This will be a short article regarding a proposal that was written by the Department of Defence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the USA. This is something I have come across during research conducted for other articles, and thought it was shocking that a government for the sake of initiating a war, can propose such a devious act of terror, this was Operation Northwoods.
At the beginning of 1959, USA companies owned about 40% of the Cuban sugar lands, almost all cattle ranches, 90% of the mines and mineral concessions, 80% of the utilities, most of the oil industry and supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports, that might of have had something to do with why the thought of an independent Cuba led them to drastic measures.
Before we get to the proposed operation, let us be reminded of who the USA supported and financed to keep control of Cuba, dictator Fulgencio Batista. Once Batista came into power, he revoked political liberties including the right to strike, profited millions of the exploitation of the country negotiating deals with the American mafia as well as the US government, carried out wide-scale violence, torture, public executions and was recorded to have murdered over 20,000 people to keep control of the country. This truly does go to show, if the US has an individual in charge whom they have control over, and whom they can benefit of, then the crimes they commit, the massacres, the torture, the exploitation and the persecution of the citizens’ rights, then the oppression of the people is of no concern, so any statements made where they show concern for the oppression of the innocent, understand and accept there is an agenda behind it. At a meeting in 1960, U.S Secretary of State Christian Herter stated that Castros administration was ‘’supressing civil liberties, removing both the freedom of speech and freedom of the press’’. As mentioned, Batista whom US financed and backed, was suppressing civil liberties through torture and violence, so is it not obvious, because Castro had the liberation of Cuba as his priority, US decided to make out that they were saving the Cuban people, and they decided to attack.
They put into plan different methods of destabilizing the nationalisation of Cuba by Castro, whether it was through propaganda, attacks on certain utility plants such as a power plant, using diplomatic means to frustrate Cuban trade negotiations, multiple assassinations on Castro, the infamous failure of the Bay of Bigs invasion and the one I will mention is the proposal of Operation Northwoods.
*A few of the well-coordinated incidents detailed in the proposal are as follows: sink ship near harbour entrance, conduct funerals for mook victims; blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba, casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation; sink a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida (real or simulated); develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in Miami, Florida and Washington, exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, using Cuban agents and prepared documents to project the idea of an irresponsible Cuban government; hijacking attempts against civil air and surface craft should appear to continue as harassing measures condoned by the Government of Cuba.
The proposal was rejected by President Kennedy, but how was it even possible for senior leaders of the US government to deem it morally correct to even think of such a devious, calculated, heinous and catastrophic plan, and to go even further of believing the proposal may be accepted, that really does speak volumes about the US government, that those senior leaders truly believed that it could be a strategy that could be accepted and implemented. The fact they would destroy any country regardless of collateral damage or civilian casualties, even if it is their ‘own’ people who have to get hurt in order to support the narrative, shows the lengths the US would go in order to maintain the control they have as a superpower, and to ensure their ideology of how the world should be run, is not put at risk by any potential revolution.
The following statements are taken directly from the unclassified proposal itself; the objective of the proposal was that ‘’US military intervention will result from heightened US-Cuban tensions which would place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances. World opinion, and the United Nations forum should be favourably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as ‘rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere’’. Furthermore, ‘’such a plan would enable a logical build-up of incidents to be combined with other seemingly unrelated events to camouflage the ultimate objective and create the necessary impression on Cuban rashness and irresponsibility on a large scale’’.
This truly shows the cunning and sinister nature of the US government and the perception that it is trying to portray to the world, that the US government are reformers, a government that has everyone’s best interests at heart, that it is on the side of the oppressed, as the protector of democracy, reality is, you would either be a fool, genuinely oblivious, intentionally ignorant, or a supporter of a truly evil regime to agree.