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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 |
