The commandments of your
religion forbid you from lying. Your years in prison and the
wounds you received as a result of your attacks on Hanoi do
not excuse you from the moral duty of truth.
Some
facts must be brought to your attention. In Cuba, we had a
rebellion against a despot who was put into power by the
United States on March 10, 1952, imposed on the Cuban
people, when you were just about to turn 16 years old, and
the Republican government of a celebrated soldier, Dwight D.
Eisenhower –who indeed was the first one to speak of the
industrial-military complex– immediately recognized and
supported that government. I was a bit older than you; I
would have my 26 birthday that August, the same month when
you were born. Eisenhower had not yet completed his
presidential term that had begun in the 1950’s, some years
after he became famous for the allied landing in the north
of France, with the support of 10 thousand planes and the
most powerful naval force known up to that time.
It was
a war, formally declared by the powers fighting Hitler. The
Nazis had launched a pre-emptive attack, without warning and
without any prior declaration of war. A new style of
producing great slaughters was imposed on mankind.
In
1945, two bombs of roughly 20 kilotons each were used
against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I once visited the first of those cities.
In the
1950’s, the government of the United States came to build
such nuclear attack weapons. One of them, the MR17, came to
weigh 19.05 tons and measured 7.49 meters; it would be
carried in their bombers and would unleash an explosion of
20 megatons, equivalent to a thousand bombs like the one
that was dropped over the first of those two cities on
August 6, 1945. It is a fact that would infuriate Einstein
who, in the midst of his contradictions, would often express
regret about the weapon that, without meaning to, he helped
to manufacture, with his scientific theories and
discoveries.
When
the Revolution triumphs in Cuba on January 1st,
1959, almost 15 years after the explosion of the first
nuclear weapons, and we proclaim an Agrarian Reform Act
based on the principle of national sovereignty, consecrated
by the blood of millions of combatants who died in that war,
the United States response was a program of illegal deeds
and terrorist attacks against the Cuban people, signed by
the President of the United States himself, Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
The
attack on the Bay of Pigs followed the exact instructions of
the President of the United States and the invaders were
escorted by U.S. naval units, including an aircraft carrier.
The first air assault with U.S. B-26 planes flying out of
secret bases was a pre-emptive attack using Cuban markings
on the planes so that world opinion would see this as a
revolt by our national air force.
You
accuse Cuban revolutionaries of being torturers. I seriously
urge you to find a single one of the more than a thousand
prisoners captured during the Bay of Pigs fighting who had
been tortured. I was there, not in some protected position
at a distant general command post. I personally captured a
number of prisoners with the help of some assistants; I
walked in front of armed squads who were still lying under
cover of the forest’s vegetation, paralyzed by the presence
of the Chief of the Revolution. I’m sorry that I have to
mention this because it might appear to be boasting, and
that is something I honestly detest.
The
prisoners were citizens born in Cuba organized by a powerful
foreign power to fight against their own people.
You
have admitted that you are in favor of the death penalty for
very serious crimes. What would have you done if faced by
such acts? How many would you have sentenced for that
treason? In Cuba, we tried several of the invaders who,
under Batista's orders, had previously committed horrendous
crimes against Cuban revolutionaries.
I
visited the mass of Bay of Pigs prisoners, --that is how you
call the Girón Beach invasion-- on more than one occasion,
and I talked with them. I like to find out man’s motives.
They showed surprise and expressed their acknowledgement of
the personal respect with which they were treated.
You
should know that while we were negotiating their liberation
in exchange for compensation by food and medicines for
children, the U.S. government was organizing plans to
assassinate me. There is a record of this in what was
written by people taking part in the negotiation process.
I
shall not go into detail about the long list of hundreds of
assassination attempts on me. None of this is made up. It
has been stated in official documents circulated by the U.S.
government.
What
ethics underlie such deeds, vehemently defended by you as a
matter of principles?
I shall
attempt to delve deeper into those matters.
Fidel
Castro Ruz
February 10, 2008.
Time:
6:35 p.m.
Part 2 |
