This article by John McAuliff in the Havana Note does a great job of catching provocative and problematic statements recently made by Secretary Clinton.  The public tends to accept such assertions  as undisputed truth,  but in fact they badly misrepresent the circumstances:

I well remember when those two small, unarmed planes doing nothing more than dropping pamphlets were shot down by the Castro regime. And I believed then, and I think you said it well today, it was done to prevent us opening. But it was also an act of such aggression and violence that you can’t let it go unanswered, either. So this is a difficult calculation. Our goal is for a free, independent democracy that gives the people of Cuba a chance to have the same opportunities that their sisters and brothers and cousins and my sister-in-law, who came to this country from Cuba, that they have in our country.–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in testimony at the House Foreign Affairs Committee

The burden of Secretary Clinton’s testimony, beyond the obligatory negative rhetoric about Cuba, was actually helpful, as I will explore in another post. However, since the above statement has become one of the unquestioned verities of US political discourse about Cuba, I wanted to share a response by Leonard Weinglass that he sent to Jane Franklin.

Personally I think shooting down the planes was a terrible act by Cuba, a disproportionate response to unquestionably illegal activity. I don’t know whether there was an alternative of forcing down the the planes, as I assume would be the US action in such a circumstance, and what the result would have been over open water.

However, my concern is the lesson being drawn from a debatable interpretation of events and motives. I do not buy the argument that Cuba acted to prevent an opening by the Clinton Administration. Rather, I believe the Cubans fell into a deliberately provocative trap set by Miami hard liners. Havana responding forcefully to repeated violations of national sovereignty would undermine pro-normalization opinion in the Administration and facilitate passage of Helms-Burton which was designed to block Executive flexibility toward Cuba. I don’t imagine that the leaders and sponsors of Brothers to the Rescue intended such a tragic end to their adventurism, but they did achieve their goal in Washington and certainly bear some of the responsibility.

While one can appreciate the short term domestic political utility of the theme that we will end travel restrictions and the embargo because those evil Castros really don’t want us to, it is risky to base policy on an illusion.

Please read the entire article.  It includes a  brief from Leonard Weinglass that clearly present the contxt of agression against Cuba that resulted in this tragedy.