The Bays of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs was one of the most important political decisions in the history of the United States. Its effects are still being felt to today, especially in the Cuban communities of the United States. The decisions that were made by the highest offices of our government showed us that the United States was, and is, far from perfect. They constructed a plan that wasn't completely thought through and paid a major price -- global embarrassment. They took the chance to destroy the communist threat that was quite close to our shores and, in the process, made the CIA and our government look incompetent.
First, I will give some background information on the conflict. In 1960, President Eisenhower gave the CIA the order to begin training Cuban exiles to oppose Castro's rule in Cuba and having them lead resistance groups within Cuba. Therefore, we would have a force already in the country to slow down Cuban Forces when our invaders landed. It didn't quite work out this way. When the American troops landed on April 19, 1961, they made it only a little way inland. At that point, they were met by a force much greater than they had planned on. We figured that the Cuban people were upset with Castro so they wouldn't want to give much of a fight. What happened was that the military fought with great pride for their country and pushed the American troops back to the landing site. There, the forces either surrendered or fled to safety. 1500 troops landed on the coast. Over 100 of them were killed and many more were captured. In many ninds, the invasion was a complete failure for the American military.
The main reason, and possibly the lone reason, for the Bay of Pigs invasion was to stop communism from reaching our country. This meant that the United States government wanted to provoke a counterrevolution in which democracy would be restored and all traces of communism would, subsequently, be destroyed. They tried this by sending the aforementioned group of Cubans into Cuba, an obviously unsuccessful tactic. They also decided to spend thousands of dollars on propaganda against Cuba. Articles, posters, and even comic books were written and distributed to spread cynicism towards Castro and his government. The other method used to spread propaganda was to drop over 1 million flyers over Cuba, hopefully convincing the people to rise up against Castro.
On July 26, 1953, the war for Cuba’s independence began, and for 6 years many Cubans fought for their freedom. The most famous of these revolutionary icons being Fidel Castro, who led the main resistance against the Cuban government. On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro and the rest of the Cuban's succeeded. This revolutionary war went on to affect the entire world and Eric Selbin believes it is still affecting it. Throughout Eric Selbin's article, Conjugating the Cuban Revolution, he firmly states that the Cuban revolution is important in the past, present, and future. Selbin, however, is wrong.
Juno Beach is the code name for the one of the five sectors of the Normandy beaches that the Allies invaded, Operation Overlord, on 6 June 1944, otherwise known as D-Day, during the Second World War. Juno beach was located between Sword and Gold sectors; this beach is 7km long and located between the villages of Graye-sur-Mer and St-Aubin-sur-Mer, the center of the British sector of the Normandy invasion. The unit responsible for the Juno sector was 3rd Canadian Infantry Division and commandos of the Royal Marines from Great Britain, with support from Naval Force J, the Juno contingent of the Naval invasion forces. The beach was defended by two Battalions of the German 716th Infantry Division with elements of the 21st Panzar Division sitting in reserve in Caen.
In January of 1959 , Communist dicator Fidel Castro took over Cuba. The United States in 1961 tried to overthrow Fidel by arming rebels and attempting to support them. This was the failure known as the Bay of Pigs. In October of 1962 , The US finds evidence that medium range nuclear sites had been installed in Cuba. They annonce that on the twenty-third that a quatntine was being Cuba and that any ship carrying offensive weapons to Cuba wasn’t allowed. Five days later , the crisis was averted when the Soviets began to remove the
The time of the Cuban Naval Blockade the Unites States was at war with the Soviet Union, the war already preexisting for almost twenty years. The war already had United States and all its citizens at the edge of their seats. The rise of nuclear weapons was relevant and a high scare factor for everyone.
The main reason for the Bay of Pigs attack on Cuba was the change to communism. The January 1, 1959 , the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista fled the country for the safety of the Dominican Republic ( Goode, Stephen 75). Fidel Castro and his guerrilla warriors overthrew the former government dictated by Batista. Over the next couple of weeks , Castro established a new government and on February 16 was officially declared premier ( Finkelstein , Norman H. 127). The United States accepted this new ...
... They did not expect Castro to react so quickly, they figured the attack would be a surprise, 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.
Along with the above mention things, the U.S. disrupted trade with Europe and outright requested that Europe not trade with Cuba. Also during this period, the CIA began to plan assassination operations against Cuban Leaders, and have eight separate plots to assassination Castro (Perez 252).
...ity of the blame went onto Kennedy's record as not being the one that had planned it out and not giving the go ahead for the second air raid. It was later proven that no matter what the outcome of the second air raid would have been, it would not have mattered. The CIA also released a document taking the full responsibility and blame for the incident at the Bay of Pigs. The Cuban Missile Crisis not only worried the U.S. but also worried the rest of the world as to how it would turn out. The Soviet's backed Cuba as an ally and fed them missiles and the supplies to build the missile silos in Cuba. The Soviet's said they did this as a counter measure incase we did in fact invade Cuba. Between these two major conflicts of the time, it can be said that the two countries were not battling over Cuba in itself, but more or less battling over the belief of Communism.
Kennedy took office in January 1961 and he trusted the CIA and his advisors, and in April 1961 the exiles were on their way to Cuba. The plan failed terribly with Castro anticipating the attack. Cuba held the exiles hostage, and Kennedy was confronted with the issue of using American forces to liberate the hostages. Kennedy’s hawk advisors and the CIA all urged the use of American forces, but Kennedy was resilient against it.
Kennedy took full public responsibility for the Bay of Pigs disaster though secretly he blamed the CIA. Kennedy fired three of the CIA?s top men whom were responsible for the operation: Director Allen Dulles, who was later a member of the Warren Commission (Lifton 176), General Cabell, and Richard Bissel. (Morrissey) After the CIA lost time, effort, and people in the attempt to secure Cuba, the CIA became hostile and wanted to get rid of Kennedy to prevent him from losing more ground, especially in Vietnam.Adding to the fire were Kennedy?s secret commitments to pulling out of Vietnam and his threat to?Smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them in the wind? (Belzer 79)
with The Soviet Union. Both sides were ready to fire their nuclear weapons, and Cuba was in the
One mission by Che Guevara was he, “strove to create a proper industrial base and to diminish the economy’s dependence on sugar,” (515). To improve the milk and meat production in Cuba efforts were made to breed a new kind of cattle. This effort failed which resulted in a famine because of this and with the U. S trade embargo the Cuban government began to give rations of daily necessities to citizens, (The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its People). Guevara efforts were too expensive for Cuba causing a crisis. The government, “decided to resolve its crisis by means of a “revolutionary offensive”: first, the nationalization of all services, restaurants, shops, and petty commercial iinstallations... witha production goal of 10 million tons of sugar (516). That goal did not work causing Fidel Castro to offer to resign. Cuba started to become a communist society. In terms of who was in charge and their role in, The Caribbean: A History of the Region and Its People state, “Castro was the visible head, the spokesman, and the international strategists while his brother Raul would become more and more the chief of personnel, the head of the armed forces and secret services,”
By the early 1960’s the U.S. had cut off ties with Cuba and was engaging to overthrow the Castro regime. In 1961 the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a fumbled CIA attempt to crush the government, inflamed
I have always wondered about the history and surrounding factors of the Bay of Pigs
The tropical island of Cuba had been an object of empire for the United States. Before the Missile Crisis, the relationship between Castro and the US were strained by the Bay of Pigs occurrence in 1961. This was where counterrevolutionary Cubans were American funded and tried to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. However, the counterrevolutionaries failed. Castro then found an alliance with the Soviet Union and an increase of distrust that Castro had on the US. On January 18, 1962, the United States’ Operation Mongoose was learned. The objective would be “to help the Cubans overthrow the Communist regime” so that the US could live in peace. Consequently, Castro informed the Soviet Union that they were worried about a direct invasion on Cuba, thus longed for protection against th...