Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has raised some eyebrows as he proposed a brute force solution to the recent protests in Cuba, which, in turn, prompted protests against the Cuban government in Florida – to bomb the "island of freedom". Suarez defended his proposal in an interview with Fox News, to host Maria McCallum's surprise, by claiming that Cuba poses a danger to the US and that in the past bombing and invading other countries worked so well for the US.
"[Cuba] is exporting communism throughout the hemisphere and throughout the world and has been doing it for decades and that is something that should interest the national security of the US. [It is] one of the largest narcotraficantes in the region, it is a state supporter of terror as designated by the United States", Suarez argued.
The Miami mayor recalled America's interventions in other states: specifically Kosovo, where NATO strikes killed between 1,200 and 5,700 civilians and left the country in ruins, and Panama, where its forces removed dictator and CIA asset Manuel Noriega from power after it turned out he was leaking intelligence to other powers. Suarez stressed that Panama had turned into a peaceful democracy following the American intervention, conveniently ignoring other cases of US military meddling, such as Libya and Iraq with Afghanistan seemingly heading in the same direction.
Suarez insisted that military intervention "has to be explored" and must remain "on the table".
The last time the US decided the military option was a good way of dealing with the communist regime in Cuba, Washington suffered a shameful fiasco. It financed and organised a covert landing of a group of Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs on 17 April 1961, backed by US bombing. Despite initial successes, the invaders were soon stopped by the forces of the Cuban military led by Fidel Castro himself. The invasion failed just three days after it started, with thousands of attackers being captured and thrown into prisons, while Havana developed closer ties with the USSR as a result, eventually leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1964. The latter nearly led to a global nuclear armed conflict between the US and the Soviet Union – hardly a positive result of the attempted intervention.