As expected, the legal and moral legs of the United States and its symbiotic ally Israel were pulled out from under them by the overwhelming vote of earthly humanity.

On June 23 the United Nations General Assembly condemned the U.S. blockade of Cuba by a score of 184 to 2. That is, 96% of humanity told the U.S. to take its knee off the neck of the 11.3 million Cuban people.

The political coordinator of the U.S. mission to the UN, Rodney Hunter, defended U.S. policy as “a legitimate way to achieve” advancing democracy, human rights, and U.S. national security objectives.

If not for the tragedy that the U.S. is trying to snuff the breath out of the Cuban people, Hunter’s comments would be laughable.

To the 99% of the people of its North American neighbor, Cuba represents absolutely no security threat. To the contrary, the Cuban government’s example of healthcare, literacy, housing, and focus on the equitable human needs of its population actually embarrasses the über wealthy United States, a large percentage of whose population is ill-fed, ill-housed, illiterate, lacking health care, in debt, and suffering from overt racism and discrimination.

The insecurity of the United States, a country that spends two-thirds of the budget Congress passes every year on merchandising slaughter around the world, state terrorism by any other name, does not result from anything Cuba does. The mass murders that take place in our communities, the gang violence, and the daily killings of innocent people of color make all of us insecure. But the U.S. cannot blame Cuba for that. It is homegrown and mirrors the actions of the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” as Martin Luther King Jr. so accurately described U.S. global aggression over half a century ago.

Israel, which joined its murder-master teacher in upholding the blockade against Cuba, manages to kill only in the thousands even as it aims to ethnically cleanse all remaining Palestinians from their homeland, whereas the U.S. through its foreign policy of multiple wars, assassinations, and forced regime change kills in the hundreds of thousands and forces millions to flee the resulting violence.

The goal of the economic sanctions (another name for hybrid war) that the U.S. imposes on Cuba and nearly 40 other states is what the U.S. already does to its own poor — namely, starvation, ill health, and destitution. But for the U.S. Cuba is a special case. Its successful socialist society proves that another, far, far better world is possible once the people eliminate the billionaire profiteers and throw off the chains of monopoly capital. And because Cubans have taken that great step, the U.S. hates and keeps trying to asphyxiate them.

In 2014 President Barack Obama reversed three quarters of a century of the U.S. foreign policy of using the blockade to force regime change on Cuba. His administration resumed diplomatic relations and reduced the economic sanctions. The succeeding Trump administration, deranged in so many directions, scuttled Obama’s changes and tightened the noose on Cuba’s neck. The current Biden administration, rather than following the policy of Obama, is shamelessly aping his immediate predecessor.

All who struggle for human rights, for human decency, for the right of Cubans, indeed any people including our own, to decide their own destiny will justly condemn the U.S. vote, will demand that the U.S. change course, relax and quickly bury the blockade, and establish normal relations with Cuba. Let us agree to send messages to Biden, to our members of Congress: End the Blockade! Let Cuba breathe!

Image: Cuba Solidarity (Facebook).

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