Washington demands the "right" of teams of armed foreign "inspectors" to go anyplace and anytime throughout the Middle Eastern country. They insist on their "right" to carve out sections of Iraq’s territory where Iraqi planes and vehicles cannot go without being bombed. After staging these provocations, the imperialist powers will declare that Iraq did not comply with every one of their demands and then claim the "right" to unleash an invasion aimed at establishing a protectorate. And this aggression will be carried out under the cover of the United Nations.

The demand of "weapons inspections" and the use of the United Nations to justify an imperialist assault is not new.

Forty years ago, in October 1962, U.S. president John F. Kennedy demanded UN "inspections" of Cuba during what is widely known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was the culmination of plans by the U.S. rulers to invade that Caribbean nation and crush the socialist revolution there. Cuban working people and their revolutionary government effectively stood down Washington’s threats and set a powerful example--one the imperialists cannot forget even today.

The story is told in Pathfinder’s new book, October 1962: The ‘Missile Crisis’ as Seen from Cuba, by Cuban author Tomás Diez Acosta. In it, readers will find an accurate record of the U.S. rulers’ efforts to undermine and overthrow the Cuban Revolution from its triumph in 1959 through the events of the final months of 1962.

After April 1961, when the revolutionary militias and armed forces of Cuba crushed a U.S-organized mercenary invasion at Playa Girón, near the Bay of Pigs, the Kennedy administration stepped up its preparations for an invasion using U.S. troops. It launched "Operation Mongoose" and other campaigns of counterrevolutionary terror and sabotage to prepare the ground for such an assault.

In light of this aggression, Cuba signed a mutual defense pact with the Soviet Union, including the deployment of Soviet missiles on the island. In October 1962, Kennedy demanded the removal of the missiles, imposed a naval blockade--an act of war he called a "quarantine"--and accelerated a course toward invasion.

In face of the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers and farmers in defense of their national sovereignty and revolutionary gains, the Kennedy administration backed off its invasion plans. After an exchange of communications between Washington and Moscow, Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev, without consulting Cuba, publicly announced his decision to withdraw the missiles.  
 
‘Imperialists are the aggressors’
In an Oct. 23, 1962, speech reprinted in Diez Acosta’s book, Fidel Castro quoted a U.S. Congressional resolution giving the Kennedy administration a green light to use armed force "to prevent in Cuba the creation or use of an externally supported military capability endangering the security of the United States." Castro stated, "There is nothing more ridiculous than to attribute to us aggressive intentions against the United States. After four years of them attacking us, it now turns out, according to them, that we are the ones with aggressive intentions against these gentlemen."

In the same speech Castro answered Washington’s demand that UN "observers" be sent to Cuba to dictate which types of weapons Cuba could and could not have and to "supervise" their removal.

U.S. officials, he said, "ask the United Nations that we disarm ourselves--with the sending of observers, of course." But "we have not the slightest intention of rendering accounts or of consulting with the illustrious members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives about the weapons we find it advisable to acquire, nor the measures to be taken to defend our country...just as we did not consult or request authorization about the type of weapons and the measures we took when we destroyed the invaders at Playa Girón."

A week later, following the Soviet government’s announcement that it was withdrawing the missiles, UN secretary-general U Thant was sent by Washington to demand that UN "inspectors" be allowed to "supervise" their removal. In the exchange between Castro and U Thant that is reprinted in October 1962 and is excerpted on the facing page, the Cuban leader asked pointedly, "What right does the United States have to ask this?" He added, "This demand for inspection aims to validate the U.S. presumption that it can violate our right to freely act within our borders." Rejecting the argument that imperialist calls for "inspections" were in the name of peace, Castro pointed out, "Violating the rights of the peoples is not the road to peace; that is precisely the road that leads to war. The road to peace is to guarantee the rights of the peoples, and the willingness of the peoples to resist and defend those rights."

In the Oct. 23, 1962, speech, Castro exposed the role of the United Nations in covering up for imperialist military assaults. He pointed to the example of the Congo, where U.S. and allied troops intervened in 1960-61 to disarm the newly independent government of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was arrested and assassinated by pro-imperialist forces.

"Imperialist forces went into the Congo flying the banner of the United Nations," the Cuban revolutionary leader said. "They assassinated the leader of the Congo. They divided it, they muzzled it, and they killed the independent spirit of that nation.

"Cuba is not the Congo. No one can come under that banner or any other banner to inspect our country. We know what we are doing, and we know how we must defend our integrity and our sovereignty.

"Any one who tries to come and inspect Cuba should know that he’d better come in full combat gear! That is our definitive answer to the illusions and to the proposals for carrying out inspections in our territory"

Today, Castro’s words remain true. Washington, an aggressor power that is armed to the teeth with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, has no right to tell Iraq or any other country what weapons it can or cannot have. The demand for "UN inspectors" is an outright violation of Iraq’s sovereign rights. It is a road not to "peace" but to imperialist war.

It’s also worth noting that revolutionary Cuba is not Iraq. While the Iraqi people today are the target of a brutal imperialist assault, working people in Cuba have a powerful advantage--they have made a revolution, taken governmental power, and overthrown capitalist rule. As in 1962, Cuban workers and farmers are organized to defend the deep-going political and social rights they have won through their revolution, and they are able to take the moral high ground in face of U.S. threats and aggression.
 
 
Related articles:
‘U.S. has no right to demand inspections’
Opposing views heard at New York meeting on October 1962 crisis  
 
 
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