One of the ironies of the U.S. national-security state’s never-ending efforts to effect regime change in Cuba is that the United States ended up adopting and embracing many of the dark-side policies and practices of what one might expect a communist regime to engage in. After the conversion of the U.S. government to a national-security state after World War II, the notion was that in order to defeat the Reds during the Cold War, America needed to become like them.
That’s how the United States ended up being a nation based on such dark-side activities as torture, assassination, secret surveillance, and indefinite detention. In fact, it was appropriate that the Pentagon and the CIA established their premier torture and indefinite detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, given that torture, military tribunals, and indefinite detention without trial would fit perfectly in most communist regimes.
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One of the most hilarious ways in which the United States became like the communists to defeat the communists involves a radio station named Radio Marti.
Haven’t heard of it? Maybe the reason is that it is not allowed to broadcast to the American people even though it is based in Miami.
Why not?
Because that would be feeding propaganda to the America people!
You see, Radio Marti is owned and funded by the U.S. government. Its sole mission is to broadcast pro-U.S. propaganda into Cuba, with the aim of fomenting dissent there as part of the U.S. government’s never-ending aim of achieving regime change in Cuba.
It’s important to point out something important here: Radio Marti is a government-owned radio station Why is that important? Because that makes this station a socialist enterprise!
Look at the irony: To fight socialism, the United States adopts socialism! Is that hilarious or what?
The annual budget of Radio Marti and its sister station TV Marti is $27 million. Okay, not a large amount of money in the large scheme of things, but it’s the principle of the thing. This socialist enterprise is being funded the same way that socialist enterprises are funded in Cuba — through coercion. Both the U.S. government and the Cuban government take money from the populace to fund socialist enterprises. Think about that the next time you’re filling out your income-tax return and wondering why the IRS is taking so much of your income from you.
How large is the listening audience for Radio Marti. It’s impossible to say given that there are no ratings services in Cuba. But once Radio Marti began broadcasting in 1985, the Cuban regime responded by jamming its signals. This had a boomerang effect because many privately owned American radio stations, whose signal was not previously being blocked, discovered that the Cuban jamming of Radio Marti’s signal also jammed their signals as well. In any event, according to Wikipedia, less than 2 percent of Cubans listen to the propaganda issued by Radio Marti.
What message does Radio Marti send into Cuba? I haven’t researched the matter, but maybe it’s something like this: “Don’t you wish that you lived in a free country like the United States, where our government engages in assassination, torture, indefinite detention, secret surveillance, income taxation, military tribunals, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public schooling, income taxation, paper money, central bank, travel controls, trade restrictions, foreign interventionism, and gun control?”
Of course, the average Cuban could be forgiven for thinking to himself after hearing that message: “Big deal. Those are all core programs in our country as well.”
Another dark irony in all this is the name that U.S. officials chose for their socialist radio station — Marti. Jose Marti is one of the most revered figures in Cuba. He was a leader in Cuba’s fight for independence from Spain and was killed in battle in 1895.
Marti opposed any outside interference in Cuba. Yet, interfere is what the U.S. government has being doing in Cuba ever since it helped to defeat Spain in the Spanish American War in 1898. Such interference has come, of course, not just with the U.S. government’s socialist radio station perversely named after Marti, but also with such dark-side activity as sabotage, terrorism, assassination, invasion, and a brutal economic embargo designed to bring maximum suffering to the Cuban populace in the hopes that they will oust the communist regime and install another pro-U.S. dictatorship in its stead. All this against a country that has never attacked the United States or even threatened to do so.
In 1899, William Graham Sumner penned an essay entitled “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” in which he pointed out that while the United States had defeated Spain on the battlefield, it was Spain that had ultimately conquered the United States. How? Because the United States ended up embracing the imperialist and interventionist mindset of the nation it just defeated in war.
The same point, of course, can be made about Cuba, only it’s worse. While the United States ended up adopting many of the core features of Cuba’s communist and socialist system, the communist regime in Cuba remains standing. I wonder if America’s socialist radio station, Radio Marti, broadcasts that message into Cuba.
Reprinted with permission of the author. Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
