Havana. September 3,
2009
Reflections of Fidel
The end does not
justify the means
Taken from CubaDebate
ON occasions direct news coming from the United
States prompts indignation and sometimes repugnance.
Of course, a large volume of recent reports have referred to problems associated
with the grave international economic crisis and its consequences in the heart
of the empire. Naturally, they are not the only ones in reference to that
powerful country. Any page of the bulky volume of news proceeding from any
continent, region or country of the world is generally related to the policy of
the United States. There is no point on the planet where the domineering
presence of the empire is not experienced.
Logically, for close to 10 years, news of its brutal wars has occupied
significant press space and even more so when a presidential election was in the
equation.
However, nobody could have imagined the appearance, in the midst of the drama of
the wars of conquest, of news on secret prisons and torture centers, a shameful
and well-guarded secret of the government of the United States.
The author of the grotesque policy which led to that point had usurped the
presidency in the elections of November 2000, by means of electoral fraud in the
southern state of Florida where the battle was decided.
After usurping power, W. Bush not only dragged the country into a politics of
war, but failed to sign the Kyoto Protocol, thus denying the world, during 10
years of struggle for the environment, the support of the nation that consumes
25% of fossil fuels, which could inflict irreparable damage on the human
species. Climate change is already present in the increase of global warming
that the pilots of executive aircraft can observe via tornados of growing
strength forming in the early hours of the afternoon along their tropical routes
and which could be a potential danger for their modern jets. The causes of the
accident of Air France passenger plane, which disintegrated in full flight, are
still unknown.
Nothing would be comparable with the consequences of the melting of the enormous
accumulated volume of water over the Antarctic continent, combined with that
melting over Greenland. I maintained my point of view on the responsibility that
falls on Bush in a recent meeting with the U.S. film director Oliver Stone,
commenting on his movie "W," referring to the penultimate president of the
United States.
I will confine myself to noting that after the political errors and horrors of
George W. Bush, former Vice President Cheney, who was his advisor, is
brandishing the idea that the acts of torture ordered by the CIA to obtain
information were justified in terms of saving U.S. lives, thanks to information
obtained in that way.
Of course that did not save the lives of the thousands of Americans who died in
Iraq, nor those of close to one million Iraqis, nor those dying in Afghanistan
in increasing numbers. Nor do we know what will be the consequences of the
hatred accumulated by the genocides that are being committed or could be
committed in those ways.
Let us be clear, it is an elemental problem of political ethics: "the end does
not justify the means." Torture does not justify torture; crime does not justify
crime.
That principle was debated and maintained for centuries. In virtue of it
humanity has condemned all wars of conquest and all the crimes committed. It is
extremely grave that the most powerful empire and the most colossal superpower
ever to have existed should proclaim such a politics. Of even more concern is
the fact that not only the vice president and the principal inspirer of such a
perfidious politics, is overtly proclaiming it, but that an elevated number of
citizens of that country, possibly more than half, support it. In that case, it
would be evidence of the moral abyss to which developed capitalism, consumerism
and imperialism can lead. If that is the case, it should be openly proclaimed
and the rest of the world should be asked its opinion.
However, I think that the most aware citizens of the United States will be
capable of waging and winning that moral battle as they comprehend the painful
truth. No honest person in the world would wish for them, or for any other
country, 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.
Translated by Granma International
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2009/septiembre/mier3/Reflections-2sept.html