Stepping
on a Flea
(Sound
familiar?)
by
Mickey Z.
Dissident
Voice
November 6, 2003
The
U.S. worked to destabilize the Bishop regime for years but could not have been
happy when he was deposed and later murdered by a group more left than he in
early October 1983. That's when the U.S. decided to risk awakening this
sleeping Caribbean flea by launching a preemptive attack on October 25, 1983.
"Grenada
has a hundred thousand people who produce a little nutmeg, and you could hardly
find it on a map," Noam Chomsky explains. "But when Grenada began to
undergo a mild social revolution, Washington quickly moved to destroy the
threat."
After
adding the obligatory statements about Soviet and Cuban designs on the island,
Reagan sent roughly two thousand American marines in to lead an operation
called "Urgent Fury." The fighting was over in a week. Casualties
included 135 Americans killed or wounded, 84 Cubans, and some 400 Grenadians.
"The
American media rarely mentioned Grenadian casualties of U.S. aggression,"
explains Ramsey Clark. "It barely reported the mental hospital destroyed
by a Navy jet, leaving more than 20 dead." (Sound familiar?)
A
Wall Street Journal headline blared: U.S. INVADES GRENADA IN WARNING TO RUSSIA
AND CUBA ABOUT EXPANSION IN THE CARIBBEAN. It was also a warning to potential
critics.
"The
invasion was already under way, so even if we opposed it, there was nothing any
of us could do," House Speaker Tip O'Neil said at the time. "I had
some serious reservations, and I'm sure my Democratic colleagues did as well, but
I'd be damned if I was going to voice any criticism while our boys were out
there." (Sound familiar?)
With
“detainees” still in custody at Guantanamo Bay, one group did commemorate the 20th
anniversary of the Grenada invasion. Amnesty International highlighted the
plight of the "Grenada 17.” Amnesty's UK media director, Lesley Warner,
explained that these 17 prisoners were detained after the invasion and tried
under controversial circumstances. "These people were initially held
without charge in cages, before being tried before an unfair, ad-hoc tribunal.
They were denied access to legal counsel and to documents needed for their
defense," Warner told The Guardian. "After sentencing, the Grenada 17
were held in tiny cells with lights left permanently on.” (Sound familiar?)
Reagan,
stopping short of donning a flight suit, made a speech on the fourth day of the
invasion, which, according to journalist William Blum “succeeded in giving
jingoism a bad name." "The president managed to link the invasion of
Grenada with the shooting down of a Korean airliner by the Soviet Union, the
killing of U.S. soldiers in Lebanon, and the taking of American hostages in
Iran,” says Blum. “Clearly, the invasion symbolized an end to this string of
humiliations for the United States. Even Vietnam was being avenged. To
commemorate the American Renaissance, some 7,000 U.S. servicemen were
designated heroes of the republic and decorated with medals. (Many had done no
more than sit on ships near the island.) American had regained its manhood, by
stepping on a flea."
Mickey
Z. is the author of The Murdering of My Years: Artists and
Activists Making Ends Meet (www.murderingofmyyears.com)
and an editor at Wide Angle (www.wideangleny.com). He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.
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