The
Responsibility of the Intellectuals:
Cuba, the U.S. and Human Rights
By James
Petras
Rebelión
01May , 2003
Once again the intellectuals
have entered into the center of a debate this time over the issues
of U.S. imperialism and human rights in Cuba. How important is
the role of the intellectuals?, I asked myself as we walked past
the Puerto del Sol in Madrid on a sunny Saturday afternoon ( April 26,
2003 ) and heard the anti-Castro slogans of a few hundred protestors
echoing through the near empty plaza. Despite a dozen articles and opinion
columns by well known intellectuals in the leading Madrid newspapers,
and hours of television and radio propaganda and endorsements by the
major trade union bureaucrats and party bosses, only 700-800, mostly
Cuban exiles turned up to attack Cuba. Clearly, I thought,
the anti-Cuban intellectuals have little or no power of
convocation, at least in Spain.
But the political impotence
of the anti-Castro writers does not mean that intellectuals in general
do not play an important role; nor does the lack of a popular audience
mean that they are without resources, especially if they do have the
backing of the U.S. war and propaganda machine, amplifying and disseminating
their word throughout the world. In order to come to reason about the
debate raging between intellectuals on the issues of human rights in
Cuba and U.S. imperialism it is important to step back and consider
the role of the intellectuals, the context and major issues that frame
the U.S.-Cuba conflict.
The Role of the Intellectuals
The role of the intellectuals
is to clarify the major issues and define the major threats to peace,
social justice, national independence and freedom in each historical
period as well as to identify and support the principal defenders of
the same principles. Intellectuals have a responsibility to distinguish
between the defensive measures taken by countries and peoples under
imperial attack and the offensive methods of imperial powers bent on
conquest. It is the height of cant and hypocrisy to engage in moral
equivalences between the violence and repression of imperial countries
bent on conquest with that of Third World countries under military and
terrorist attacks. Responsible intellectuals critically examine the
political context and analyze the relationships between imperial power
and their paid local functionaries who they describe as dissidents
they do not issue moral fiats according to their dim lights and
their political imperatives.
Committed intellectuals who
claim to speak with moral authority, especially those who lay claim
to being critics of imperialism, have a political responsibility to
demystify power and state and media manipulation particularly in relation
to imperial rhetoric of human rights violations by independent Third
World states. We have in recent times seen too many self-styled progressive
Western intellectuals supporting or silent on the U.S. destruction of
Yugoslavia, the ethnic cleansing of over 250,000 Serbs, gypsies and
others in Kosovo, buying into the U.S. propaganda of a humanitarian
intervention. All the U.S. intellectuals (Chomsky, Zinn, Wallerstein
etc
) supported the U.S.-financed violent fundamentalist uprising
in Afghanistan against the Soviet-backed secular government in Afghanistan
under the pretext that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan
and the fundamentalist fanatics entering the country from all over the
world were the dissidents defending self-determination
an admitted propaganda ploy successfully executed by the boastful
former National Security Adviser, Zbig Bryzinski. Then and now prestigious
intellectuals brandish their past credentials as critics
of U.S. foreign policy to give credibility to their uninformed denunciation
of alleged Cuban moral transgressions, equating Cubas arrest of
paid functionaries of the U.S. State Department and the execution of
three terrorist kidnapers with the genocidal war crimes of U.S. imperialism.
The practitioners of moral equivalents apply a microscope to Cuba and
a telescope to U.S. crimes which gives them a certain acceptability
among the liberal sectors of the empire.
Moral Imperatives and
Cuban Realities:
Morality as Dishonesty
Intellectuals are divided
on the U.S.-Cuba conflict: Benedetti, Sastre, Petras, Sanchez-Vazquez
and Pablo Gonzalez Casanova and scores of others defend Cuba; right-wing
intellectuals including Vargas Llosa, Savater, and Carlos Fuentes have
predictably issued their usual diatribes against Cuba; and a small army
of otherwise progressive intellectuals Chomsky, Saramago, Sontag,
Zinn and Wallerstein have joined the chorus condemning Cuba,
waving their past critical postures in an effort to distinguish themselves
from the right-wing/State Department Cuban opponents. It is the latter
progressive group which has caused the greatest harm among
the burgeoning anti-imperialist movement and it is to them that these
critical remarks are directed. Morality based on propaganda is a deadly
mix particularly when the moral judgements come from prestigious
leftist intellectuals and the propaganda emanates from the far-right
Bush administration. Many of the progressive critics of
Cuba acknowledge, in passing and in a general way, that the U.S. has
been a hostile aggressor against Cuba, and they generously
grant Cuba the right to self-determination and then launch into
a series of unsubstantiated charges and misrepresentations devoid of
any special context that might serve to clarify the issues and provide
a reasoned basis for
moral imperatives. It is best
to begin with the most fundamental facts.
The left critics, based on
U.S. State Department labeling, denounce the Cuban governments
repression of individuals, dissidents, including journalists, owners
of private libraries and members of political parties engaged in non-violent
political activity trying to exercise their democratic rights. What
the progressives fail to recognize or are unwilling to acknowledge
is that those arrested were paid functionaries of the U.S. government.
According to the Agency of International Development (AID), the principal
U.S. federal agency implementing U.S. grants and loans in pursuit of
U.S. foreign policy, under USAIDs Cuba Program ( resulting from
the Helms-Burton Act of 1996) AID has channeled over $8.5 million dollars
to Cuban opponents of the Castro regime since 1997 to publish, meet,
propagandize in favor of the overthrow of the Cuban government in co-ordination
with a variety of U.S. NGOs, universities, foundations and other
front groups. (Profile of the USAID Cuba Program on the AID web
site ). The U.S.AID program, unlike its usual practice, does not channel
payments to the Cuban government but directly to its Cuban dissident
clients. The criteria for funding are clearly stated the recipients
of payments and grants must have demonstrated a clear commitment to
U.S. directed regime change toward free markets
and democracy no doubt similar to the U.S. colonial
dictatorship in Iraq. The Helms-Burton legislation, the U.S.AID Cuba
Program and their paid Cuban functionaries, like the U.S. progressive
manifesto, condemn Cubas lack of freedom, jailing of innocent
dissidents, and call for a democratic change of regime in Cuba.
Strange coincidences that require some analyses. Cuban journalists who
have received $280,000 from a Cuba Free Press -AID front- are not dissidents
they are paid functionaries. Cuban Human Rights groups who
receive $775,000 from CIA front Freedom House are not dissidents
particularly when their mission is to promote a transition
(overthrow) of the Cuban regime.
The list of grants and funding
to Cuban dissidents (functionaries) by the U.S. government
in pursuit of the U.S. policy is long and detailed and accessible to
all the progressive moral critics. The point is that the jailed opponents
of the Cuban government were paid functionaries of the U.S. government,
paid to implement the goals of the Helms-Burton Act in accordance with
the criteria of the U.S.AID and under the guidance and direction of
the head of the U.S. Interest Section in Havana. Between September 2,
2002 and March 2003 James Cason, head of the US Interest Section, held
dozens of meetings with his Cuban dissidents at his home
and office, providing them with instructions and guidelines on what
to write, how to recruit, while publicly haranging against the Cuban
government in the most undiplomatic manner. Washingtons Cuban
functionaries were supplied with electronic and other communication
equipment by USAID, books and other propaganda and money to fund pro-U.S.
trade unions via the U.S. front, the American Center
for International Labor Solidarity. These are not well-meaning
dissidents unaware of their paymaster and their role as
U.S. agents, since the USAID report states ( under the section entitled
The US Institutional Context),
The Cuba Program is funded
through Economic Support Fund, which is designed to support the economic
and political foreign policy interests of the US by providing financial
assistance to allies (sic) and countries in transition to democracy.
No country in the world tolerates or labels domestic citizens paid by
and working for a foreign power to act for its imperial interests as
dissidents. This is especially true of the U.S. where under
Title 18 ,Section 951 of the U.S. Code , anyone who agrees to
operate within the United States subject to the direction or control
of a foreign government or official would be subjected to criminal prosecution
and a 10 year prison sentence. Unless , of course, they register
as a paid foreign agent or are working for the Israeli government. The
U.S. progressive intellectuals abdicate their responsibilities
as analysts and critics and accept at face value the State Department
characterization of the U.S. paid functionaries as dissidents striving
for freedom. Some defenders of the U.S. agent-dissidents
claim that the functionaries received scandalously long sentences.
Once again empirical myopia compounds mendacious moralizing. Cuba is
on a war footing.
The Bush government has
declared that Cuba is on the list of military targets subject to mass
destruction and war. And in case our moralistic intellectuals dont
know it : What Bush, Rumsfeld and the war-mongering Zionists in the
Administration say -- they do. The total lack of seriousness in Chomsky,
Zinn, Sontag, Wallersteins moral dictates is that they fail to
acknowledge the imminent and massive threat of a U.S. war with weapons
of mass destruction, announced in advance. This is particularly onerous
given the fact that many of Cubas detractors live in the U.S.,
read the U.S. press and are aware of how quickly militaristic pronouncements
are followed by genocidal actions. But our moralists are not bothered
by context, by U.S. threats to Cuba immediate or proximate, they are
eager to ignore it all to demonstrate to the State Department that they
not only oppose U.S. foreign policy but also condemn every independent
country, system and leader who opposes the U.S. In other words, Mr.
Ashcroft, when you crack down on the apologists for Cuban
terror, remember that we are different, we too condemned
Cuba, we too called for a change of regime. The critics of Cuba ignore
the fact that the U.S. has a two-pronged military-political strategy
to take over Cuba that is already operative. Washington provides asylum
for terrorist air pirates, encouraging efforts to destabilize Cubas
tourist-based economy; it works closely with the terrorist Cuban American
Foundation engaging in attempts to assassinate Cuban leaders. New U.S.
military bases have been established in the Dominican Republic, Colombia,
El Salvador and there is an expanding concentration camp in Guantanomo
all to facilitate an invasion. The U.S. embargo is in the process
of being tightened with the support of the right-wing Berlusconi and
Aznar regimes in Italy and Spain.
The aggressive and openly
political activity of James Cason of the Interest Section in line with
his Cuban followers among the paid functionaries/ dissidents
is part of the inside strategy designed to undermine Cuban loyalties
to the regime and the revolution. The inter-connection between the two
tactics and their strategic convergence is ignored by our prestigious
intellectual critics who prefer the luxury of issuing moral imperatives
about freedom everywhere for everyone, even when a psychotic Washington
puts the knife to Cubas throat. No thanks, Chomsky, Sontag, Wallerstein
Cuba is justified in giving its attackers a kick in the balls
and sending them to cut sugar cane to earn an honest living. The death
penalty for three ferry boat terrorists is harsh treatment but
so was the threat to the lives of forty Cuban passengers who faced death
at the hands of the hijackers. Again our moralists forgot to discuss
the rash acts of air piracy and the plots of others uncovered in time.
The moralists failed to understand
why these terrorists desperadoes are seeking illegal means to leave
Cuba. Bushs Administration has practically eliminated the visa
program for Cuban emigrants wishing to leave. Visa grants have declined
from 9000 for the first four months of 2002 to 700 in 2003. This is
a clever tactic to encourage terrorist acts in Cuba and then denounce
the harsh sentences, evoking the chorus of yea sayers in
the Amen corner of the progressive U.S. and European intellectual
establishment. Is it simply ignorance which informs these moral pronouncements
against Cuba or is it something else besides moral blackmail?
, to force their Cuban counterparts to turn against their regime, their
people or face the opprobrium of the prestigious intellectuals
to become further isolated and stigmatized as apologists of Castro.
Explicit threats by Saramago to abandon his Cuban friends and embrace
the cause of U.S. paid functionaries. Implicit threats of no longer
visiting Cuba and to boycott conferences. Is it moral cowardice to pick
up the cudgels for the empire and pick on Cuba when it faces the threat
of mass destruction over the freedom of paid agents, subject to prosecution
by any country in the world?
What is eminently dishonest
is to totally ignore the vast accomplishments of the revolution in employment,
education, health, equality, and Cubas heroic and principled opposition
to imperial wars the only country to so declare and its
capacity to resist almost 50 years of invasions. That counts for nothing
for the U.S. intellectuals that is scandalous!! That is a disgrace,
a retreat in search of respectability after daring to oppose
the U.S. war along with 30 million other people in the world. It is
not time to balance things out by condemning Cuba,
by calling for a regime change, by supporting the cause of the market
oriented Cuban functionary-dissidents. Let us remember the same
progressive intellectuals supported dissidents in Eastern
Europe and Russia who were bankrolled by Soros and the U.S. State Department.
The dissidents turned the country over to the Russian mafia,
life expectancy declined five years ( over 10 million Russians died
prematurely with the sacking of the national health system), while in
Eastern Europe dissidents closed the shipyards of Gdansk
, enrolled in NATO and provided mercenaries for the U.S. conquest of
Iraq. And never among these current supporters of Cuban dissidents
is there any critical reflection on the catastrophic outcomes resulting
from their anti-communist diatribes and their manifestos in favor of
the dissidents who have become the soldiers of the U.S.
Middle Eastern and Central European empire. Our U.S. moralists never,
I repeat, never, ever reflected critically on their moral failures,
past or present because, you see, they are for freedom everywhere,
even when the wrong people get into power and the other
empire takes over, and the millions die from curable diseases and white
slavery rings expand. The reply is always the same: Thats
not what we wanted we were for an independent, free and just
society it just happened that in calling for regime change, support
for dissidents, we never suspected that the Empire would take
it all, would become the only superpower, and engage in colonizing
the world.
The moral intellectuals must
accept political responsibility for the consequences and not hide behind
abstract moral platitudes, neither for their past complicity with empire
building nor their present scandalous pronouncements against Cuba. They
cannot claim they dont know the repercussions of what they are
saying and doing. They cannot pretend innocence after all they we have
seen and read and heard about U.S. war plans against Cuba. The principal
author and promoter of the anti-Cuban declaration in the United States
(signed by Chomsky, Zinn and Wallerstein) was Joanne Landy, a self-declared
democratic socialist, and lifelong advocate of the violent
overthrow of the Cuban government for the past 40 years. She
is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), one of the
major institutions advising the U.S. government on imperial policies
for over a half century. Landy supported the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan,
Yugoslavia and the Albanian terrorist group, the KLA calling
publicly for overt military support responsible for the murder
of 2000 Serbs and the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs
and others in Kosova. It is no surprise that the statement authored
by this chameleon right-wing extremist contained no mention of Cubas
social accomplishments and opposition to imperialism. For the record,
it should be noted, that Landy was a visceral opponent of the Chinese,
Vietnamese and other social revolutions in her climb to positions of
influence in the CFR. For all their vaunted critical intellect, the
progressive intellectuals overlooked the unsavory politics
of the author who promoted the anti-Cuba diatribe.
The Role of the Intellectual
Today
Many critics of Cuba speak
of principles as if there were only one set of principles
applicable to all situations independent of who is involved and what
are the consequences. Asserting principles like freedom
for those involved in plotting the overthrow of the Cuban government
in complicity with the State Department would turn Cuba into another
Chile where Allende was overthrown by Pinochet and lead
to a reversal of the popular gains of the revolution. There are principles
that are more basic than freedom for U.S. Cuban functionaries , that
is , national security and popular sovereignty. There is, particularly
among the U.S. progressive left, a certain attraction to Third World
victims, those who suffer defeats ,and an aversion for successful revolutionaries.
It seems that the U.S. progressive intellectuals always find an alibi
to avoid a commitment to a revolution. For some it is the old refrain
Stalinism if the state plays a major role in the
economy; or it can be mass mobilizations that they dub plebicitary
dictatorships, or it can be security agencies which successfully
prevent terrorist activity which they call a repressive police
state.
Living in the least politicized
nation in the world with one of the most servile and corrupt trade union
apparatus in the West, with virtually no practical political influence
outside a few university towns, the practical intellectuals in the U.S.
have no practical knowledge or experience of the everyday threats and
violence which hangs over revolutionary governments and activists in
Latin America. Their political conceptions, the yardsticks they pull
out to condemn or approve of any political activity, exists nowhere
except in their heads, in their congenial, progressive, university settings
where they enjoy all the privileges of capitalist freedom and none of
the risks which Third World revolutionaries have to defend themselves
against. A little modesty, dear prestigious, critical, freedom preaching
intellectuals. Look deep inside and ask yourself if you would like to
be pirated by a Miami-based terrorist organization. Ask yourself if
you would enjoy sitting in a café in a major tourist hotel in
Havana when a deadly bomb goes off greetings from the terrorists
taking a beer with the Presidents brother, Jeb. Think about living
in a country which is on the top of the hit list of the most violent
imperial regime since Nazi Germany and then perhaps your moral
sensibilities might awaken to the need to temper your condemnations
of Cuban security policies and contextualize your moral fiats.
I want to conclude by establishing
my own moral imperatives for the critical intellectuals.
The first duty of Euro-U.S.
intellectuals is to oppose their own imperial rulers set on conquering
the world.
The second duty is to clarify
the moral issues involved in the struggle between imperial militarists
and popular/national resistance and reject the hypocritical posture
that equates the mass terror of one with the justified if at times excessive
security constraints of the other.
To establish standards of
political and personal integrity with regards to the facts and issues
before making moral judgements.
Resist the temptation to
become a moral hero of the empire by refusing to support
victorious popular struggles and revolutionary regimes which are not
perfect which lack all the freedoms available to impotent intellectuals
unable to threaten power and therefore tolerated to meet, discuss and
criticize.
Refuse to set themselves
as Judge, Prosecutor and Jury condemning progressives who have the courage
to defend revolutionaries. The most appalling instance is Susan Sontags
scurrilous attack on Colombian Nobel Prize winning novelist, Gabriel
Garcia Marquez, who she accused of lacking integrity and being an apologist
of Cuban terror (sic). Sontag made her blood libelous accusations in
Bogata, Colombia. The Colombian death squads working with the regime
and the military kill more trade unionists and journalists than any
place in the world, and do so , for far less than being an apologist
of the Castro regime. This is the same Sontag who was an enthusiastic
supporter of the U.S. imperial invasion and bombing of Yugoslavia, apologist
for the fundamentalist Bosnian regime and who was a silent witness to
the killing and ethnic cleansing of Serbs and others in Kosova. Moral
integrity indeed! The precious sense of moral superiority found among
New York intellectuals allow Sontag to finger Marquez for the death
squads and feel that she has made a great moral statement.
U.S.-European intellectuals
should not confuse their own political futility and inconsequential
position with that of their counterparts among committed Latin American
intellectuals. There is a place for constructive dialogue and debate
but never personal assaults that demean individuals facing daily threats
to their lives.
It is easy for critical intellectuals
to be a friend of Cuba in good times at celebrations and
invited conferences in times of lesser threats. It is much harder to
be a friend of Cuba when a totalitarian empire threatens
the heroic island and puts heavy hands on its defenders. It is in times
like this of permanent wars, genocide and military aggression,
when Cuba needs the solidarity of critical intellectuals, which they
are receiving from all over Europe and particularly Latin America. Isnt
it time that we, in the United States, with our illustrious and prestigious
progressive intellectuals with all our majestic moral sensibilities
recognize that there is a vital, heroic revolution struggling to defend
itself against the U.S. juggernaut and that we modestly set aside our
self-important declarations, support that revolution and join the one
million Cubans celebrating May Day with their leader Fidel Castro?