The Decadent Worker

1973: Assassination of U.S. diplomats Cleo A. Nobel, Jr., and George C. Moore and Belgian diplomat Guy Eid by Palestinian guerrillas in Khartoum; Richard Sharples of Bermuda, Mohammad Ali Osman of Yemen, Salvadore Allende Gossens of Chile, and Lyndon Johnson at his ranch in Texas. Among his last words: “You know, fellows, it really was a conspiracy…” Senator Stennis shot in Washington, D.C. Bilderberger meeting in Saltsjobaden, Sweden. Trilateral Commission founded under the direction of Primus Illuminatus David Rockefeller, with Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale among the founding members.” — Bruce Roberts, The Gemstone Files

…Didn’t the United States invade the Dominican Republic? Didn’t the United States bomb North Vietnam? Didn’t they carry on an exhausting war for years in South Vietnam? How could we be sure that we would not be invaded? And this thought determined the setting up of strategic missiles in Cuba.

Of course, the measures we took also implied another danger, but in the final balance Cuba was not invaded and there was no world war. We did not, therefore, have to suffer a war like Vietnam — because many Americans could ask themselves, why a war in Vietnam, thousands of miles away, why millions of tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam and not on Cuba? It was much more logical for the United States to do this to Cuba than to do it ten thousand kilometers away. And this is precisely how we saw the danger, and the results of the crisis prevented this type of war against Cuba. What would have happened to us? Since the socialist countries are so far away, we had no backup defense, no direct source of ammunitions. In the end the problem of a world war was circumvented…

Considerable infiltration also went on. All this was after 1962, 1963, 1964, and all this was very irritating for us because there was an agreement against direct aggression, but the policy of harassment continued in effect…

Large squadrons were mobilized around Cuba, in different directions, utilizing air transports, everything, but as the Vietnam War grew in momentum, all these troops were sent there…

As the United States became more and more involved in Vietnam, it limited its activities with relation to Cuba, because it was obvious that as they diminished their troops here their troops in Vietnam increased. Our defensive capabilities also grew, and it would have been necessary to use the troops in Vietnam in any attack against Cuba.

Although there always were reserves in the United States, these were not enough to carry out a lightning attack against Cuba…

After a few years, after the terrible mistake of the involvement in Vietnam, the international situation has changed and today, fifteen years after the Revolution, we can say that we enjoy a relatively peaceful climate in our country.

–Fidel Castro, 1975

(Frank Mankiewicz and Kirby Jones, With Fidel: A Portrait of Castro and Cuba, Ballantine Books, New York, 1975, pp. 150-155)

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