When the US Is the Bad Guy

Like I always say, examples abound of the United States’ double standards. Take Saudi Arabia whose repressive, repugnant dictatorship matters not one jot to the U.S. government, which has established one of its best working relationships with the country.

Iran, however, is just a hop, skip and jump away across the Persian Gulf; its society is far more open than Saudi Arabia’s, and yet Washington has always seen its government as despotic, terrorist and criminal, to be wiped from the face of the earth for the good of all humanity.

In other words, there is one rule for Saudi Arabia and another for Iran. It is said that countries have interests, not friends, and the country in which I reside is a classic example.*

When the Shah ruled Iran, the U.S. government had excellent diplomatic and trade relations with the country. It was of little importance that he was a dictator who violated every human right in the book. Trade and strategic interests impelled the White House to get along famously with the dictator up until the moment he was toppled by Muslim fundamentalists. And lest we forget, when the Shah was forced to leave Iran like a shot and was no longer of any use, the U.S. turned its back on him.

And what about Saddam Hussein, the unconditional ally and Iraqi strong man who required help in his war with Iran? The Americans gave Saddam huge quantities of arms and intelligence to enable him to win the conflict, years before he became the man that they described as a dictator, a murderer and a terrorist. At the time, he was the ideal ally who was waging war on America’s archenemy.

The conflict cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides, though some claim that it caused over a million casualties between 1980 and 1988. At that point, the U.S. government had no objection in aligning itself with Saddam, and this remained the case until he concocted the stupid idea of invading Kuwait, a U.S. ally, due to its oil. Only then did he become the terrible dictator, terrorist and criminal that had to be eliminated. All of a sudden, they began demonizing the very man they only recently sanctified.

For decades, the Somoza family’s government in Nicaragua was aided, supported and financed by the United States. “Dictatorial, yes, but they’re our allies,” was what U.S. government officials would say. When the Sandinistas overthrew the ruling family and obliged their quick exile, they were left to their own devices just like the Iranian Shah. Nicaragua was then subject to the same treatment as Iran: It was demonized. The dictator’s ousters then had to be ousted, vilified and destroyed, so the U.S. government organized, trained, financed and supplied thousands of men for a dirty war against the Sandinistas, with results that do not need repeating. The bad guys thus become the good guys in American eyes and their ousters the new enemy.

A few days ago, an appalling act of terrorism was carried out in Boston. Two sick individuals set off bombs where thousands of innocent citizens had gathered to watch the marathon. These terrorists acted without the tiniest regard for the human life they would take away that day. Terrorists, of course, only have regard for sowing terror. Without a single clue about the perpetrators of the crime, the authorities found those involved in just a couple of days. Though tracking down the murderers was an arduous task, they were captured with incredible speed.

This week it will be one year since an act of terrorism was committed in Miami against a company that chartered flights to Cuba. To date, nothing is known of those responsible. Thank God there were no victims, but there easily could have been. How is it possible that the case of such a straightforward act of terrorism carried out in Miami has yet to be resolved and the extremely complex Boston bombing was solved in a matter of days? Could it be that there are “bad terrorists” who must be apprehended and “good terrorists” that are deliberately left to freely roam the streets of this city?

*Editor’s note: The author is a Miami-based Cuban journalist.