BAY OF PIGS

2847 Words6 Pages

BAY OF PIGS

It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was affiliated with Castro, and the two countries made many military decisions together. As Kennedy and the United States tried to stop Cuba and Russia from becoming a threat to the world, an invasion was planned out and executed. The results were a disaster. The Bay of Pigs invasion was the largest military mistake ever made by the United States government and the CIA in the 20th century and brought America to the brink of war with Cuba and Russia. The Bay of Pigs invasion was not a quick decision, many hours of meetings and conferences occurred before President Kennedy gave permission for the attack. President Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961, and immediately wanted to take the initiative with the Soviet and Cuban governments (Pearson 12). Russia was already under Communist control, and Fidel Castro took over the Cuban government with heavily armed troops and policeman. Castro’s policemen filled the streets, and he ran the newspapers, as well as many assembly buildings (Frankel 60). At the beginning, Castro did not run a Communist government, but once he began to meet with Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, Castro started a Communist government (Crassweller 23). Max Frankel, writer for the New York Times, summarizes the situation in Cuba by saying, “Little by little, the vise tightened. Little by little the free people of Cuba came to realize it could happen there. The grim facts of life on an island that became a police state” (Frankel 59). Every day, Castro came closer to controlling every aspect in life in Cuba. Fidel Castro even took control of the schools in Cuba, throwing out any teacher who he thought...

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...urprise, they assumed many Cubans would defect from Castro, and help the U.S. fight. The undisputed fact is that the U.S. lost the battle at the Bay of Pigs. Nothing was gained, and nearly brought the U.S. into war with Cuba and its ally, Russia. After nearly 40 years, the Bay of Pigs remains the largest mistake made by United States officials.

Bibliography

“Bay of Blunders.” Savannah Now. 1998. 10 April 2000 Crassweller, Robert D.
Cuba and the U.S.: The Tangled Relationship. New York: The Foreign Policy Association, 1971. Flaherty, Tom.
“What We Learned from the Bay of Pigs.” Reader’s Digest July 1963: 92-94. Frankel, Max.
“Cuba - A Case of Communist Take-Over.” The New York Times Magazine July 1961: 59-64 Guido, Jessica.
“The Invasion and the Failure.” The Invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. 1999. 11 April 2000 .
1965: 47. Pearson, Drew.
“Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Cuba.” Saturday Review 29 March 1969: 12-16.
“The Price of Military Folly.” U.S. News Online. 1996. 10 April 2000 . Robinson, Linda.
“What Didn’t We Do to Get Rid of Castro?” U.S. News Online. 1996. 10 April 2000 Schlesinger, Arthur M.
A Thousand Days. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965.

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