I have written before (here and here) about Donald Trump’s penchant for blowing fishing boats in the Caribbean Sea out of the waters with Hellfire missiles, killing (or attempting to kill) all the men aboard. His #1 assistant in this diabolical practice has been Pete Hegseth, the current Secretary of War, who, on hearing that two of the men aboard one of the boats were still alive and clinging to the wreckage, gave an undisputed totally illegal order to shoot them until they were dead. Which order was dutifully obeyed because: “Just following orders! Sir!”. The rationale given to these extra-judicial killings was that the boats were smuggling drugs into the US and needed to be stopped for the safety of the country. It didn’t matter that there was no evidence of drug running nor any other justification for using lethal violence against the boats. We were just told to trust that Trump was doing the right thing.
“I say that the boats are running drugs. I say that hundreds of thousands of Americans are going to die if they succeed. I say that the only moral restraint on my behavior is myself. I say, kill them all. Let God sort them out. Who are you going to believe–me or your own damn lying eyes and ears?”
All’s fair in love and war. Right?
Which brings us to this. Apparently, a Florida-registered speedboat with ten men in it were intercepted barely a mile offshore of Cuba by a government patrol boat. According to the Cuban Embassy, the crew of the speedboat opened fire on the patrol boat, resulting in a firefight which left four Americans dead and the others wounded to some degree. See here for more information.
Now, I can’t say with 100% certainty that this actually happened and I am quite confident that, if it did happen, the story has been stretched, manipulated, and distorted to some extent. There are always at least two sides to every argument and no one has an absolute lock on truth. Nevertheless, I have to take it on face value that this event did occur more or less as reported and that the fallout is predictable. Namely, the US government will use it as justification to ramp up its already suffocating hold on Cuba and may trumpet the need for military “intervention” (read that assault) on the island to protect American citizens, even if they were stupid enough to put themselves in harm’s way. After all, consider this immediate response:
“The dictatorship in #Cuba has just attacked a boat from Florida & murdered those on board. This regime must be relegated to the dust bin of history!” — https://twitter.com/RepCarlos/status/2026737976907067395
My! How the tables have turned. As you give, you receive. When you blow up fishing boats in international waters without respect for due diligence, just cause, and human life, then you risk getting your own boats being fired upon. With due diligence and for good reason by the Cuban government, I might add, if the event happened as reported.
ZeroHedge raised an important question.
“What armed men aboard the Florida-registered speedboat were doing inside Cuban territorial waters remains a very open question at the moment.“
Well, yes. Exactly. Why did a boatload of armed men venture inside the territorial limits of Cuban water? What was their goal? What did they hope to accomplish? Did they realize the risk they were running? Did they care? Who were these men, anyway, and more importantly, who were they working for?
It is entirely possible, not likely, but possible, that the ten men on the boat were nothing more than Rambo-type, hot-headed hotshots who were stupid enough to try something like this and got more than they bargained for. After all, there are a lot of incredibly dumb people on this earth who act first out of emotion without ever rationally considering the possible consequences. This is not out of the question, but, as I said, not likely. The most plausible explanation is that they were on the payroll of an unnamed entity which was attempting to smuggle a heavily-armed crew into Cuba to stir up trouble in the hopes of further destabilizing the current government and potentially starting an uprising among the “campesinos nativos”. If that was the case, then it recalls the Bay of Pigs debacle, which became a black mark against the John Kennedy administration forever as an example of official incompetence.
This episode will probably be stonewalled and any involvement by the US government in it will be denied until the spokespersons are blue in the face from lack of breath, but it won’t put to rest the suspicions. As the saying goes, never believe anything the government tells you until it is explicitly denied. Vehemently explicitly denied. When Donald Trump says that the US absolutely had nothing to do with it and attacks someone else for asking questions, then we can be pretty sure that his fingerprints are all over it. On the other hand, being the type of person he is, he might just come out and admit that he ordered the project and, “What are you gonna’ do about it?”
Who knows? And who can comprehend what damage might ensue as a consequence? And who will be blamed while the dust is settling?
The answer to that last question is obvious and will be brought out immediately–“Not I. Look over there!”
Update to this story: https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/foiled-armed-infiltration-cuba-kills-four-aboard-heavily-armed-us-linked-speedboat
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