The truth on the other hand, is the unshakable reality that has driven every sanction, every sabotage attempt, and every assassination plot since 1959: Cuba is a threat only to an idea. It is a threat to the imperial doctrine that a small, poor nation in America’s ‘backyard’ must not be allowed to choose socialism, to provide free healthcare and education, and homes to live without the permission of Washington.
For this sin of self-determination, the crime of building a society where capital is not god, Cuba has been punished with the most enduring economic siege in modern history. This is not an ‘embargo’, which I consider to be a sterile, political term. It is a total blockade, designed to constrict and cripple. It is enforced by a plethora of laws with names like the Helms-Burton Act, which terrorises foreign companies from trading with the Island and allows the US to seize ships in international waters. Its goal, as US politician Robert Torricelli once admitted, was to…
‘Wreak havoc’.
Attempted genocideScrew my previous comment.
As FunkyStuff says, It is a genocide unquestionably. Millions of lives have been lost around the world due to US sabotage warfare (which the libs love to call “sanctions”) that uses the US hegemony power to strangle countries by any means necessary, all for the benefit of a fascist political agenda.
Cuba has received some of the harshest of the hybrid warfare from America. The fact that you are equivocating about the warfare tactics of a fascist society reflects poorly on you, no different from “but actually”-ing the actions of nazi Germany in the middle of WW2 (while also being factually wrong about your points).
The fact that Cuba can survive and thrive despite the genocide is a testament to their resilience. But a state, and a nation are not one entity. All the extra lives that could have been saved had Cuba been allowed to develop under normal external conditions do not come back to life because the population managed to grow.
That’s not how it works. If there’s an organized effort to exterminate a group of people because of their immutable characteristics (in this case nationality) it’s genocide. You can be guilty of the crime of genocide even if you don’t kill a single person. The US embargo absolutely meets the criteria and has already caused thousands of excess deaths (as well as underdevelopment) over the course of decades. It’s like Gaza, blocking off a group of millions of people from being able to get anything from the rest of the world and restricting the flow of basic necessities. They don’t have to kill any specific number of people for that to count as genocide, it just is.
Yeah I suppose it is better to have made an actual argument instead of just “owning” the commenter, and you are correct, it is not merely an attempted genocide, which would be something like a guy in the government trying to organise a genocide but failing to organise and accomplish anything.