Reflections by comrade Fidel

THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS

The news coming from the United States are sometimes outrageous and sometimes disgusting.

Lately, a good number of them referred to problems related with the grave international economic crisis and its consequences for the empire. Of course, they are not the only news associated with that powerful country. Any page of the thick volume of news from any continent, region or country in the world is generally connected with the US policies. There is no place on earth where the domineering presence of the empire is not felt.

Obviously, for almost ten years the news on its brutal wars took large space in the press, much more so at times of presidential elections.

However, no one could have thought that in the middle of the ongoing drama of the wars of conquest there would be news on secret jails and torture centers, a shameful and well-kept secret of the US administration.

The author of the grotesque policy leading the world to that point had usurped the US presidency after the November 2000 elections through electoral fraud in the southern state of Florida where the contest was decided.

After seizing power, W. Bush not only dragged the country into a war policy but also left the Kyoto Protocol unsigned thus denying the world for ten years the support of that nation to the struggle for the environment, a nation that consumes 25 percent of the fossil fuel, which can bring irreparable damage to the human species. Climate change can already be felt in the rise of heat in the world, something the executive plane pilots can perceive through the increasingly strong tornadoes formed in the early afternoon at their tropical air routes that can prove hazardous for their modern jet planes. Meanwhile, the causes of the accident of the Air France plane that disintegrated in mid-flight are still unknown.

But nothing would compare to the consequences of the melting of the enormous mass of water accumulated on the Antarctic continent combined with that melting on Greenland. I recently sustained my perception on Bush’s responsibility in a discussion I had with American film maker Oliver Stone on his movie “W” related to the former president of the United States.

I would simply say that after the political errors and horrors made by George W. Bush, former Vicepresident Cheney, who was his advisor, defends the notion that the tortures the CIA was ordered to practice in order to extract information were justified since American lives could be saved thanks to the information thus obtained.

Of course, they did not save the lives of the thousands of Americans who died in Iraq, and the almost one million Iraqis or those who keep dying in Afghanistan in growing numbers. No one knows what the consequences will be of the hatred accumulated by the genocides being committed or that could be committed that way.

Let’s be clear about this for it is essentially a question of political ethics: “The end does not justify the means.” Torture does not justify torture like crime does not justify crime.

Such a principle was debated and advocated for years. On this basis, humanity has condemned every war of conquest and every crime committed. It is extremely serious that the most powerful empire and the largest superpower that has ever existed assert such a policy. But more disturbing still is that not only the former vicepresident and advocate of such a perfidious policy is openly defending it but that a high number of people in that country, maybe more than half, support it. If that were the case, it would be proof of the moral abyss that developed capitalism, consumerism and imperialism could lead to; and, it should be openly claimed and then ask the rest of the world how it feels about it.

I think, however, that the Americans with a higher conscience will be capable of waging and winning this moral battle as they grow more aware of the painful reality. No honest person in the world could wish them or any other nation the death of innocent people victims of any form of terror, wherever it may come from.

Fidel Castro Ruz

September 2, 2009

7:34 P.M.