Melville Cooke Steel grey doesn't go with blue anymore
Or is it something you can't see
Ashes on the windowsill
This generation's uncomfortably still
The eagle's landed and I heard the scream
And it wasn't a dream
- Ashes on the Window Sill, Della Manley
LAST WEEK Wednesday, a ship packed with Americans dropped anchor off Grenada to gloat. They were not very far from the spot where an American aircraft carrier launched Operation Urgent Fury on October 25, 1983, when I was in second form at Munro College.
Tom Kilgannon, part of an organisation called the Freedom Alliance, said "Grenada is an important event in the rolling back of communism". Former Republican Congressman said "it was an end to Castro's efforts to get a foothold in the region".
It was a strange end. At the time of the invasion, it was claimed that 1,600 Cubans, mostly professional soldiers, were on the island. Actually, there were less than 800, most of them construction workers. There were also about 100 doctors, dentists, teachers etc. and a whopping 43 soldiers.
Eighty-four Cubans were killed, 135 Americans and who knows how many Grenadians as 7,000 US troops flooded the island, with a total population of 110,000 persons.
As the United States works itself up to another assault on a country that has as much chance against its military machinery as Kenya does against Australia if they ever meet at the cricket World Cup, we must not forget the precedent set in the Caribbean less than 20 years ago.
The methodology and logic is the same Grenada was supposed to be building up this mighty military machinery, which never existed. It was supposed to be planning a submarine base rubbish. The airport under construction at the time was to facilitate military planes the persons responsible for building it said it was being done to civilian specifications.
The operation was to save medical students at the university from imminent harm they radioed to say they were safe. The Governor-General was supposed to have called for help he denied it and he was British anyway. How could he call in US troops?
The OECS, Barbados and Jamaica were supposed to have issued an urgent appeal, as they felt endangered. Crap. In fact, I have found reports on the Internet which have quoted sources close to the then Jamaican Prime Minister as saying the US approached him, saying issue an appeal and we will respond.
Mr. Seaga can choose to confirm or deny. I wonder if he was invited on the cruise? After all, he was the golden calf of Reagan
and Thatcher, after they had got rid of that pesky Manley, who dared to shake Castro's hand.
When the United Nations condemned the invasion, with the exception of three countries including Chile, ruled by a murderer called Agosto Pinochet, good friend of the US, Reagan said: "One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them where we're involved and it didn't upset my breakfast at all."
And y'all thought that that son of a Bush was original.
The fact is that since getting there butts thoroughly whupped in Korea and Vietnam, the US has chosen its opponents more carefully than Mike Tyson just after he came out of prison. Grenada, Panama, Gulf War I and Afghanistan were all carefully chosen sops. And, in any case, the US does not fight wars. They bomb people from miles in the air, bomb them some more, bomb them again for good measure and then send other people's ground troops to lead the way.
Now that is brave.
Half of the Iraqis that they are massing troops to massacre are under 15 years old. And half survive on food handouts. How brave of these poster boy soldiers.
Oh - remember that Urgent Fury was supposed to turn back Cuban influence and communism in Grenada and the region? Cuban doctors, teachers and nurses are an integral part of Grenada and a 270-bed hospital opened this year was built with Cuban assistance.
As a 45-year-old woman named Mary Parke said: "The Cubans do good work. Why doesn't the US help us more?" And she should know. She works at the mental ward of a hospital which was "accidentally" bombed by the US back in 1983. Collateral damage, they call it these days.
Footnote: Please do yourselves a favour, lay off the BET and porno websites for an hour and read about Eric Gairy, Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movement and Bernard Coard. It's amazing what you can learn in 60 minutes.
The truth in international conflicts is hard to come by, because most nations are deceived about themselves - Martin Luther King Jnr.
Melville Cooke is a freelance writer.
