Word: cuba
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...ideological warfare, such metaphors are more than mere shorthand. They are used to prevent thought. They do so by instantly conjuring up a whole complex of circumstances and feelings to be drawn automatically from one situation and plugged into another. For "another Iran," read: hostages, helplessness, humiliation. For "another Cuba," read: adventurism, revolution, proxy mischief. For "another Afghanistan," read: imperialism, superpower bullying, disrespect for the rule of law. (For "another Nicaragua," see "another Cuba," above...
...side or the other with all of these and more. The real Grenada is none of the above. The upheaval there was not, as it was in Iran, a xenophobic religious revolution that saw in every American an agent of Satan and a spy. Grenada was not, like Cuba or Nicaragua, a regional power that could project real force against its neighbors (though it would still be valuable to a great power as a staging point; in this respect it resembled, if anything, other useful dots on the map like Iwo Jima in 1945 or Diego Garcia today...
...invasion of Grenada has sparked a flurry of left and right-wing protests on campus. Right-wing yahoos are jubilant that the U.S. finally found a country small enough for Reagan's supercommandos to cream. Yuk it up, guys... if you think Cuba or Nicaragua is next, your CIA and Army buddies will find themselves stuck in a roach motel ("they'll check in but they won't check out"). To be sure, the spectacle of "rescued" U.S. medical students kissing American soil made better press for Reagan than the nightly newscasts of mangled bodies of over 200 dead Marines...
Reagan justifies the invasion of Grenada as a confrontation with the Soviet Union and Cuba in order to mobilize American society for an actual war with the Soviet bloc. Behind every-moment for social justice anywhere in the world the U.S. sees the hand of "Soviet aggression." Despite the political degeneration led by Stalin, the gains of the Russian Revolutions (a planned economy and collectivized property) remain and must be defeated. Without the aid of the USSR. Cuba would have been reduced to irradiated rubble over 20 years ago; without Soviet arms and Cuban troops the Black nationalist regime...
...against the offensive missile sites that the Soviets were installing in Cuba. Working in the extraordinary partnership that he had developed with his brother Bobby, the President imposed a naval quarantine on Cuba and allowed Khrushchev time to consider. When the Soviets sent two somewhat contradictory replies to his ultimatum, one hard and one more accommodating, Kennedy simply ignored the hard message and replied to the softer one. It worked. Khrushchev blinked, and in the memorable denouement, the Soviet ships turned and steamed away from Cuba. Says Harvard Political Scientist Richard Neustadt: "The Administration set a new standard of prudence...