MONDAY marked 60 years of debilitating American sanctions imposed on Cuba by the late president John F. Kennedy.
The ostensible reason, as revealed by a memorandum written by then deputy assistant secretary of state Lester D. Mallory, sighted by The Guardian, was: "To bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of the government." Call it the death-by-decree America. Be it Kennedy, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, regime change by decrees remains America's staple diet.
Trump and Biden, between them, are said to have added more than 200 sanctions to the "economic" embargo list. (Do not be deceived by the term "economic"; it is essentially a military strategy).
See how quickly the US and its allies blame China for doing exactly the same to Australia and Lithuania. Not that we are urging China on. Let's be blunt. China is making a big mistake by following the inhumane example of the United States.
Washington claims its long-term goal is to introduce democracy and human rights into Cuba. Consider democracy. If by democracy we mean a government of the people, by the people, for the people, then the Cubans, not Americans, must make the choice through ballots.
Forcing a regime upon them by bullets is by itself undemocratic. As revealed by the 1960 memo of Mallory, a majority of Cubans preferred communism, not democracy.
There was no reason for the Kennedy administration to impose the "economic" embargo. Even if the Cubans have had a change of heart now, it is for them to decide. America can't be the global dispenser of democracy, especially when it is so much in need of it at home.
Now for human rights. Is Washington missing an irony here? How could denying food and medicine to innocent Cubans be said to be promoting human rights?
Data on death by denial of food or medicine are hard to come by. But one real life example might point to a larger national tragedy. How many deaths is anybody's guess.
London-based Kathryn Riley's letter of July 18, last year, to The Guardian might be about the death and desperation of her husband, Roberto Molino Rivero, a type 1 diabetic in sanctions-hit Cuba, but in it there are hints of other possible deaths.
After a desperate search for insulin from pharmacy counter to pharmacy counter in Havana and finding none, Rivero asks Riley to send some to him. She sends them through a courier, but the package was returned with a message scrawled to read: "US sanctions on Cuba".
Medicines, the Americans say, are exempted but in Riley's experience the world of theory doesn't seem to be in sync with that of practice. Riley did say that her case is being investigated, but it is one death too late.
There is no way of telling how many died like this, but the US could put a stop to such deaths if it wants. There is neither legal nor moral grounds for the Biden administration to keep the embargo going.
Yes, Rivero died because of a lack of insulin. But he also died because of a lack of American humanity.
Human rights without humanity are no human rights. Sixty years of a failed experiment at regime change is lesson enough. If the Cubans want to live under communism, it is their right.
Why should it disturb Washington to no end? America can't remake the world in its image.