By: Cliff Kincaid - Accuracy in Media - Cross-Posted at the – NoisyRoom and at AskMarion
I recently asked John A. Stormer, author of the 1964 bestseller None Dare Call It Treason (Kindle), if he thought President Barack Obama was a Marxist. “He’s two things,” Stormer told me. “Is he a Marxist or is he a Muslim? He is really involved in both of these things. He’s anti-American.”
Obama’s policies have benefited enemies of the U.S. across the spectrum, from Muslim to Marxist. All of these anti-American forces have made dramatic gains under Obama. This means that the situation is far worse for America than when Stormer wrote his seven-million-copy bestseller.
Stormer’s book was described at the time as an exposé of how the U.S. government was ostensibly “fighting” communism with its right hand, while actually aiding, supporting, and promoting communism with its left. The book was self-published at a time when the U.S. was opposing communism in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, but doing business with countries like the Soviet Union, which were supplying the enemy that was killing American soldiers on the battlefield.
The difference now, as we have seen with Obama’s recognition and bailout of the Castro regime in Cuba, is that the U.S. government doesn’t even pretend to be anti-communist anymore. Obama has made the U.S. into a facilitator of international communism.
Our troubles are compounded by the spectacle of “conservatives” who pretend not to grasp what is going on. Columnist George Will writes at National Review that Cuba is a “geopolitical irrelevancy.” He says, “Cuba’s regime, although totalitarian, no longer matters in international politics.”
Will must have missed Vladimir Putin’s visit to Cuba in July, when he had meetings with brothers Raul and Fidel Castro and participated in a ceremony at the Memorial to the Soviet Internationalist Soldier. It is a tribute to Soviet soldiers who were stationed in Cuba in the early 1960s and died there. Putin forgave most of Cuba’s debt to the former Soviet Union.
Before that, in May, investigative reporter Bill Gertz noted that Cuba and Russia “concluded a security deal” aimed at bolstering “intelligence and military ties” between the two countries.
Will must have missed that dispatch.
But Russia isn’t the only U.S adversary that considers Cuba geopolitically relevant.
Toby Westerman, editor of International News Analysis Today, wrote a 2012 column noting that Communist China regards the island of Cuba as “strategically located for the interception of U.S. military and civilian satellite communications,” and that “China’s spy service also cooperates closely with Havana’s own world-class intelligence services.”
Westerman added, “The value Beijing places upon the information acquired via Havana can be seen in the October 2011 visit to the island by General Guo Boxiong, Vice Chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. Guo’s presence in Cuba underscored that China has a special military commitment in addition to a sizable economic investment in Cuba.”
Considering the damage that is being done to the United States, and the failure of “conservative” columnists such as George Will to recognize it, we are reminded that the title of Stormer’s book came from the famous John Harington quotation: “Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
But it gets worse.
Just two days after Obama announced his new Cuba policy, Raul Castro received the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, Dmitry Rogozin, during an official visit to Cuba on the occasion of the 12th Session of the Cuba-Russia Intergovernmental Commission.
Will should be advised that all of this is being covered in the English-language version of the official Cuban Communist Party paper Granma. The information is not a national security secret.
The Cuba-Russia Intergovernmental Commission on economic-trade and scientific-technical collaboration held a meeting designed to “advance tasks and objectives established during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Cuba in July…” The objective, according to Granma, is “to realize agreements in order to increase exchanges in diverse spheres” and “address key areas of interest to both countries.”
While Raul Castro’s talk of a “new economic model” in Cuba has been trumpeted far and wide by the U.S. media, his December 20 speech to the “National Assembly of People’s Power” said this does not mean that capitalism will be tolerated. He said the “guidelines” for the new economy make it clear that “The economic system which will prevail in Cuba will continue to be based on the people’s socialist ownership of the fundamental means of production, governed by the socialist principle of distribution, from each according to his/her capacity to each according to his/her contribution.”
He referred to “the irreversibility of socialism in Cuba.”
To understand the strategic significance of Obama’s change in policy toward the dictatorship in Cuba, Castro said he will be participating in the Seventh Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama on April 10-11, 2015. The event is managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), a group that used to be dedicated to promoting democracy in the hemisphere.
How things change.
In January 1962, the OAS was an anti-Communist organization, having established a “Special Consultative Committee on Security Against the Subversive Action of International Communism.” The group declared, “The principles of communism are incompatible with the principles of the inter-American system.”
It passed a resolution declaring, “The present Government of Cuba has identified itself with the principles of Marxist-Leninist ideology, has established a political, economic, and social system based on that doctrine, and accepts military assistance from extra-continental communist powers, including even the threat of military intervention in America on the part of the Soviet Union…”
Nothing has changed over the years, except that Russia has replaced the Soviet Union and international communism has made dramatic gains in the hemisphere.
Another big change, of course, is that the U.S. President is either a Marxist or a Muslim. Take your pick. Perhaps, as Stormer says, anti-American is the best description.
Referring to Republican Senators Rand Paul (KY) and Marco Rubio (FL), Will writes, “As they brawl about Cuba, a geopolitical irrelevancy, neither seems presidential.” But this is the kind of debate that we desperately need to have. It will determine if the U.S. is a force for good or evil in the world. Senator Paul has sided with Obama and Castro. Senator Rubio has come down on the side of freedom.
This debate will not only determine if the Republican Party remains pro-freedom and anti-communist, but whether the United States will stay true to Ronald Reagan’s vision of a world free from communism.
It is troubling, 50 years after the publication of None Dare Call It Treason (Kindle), that we have to go through this debate all over again—this time with the stakes even higher.
One thing is clear at this point: we need a new generation of conservatives in the media willing to take a stand for freedom, and to conduct a review of the “death of communism.”
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