{"id":6346,"date":"2021-01-08T17:50:26","date_gmt":"2021-01-08T17:50:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=147856"},"modified":"2021-01-08T17:50:26","modified_gmt":"2021-01-08T17:50:26","slug":"foreign-correspondent-u-s-hypocrisy-on-cuba-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/08\/foreign-correspondent-u-s-hypocrisy-on-cuba-continues\/","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Correspondent: U.S. Hypocrisy on Cuba Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I\u2019ve always been puzzled by the State Department list<\/a> of State Sponsors of Terrorism. It supposedly designates countries aiding terrorist organizations. But it includes countries that don\u2019t support terrorism and excludes countries that do.<\/p>\n

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Ronald Reagan put Cuba on the list in 1982, falsely claiming Cuba was supporting terrorist movements in Latin America.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Currently the list consists of North Korea, Syria, and Iran. Missing from the list are U.S. allies that actually do sponsor terrorist groups: Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.<\/p>\n

In an email exchange, linguist and activist Noam Chomsky decries the hypocrisy of the list.<\/p>\n

\u201cEither eliminate it, or make it honest,\u201d he tells me.<\/p>\n

That hypocrisy becomes clear looking at the listing of Cuba. Ronald Reagan put Cuba on the list in 1982, falsely claiming Cuba was supporting terrorist movements in Latin America. In 2015, President Barack Obama removed<\/a> Cuba from the list as part of normalizing diplomatic relations.<\/p>\n

Cuba didn\u2019t change its policies on terrorism; Washington, D.C., changed its policies on Cuba.<\/p>\n

Now the Trump Administration is threatening<\/a> to put Cuba back on the list during Trump\u2019s final weeks in office. The maneuver is not based on a sudden surge in Cuban support of terrorism but is part of a wider effort<\/a> to stop the Biden Administration from re-establishing normal relations with Cuba.<\/p>\n

In reality, Cuba has never been a state sponsor of terrorism. It supported<\/a> armed insurgents in Latin America and sent troops<\/a> to Angola to beat back a South African invasion of that country. But it never supported intentional attacks on civilians practiced by such groups as Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n

Paul Pillar, a retired twenty-eight-year veteran of the CIA and former deputy chief of the CIA Counterterrorism Center, tells me that keeping Cuba on the State Department list was a reward to conservative Republicans in Florida.<\/p>\n

Cuba \u201cstayed on the list much longer than any others,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was clearly political.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chomsky notes that the State Department listing was just one component of a sixty-year war against Cuba. \u201cAs the case of Cuba reveals, \u2018terrorism\u2019 means resistance to massive U.S. terrorism and refusal to bow down to the master,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Graham Fuller, a retired operations officer and analyst who worked for the CIA for twenty-five years, puts it another way: \u201cHell hath no fury like a declining superpower.\u201d<\/p>\n

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According to the State Department<\/a>, \u201cTerrorism means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.\u201d<\/p>\n

By that definition, the people who blew up<\/a> the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983 were terrorists. Although the group attacked soldiers in a conflict zone, the marines were \u201cnoncombatant targets,\u201d not soldiers fighting in the field.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe pride ourselves as the world\u2019s only superpower,\u201d says Fuller. \u201cYet the United States rarely considers itself as having a major impact on actions of other states.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

By contrast, the 2019 U.S. military drone strike that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and Iraq militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was not terrorism because it was carried out openly, not by \u201cclandestine agents.\u201d<\/p>\n

How convenient! Insurgent groups can only kill soldiers in the battlefield whereas the Pentagon can create battlefields anywhere in the world so long as it assassinates people openly.<\/p>\n

The State Department uses gobbledygook to lump together Al Qaeda, ISIS, Marxist guerrillas, and Palestinians who are engaged in armed struggle. Its \u201cterror list\u201d has always reflected Washington\u2019s drive for hegemony rather than a fight against terrorism.<\/p>\n

When Congress created the list in 1979, the State Department designated Libya, Iraq, South Yemen, Syria, and all countries allied with the U.S.S.R. at the time. Among other sins, Washington accused those countries of supporting armed Palestinian groups that it designated as terrorist.<\/p>\n

Over the years, the State Department has added North Korea, Sudan, Cuba, Iraq, and Iran.<\/p>\n

Somehow Pakistan never made the list, despite its security service supporting the terrorist group that seized a Mumbai hotel<\/a> in 2008 and killed 160 people. And don\u2019t forget that Osama bin Laden was living<\/a> for years in Abbottabad, Pakistan, 100 yards from a major Pakistani military academy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe U.S. won\u2019t put allies on the list even though they engage in terrorist behavior,\u201d says Pillar.<\/p>\n

He adds one more example. Saudi Arabia\u2019s leaders ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Khashoggi killing was as blatant as you can get,\u201d says Pillar. \u201cIt was terrorism by any definition.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Washingtonian hypocrisy also extends to how it removes countries from the list. The George W. Bush Administration pulled North Korea off in 2007 as part of negotiations to limit that country’s nuclear program. Donald Trump relisted Korea<\/a> in 2017 after talks on nuclear weapons fell apart.<\/p>\n

In neither case did North Korea change its policies<\/a> on terrorism. In fact, Washington has not removed a single country from the list because it ceased sponsoring terrorist activities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn practice the list isn\u2019t used to combat terrorism,\u201d says Pillar.<\/p>\n

The State Department list is one component of what became known as the War on Terror. The struggle against terrorism \u201cbecame a huge cottage industry independent of foreign policy,\u201d says former CIA analyst Fuller.<\/p>\n

The war against terrorism allows for virtually no dissent, he explains. \u201cIf you invoke terrorism, that closes the argument.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a CIA analyst, Fuller saw firsthand how U.S. policy makers rarely consider the reasons behind the terrorist acts. Most international terrorism is deeply political, he explains.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe pride ourselves as the world\u2019s only superpower,\u201d says Fuller. \u201cYet the United States rarely considers itself as having a major impact on actions of other states.\u201d <\/p>\n

For example, Washington policy makers say Syria supports terrorism. But for the past 50 years, the United States has tried to overthrow Syrian regimes. Is it little wonder that Syria has armed and funded militias opposed to the United States?<\/p>\n

\u201cBut our actions are never seen as relevant to other countries\u2019 actions,\u201d says Fuller.<\/p>\n

Washington should abolish the State Department list altogether. There\u2019s no need to wait for Congressional action. The Biden administration could remove all the current designees and not add any new ones. Presto, the list disappears.<\/p>\n

Republicans and some Democrats would strongly oppose such action, of course. Fuller says many would fight to keep Iran on the list in part because Washington has been \u201cobsessed with Iran for defying us<\/a> for forty years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taking Iran off the list, on the other hand, \u201cwould suggest we understand the nuances, such as our role<\/a> in overthrowing former Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh,\u201d Fuller says. \u201cIt would be a major statement that we want to deal with Iran in a rational way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always been puzzled by the State Department list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. It supposedly designates countries aiding terrorist organizations. But it includes countries that don\u2019t support\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":304,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/304"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6347,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6346\/revisions\/6347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}