The Goose and the Gander in Cuba

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 12, 2023

Hand it to the Chinese and Cubans for exposing the utter hypocrisy of the U.S. national-security state, its empire of foreign military bases, and its foreign policy of interventionism.

Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that China is paying Cuba billions of dollars in return for permitting China to construct a major facility in Cuba to spy on the United States.

China and Cuba deny the deal but what is so funny has been the reaction of U.S interventionists. They are going ballistic over China’s supposedly aggressive behavior.

Florida Senator Marc Rubio expressed the sentiments of all U.S. interventionists by exclaiming, “The threat to America from #Cuba isn’t just real, it is far worse than this.” Rubio and U.S. Senator Mark Warner from Virginia jointly stated, “We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people. The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security.”

The Reds are coming! The Reds are coming!

Wait a minute! What about all those military installations, including spying facilities, that the Pentagon and CIA have surrounding China and Russia? Indeed, what about the Pentagon’s and CIA’s imperial torture and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which is used to spy on Cuba?

Oh, there isn’t anything threatening about those facilities, U.S. interventionists exclaim. They are just for “defense.” The Chinese, Russians, and Cubans just suffer from extreme paranoia. The United States, U.S. interventionists say, is really just a peace-loving nation. Never mind that much of the world views the U.S. national-security state as Martin Luther King did — as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” one that is responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people in the last 7o years.

Referring to the China-Cuba deal, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, stated that U.S. officials are closely monitoring these activities and taking steps to counter them.

Really? Now why would they do that? One big reason: They don’t like it! They don’t like it when some foreign power from thousands of miles away establishes a spy facility only 90 miles away from American shores.

And what happens if that Chinese spy facility in Cuba begins to show signs of nuclear missiles? I will guarantee you that Kirby and all the other officials in the national-security establishment will go ballistic and begin calling for a bombing campaign against Cuba or an invasion, just like Pentagon and CIA officials did back in 1962. That’s because they won’t like the fact that there are Chinese nuclear missiles pointed at the U.S. from only 90 miles away.

But can you see the hypocrisy that the rest of the world sees? When Russia and China object to U.S. and NATO military installations and nuclear missiles on or near their borders, U.S. officials condemn them for their “aggressiveness.”

Moreover, let’s not forget that whenever there is some altercation between Chinese or Russian planes or ships and those of the Pentagon, the altercations always take place over there near Russia and China, not over here in our part of the world. That’s because U.S. military planes and ships are over there stirring up crises and conflicts to justify the continued existence of America’s Cold War-era national-security state.

Time will tell whether the Chinese-Cuba connection will erupt into another full-blown crisis, one that will naturally be used to justify ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess for the national-security establishment. If so, it will only provide more confirmation of how U.S. interventionism abroad makes Americans less safe here at home.

But one can easily understand why the Chinese, Russians, and Cubans would behave in the same manner as the Pentagon and the CIA. After all, from their perspective, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.