From CubaNews:
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/CubaNews"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.")
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REFLECTIONS BY THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF
THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE
(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.
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