The Empire and Man’s Right to Life

“What monsters!” I exclaimed after reading the last line of the revelations by the famous journalist Seymour Hersh, published in Democracy Now and selected as one of the 25 most censured news articles in the United States.

The article is titled “War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal” and was included in Project Censored, created by one of the universities in California, which includes the essential paragraphs of those revelations.

“McChrystal was appointed by President Barack Obama as commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan. He had been formerly in charge of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney. Most of what General McChrystal has done over a thirty-three-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the JSOC, a special black operations commando unit of the Navy Seals and Delta Force so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.

“Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Seymour Hersh claims that the Bush administration ran an executive assassination ring that reported directly to former Vice President Dick Cheney, and that Congress had no oversight of it whatsoever. The JSOC team would go into countries, without talking to the ambassador or to the CIA station chief, find people on a to-be-killed list, execute them, and leave. There was an ongoing list of targeted people, cleared by Vice President Cheney’s office, who had committed acts of war or were suspected of planning operations of war against the United States. Hersh asserts that there have been assassinations in a dozen countries in the Middle East and Latin America. ‘There’s an executive order, signed by President Ford, in the ’70s, forbidding such action. It’s not only contrary—it’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s counterproductive,’ he added.”

According to the article, “JSOC was also involved in war crimes, including the torture of prisoners in secret “ghost” detention sites. Camp Nama in Iraq was one such “ghost” facility hidden from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the international body charged under international law with monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions.”

They officially placed the Major General in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, but he was “a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and other bases in Iraq and Afghanistan under his command.”

Upon further reading, a point of special interest is raised: When such acts enter into conflict with officials, in compliance with their duties, they are obligated to commit acts that openly clash with the law and implicate grave crimes.

“An interrogator at Camp Nama described locking prisoners in shipping containers for twenty-four hours at a time in extreme heat, exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water, bombardment with bright lights and loud music, sleep deprivation, and severe beatings.”

Immediately, flagrant violations of international principles and agreements signed by the United States arise. Cuban readers may remember the story told in two other articles in which I explain our relationship with the International Red Cross, when we returned a high number of enemy prisoners who fell into our hands during the defense of the Sierra Maestra and later the strategic counteroffensive against the Cuban army, [with soldiers] trained and supplied by the United States. Not once was a prisoner ever mistreated, and none of the injured was ever left unattended. That same institution [the Red Cross], based in Switzerland, could have faith in those facts.

“In describing why no other press had covered the story, Hersh stated, ‘My colleagues at the press corps often don’t follow up, not because they don’t want to but because they don’t know who to call. If I’m writing something on the Joint Special Operations Command, which is an ostensibly classified unit, how do they find it out? The government will tell them everything I write is wrong or that they can’t comment. It’s easy for those stories to be dismissed. I do think the relationship with JSOC is changing under Obama. It’s more under control now.'”

“…the decision by Obama’s administration to appoint General McChrystal as the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan, as well as the continuation of the military commission for the detainees held in the Guantánamo Bay prison, are unfortunately examples of the Obama administration continuing to walk in Bush’s footsteps.”

“Rock Creek Free Press reported in their June 2010 issue that Seymour Hersh, speaking at the Global Investigative Journalism conference in Geneva in April 2010, had criticized President Barack Obama and alleged that U.S. forces are engaged in ‘battlefield executions.'”

“Those we capture in Afghanistan are being executed on the battlefield,” Hersh claimed.

Arriving at this point, the narrative comes into contact with a very current reality: The continuity of a policy by the president who succeeded the delirious George W. Bush, inventor of the war to seize control of the most important natural gas and oil reserves in the world in a region inhabited by more than 2.5 billion people, by virtue of acts committed against the American people by an organization of men who were recruited and armed by the CIA to fight in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, and that continues to enjoy the support of some of the strongest allies of the U.S.

The complex and unpredictable zone whose resources are disputed stretches from Iraq and the Middle East to the outer limits of the Chinese province of Xinjiang — passing through Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and the old Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They are capable of supplying gas and oil to the growing economy of the People’s Republic of China and industrialized Europe. The population of Afghanistan, as well as part of Pakistan, a country of 170 million people and possessor of nuclear arms, is victim to unmanned air strikes that massacre the civilian population.

Among the 25 news stories most censored by the mainstream media, selected by Sonoma State University in California — as they have done for 34 years — one of them, corresponding to the period between 2009 and 2010, was “War Crimes of General Stanley McChrystal.” Two others relate to our island: “Cuba Provided the Greatest Medical Aid to Haiti after the Earthquake” and “Prisoners Still Brutalized in Gitmo.” A fourth story asserts “Obama Cuts Domestic Spending and Increases Military Corporate Welfare.”

Our foreign relations minister, Bruno Rodriguez, was responsible for the Cuban Medical Mission sent to Pakistan after a destructive earthquake hit the rough terrain in the northeast of the country, where extensive areas inhabited by people of the same ethnicity, with the same culture and traditions, were arbitrarily divided by British colonialism into countries that later fell under the aegis of the Yankees.

In his speech yesterday on Oct. 26, at the heart of the U.N., [Minister Rodriguez] demonstrated how excellently well informed he was of the international situation in our complex world.

His brilliant allegation yesterday and the resolution approved by that institution [the U.N.], by that transcendence, requires another reflection, which I propose to write.