For half a century, the U.S. has dedicated itself to the overthrow of the socialist regime for the simple reason that it has refused to obey orders.

As MIT linguistics professor and political activist Noam Chomsky has observed, international affairs are run like the mafia. The most powerful actors demand obedience and will dispatch their minions to dispose of those who dare to resist.

Cubans dared to resist. The revolutionary movement of 1959 overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Batista and instituted a series of reforms, which, contrary to propaganda, led to a marked improvement in the lives of regular Cubans, including one of the best health care systems in the world, free education and agrarian reform.

Once Cuba began nationalizing U.S.-based industries, the U.S. became increasingly annoyed that Cuba was deciding what to do with its own economy instead of subordinating themselves to the master and its corporate constituency.

Cuba's independence soon came to be too much for U.S. planners. In 1960, President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to train and equip Cuban exiles in an attempt to overthrow the regime. This was before Cuba had any significant ties to the Soviet Union, thus dispelling the made-up notion that the U.S. was simply trying to undermine Cuba because it was receiving support from the Soviets.

In fact, it was a series of U.S. actions that led Cuba to consolidate relations with the Soviet Union. CIA Director Allen Dulles urged Britain not to provide any arms to Cuba in the hope that this "might lead the Cubans to ask for Soviet or Soviet bloc arms," allowing the U.S. to portray tiny Cuba as a security threat. As Cuba began trade relations with the Soviet Union, the U.S. became enraged and cut off all diplomatic relations with the island.

After Kennedy decided to invade Cuba (a war crime) using trained Cuban exiles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Kennedy administration instituted Operation Mongoose -- a vicious terrorist campaign that was headed by liberal icon Robert Kennedy. According to documents that have been made publicly available, Operation Mongoose would consist of economic warfare, paramilitary operations and sabotage in the hopes of undermining the Castro regime, and creating a situation that would justify U.S. military intervention (one of the reports is titled "Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba").

Robert Kennedy informed the CIA that overthrowing Castro was "the top priority in the United States Government." In the aforementioned documents, Operation Mongoose operations chief Edward Lansdale explained that the success of the program would lead to "decisive U.S. military intervention." The documents also mention plans to "lure or provoke Castro … into an overt hostile reaction against the United States," providing a pretext for a U.S. invasion.

The most disturbing part of all the documents includes considerations for the U.S. to "develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington." This "terror campaign" could also be "pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States," including sinking "a boatload of Cubans enroute to Florida." They also considered an option to "blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo and blame Cuba" to repeat the "Remember the Maine" incident.

While planners were thinking of ways to overthrow the Castro regime, terrorist atrocities continued against Cuban civilians. President Kennedy issued a national security memorandum, which was a "directive to engineer an internal revolt that would be followed by U.S. military intervention." U.S.-backed terrorist forces attacked a seaside hotel in Cuba, killing dozens of people. Cargo ships were attacked and sugar shipments were poisoned.

After the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was a direct result of Washington's terrorist attacks against Cuba, terrorist operations against Cuba continued. These attacks included blowing up a Cuban industrial facility, killing 400 workers. Shortly before Kennedy was assassinated, he approved a plan for the CIA to carry out "destruction operations … against a large oil refinery and storage facilities, a large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor facilities and underwater demolition of docks and ships."

Terrorist operations against Cuba became more extreme under the Nixon administration, including the bombings of embassies and a Cuban airliner. One of the men involved in the bombing of the airliner, which killed 70 people, Luis Posada Carriles, whom the Justice Department regards as "an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks," is a free man thanks to the reactionaries in the Bush administration. Cuba has been demanding his extradition, but the Bush administration has refused. Perhaps Cuba should bomb Washington for refusing to hand over a known terrorist. After all, that's what we did to Afghanistan. By our own rules, the U.S. is a terrorist state that harbors known international terrorists.

Economic warfare continues against Cuba to this day, including a devastating embargo which, according to the American Association for World Health, has "severe health effects," and would be considered a "humanitarian catastrophe" were it not for Cuba's health care system. The embargo continues to withhold vital food and medicine. The embargo is condemned by the whole world regularly at the U.N. General Assembly, save for the U.S. and its servant in the Middle East, Israel.

It's obvious that Cuba is no security threat, and the childish idea that the U.S. cares about human rights in Cuba can safely be put aside due to the vast documentary and historical record of U.S.-backed terrorist atrocities against Cuban civilians. The reason that the U.S. continues in an attempt to isolate Cuba is that "Castro represents a successful defiance of the U.S., a negation of our whole hemispheric policy of almost a century and a half." In the 1960s, Arthur Schlesinger worried that "the poor and underprivileged … are now demanding opportunities for a decent living." That's always a troubling sign for the empire.