Stabbed in the Back

 At one point in his 1904 book of political and social commentary, The New Star Chamber, Edgar Lee Masters (one of my personal writer-poet-lawyer heroes) observes of the Spanish-American war and its aftermath: "Everyone knows that the Filipinos were our allies and that we betrayed them; that we broke our word with Cuba and that the course of the president has been uncandid and inconsistent."

He was referring to the fact that the U.S. pretended to support the national liberation struggles of both Cuba and the Philippines, in their effort to free themselves from Spanish domination—and then, when the U.S. had used the blood of their patriots to defeat Spain, turned around and stabbed them in the back by trying to assert a new U.S. claim to imperial rule in the former Spanish Empire. 

The bloody occupation of the Philippines followed; as well as a neo-colonial policy of U.S. interference in Cuba that continued up to the time of that country's revolution in 1959. 

It's hard to look around the world right now and not feel that history is repeating itself. For years, the U.S. presented itself as a friend to the Venezuelans' freedom struggles. We said to that county's democratic dissidents: we support you. We said to her political prisoners, victims of Maduro's regime, caged in a torture chamber in Caracas: we see you and call for your freedom. 

Now—after using the sacrifices of this democratic opposition movement to justify our own criminal, lawless military invasion of the country—we have completely stabbed them in the back. The Trump administration has made perfectly clear that they have no intention of supporting the rightful victors of the country's last election or helping to ensure a democratic transition. 

Instead, each day brings fresh evidence that they are working hand-in-glove with the remnants of the authoritarian Maduro regime to extract the country's oil wealth and line American pockets. Marco Rubio appeared yesterday before Congress to describe how the country's authoritarian leader—who still has hundreds of political prisoners pent in a central prison in Caracas—is cutting a deal with the U.S. to sell oil. 

"You are taking their oil at gunpoint," as Chris Murphy, Senator for Connecticut, put it; "You’re deciding how and for what purposes that money is going to be used in a country of 30 million people. I think a lot of us believe that that is destined for failure."

The Venezuelan people—Venezuelan democrats—were our allies and we betrayed them—to update Masters's observation. We used their suffering to try to justify to the world our interference in their country, our kidnapping of their president; our unprovoked illegal invasion of their territory. And then—when they had served their purpose—we ignored them and cozied up to the very same government that is still—to this day—imprisoning and torturing them. 

And that is far from the only such betrayal. The Trump administration likewise presents itself, in some moods, as a friend to political dissidents in Cuba. They are even reportedly preparing plans for regime change in the country. 

Yet, meanwhile, they are locking up Cuban asylum-seekers who manage to escape the dictatorship and seek freedom on our shores. In just the past month, a Cuban immigrant—a father of four—was wrestled to the ground in an ICE detention site and choked to death by guards. 

Here's someone who voted with his feet to choose the American way of life over a Soviet-style dictatorship—and this is the fate he meets here, in the land of the free—strangled to death in an internment camp. 

I am reminded again of how Lion Feuchtwanger described the French policy of interning anti-Fascist refugees from Germany, in the early months of World War II: 

"They knew very well that [...] we were friends of France who had come to France with full trust in French hospitality, warmly welcomed by the French people [...] natural allies in the war on Hitler. [...] To intern so many people who had beyond any doubt proved themselves bitter enemies of the Nazis was a stupid, revolting farce." 

We see that same stupid, revolting farce on display wherever the Trump administration locks up Venezeulan asylum-seekers, Cuban asylum-seekers, Afghan asylum-seekers, Iranian asylum-seekers, Chinese asylum-seekers—while all the time pretending to support the brave dissidents fighting for freedom from their repressive governments back home. 

There is no word for it but betrayal. No way to describe it but to say it is a brazen violation of trust. 

"[T]he Filipinos were our allies and that we betrayed them," as Masters put it. And so in turn have we betrayed the Cubans, the Venezuelans, the Iranians, the Kurds, the Afghans, and god knows how many other people who fought for our values and for the future of democracy on the assumption that we had their back—only to see us step eagerly into the role of the imperial, authoritarian oppressors they thought they were resisting. 

Masters writes of the "repudiation of the fundamental principles of the republic involved" in what he terms "the [U.S.'s] Philippine aggression." After disingenuously invoking the Philippine national cause and decrying the abuses of the Spanish Empire, "[t]hen the American people beheld the United States move up and occupy the place vacated by Spain. We took their war and their methods. We tricked the Filipinos, we shot them, we burned their homes."

Is it not precisely so with our policy in Venezuela today? We said: we will free you from Maduro! We said, as E.E. Cummings once parodied our hypocritical canting promises: "All poor little peoples who want to be free, just trust in the u.s.a.!" 

And now, here we stand in Maduro's place; applying his methods; claiming to "run" the country and thereby implicitly approving of the fact that hundreds of these dissidents still remain behind bars.

We invoked their suffering and their struggle and their sacrifices—all those dissidents who faced imprisonment for what they believed; but it was only to justify our own military aggression—just as we used the name of the freedom fighters in Cuba and the Philippines to justify our policy of war with Spain. When the time came, and we had sucked the freedom fighters dry, we betrayed them, and stepped happily into the shoes of their former oppressors. 

so rah-rah-rah democracy—as Cummings wrote of the U.S.'s similar betrayal of the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956: 

let's all be as thankful as hell

and bury the statue of liberty

(because it begins to smell)