Monday, December 17, 2007

Bay of Pigs post-mortem

A friend sent me this document, “Record of Paramilitary Action Against the Castro Government in Cuba” (pdf, 4.5 mb), a declassified CIA study of the Bay of Pigs operation. It was written by Jack Hawkins, a Marine Corps Colonel who was detailed to the CIA and participated in the planning of the operation. Simply put, it’s a detailed account of the organization, execution, and failure of the operation. The introduction summarizes Hawkins’ view as follows:

“…experience indicates that political restrictions upon military measures may result in destroying the effectiveness of such efforts. The end result is political embarrassment coupled with military failure and loss of prestige in the world. If political considerations are such as to prohibit the application of those military steps required to achieve the objective, then such military operations should not be undertaken.”

The final 18 pages of the paper are a Sep- tember 1961 article from Fortune magazine about the foreign policy context of the time and how President Kennedy and his people acted in this Cuba operation. The purpose was to aid and expand a counterrevolutionary movement in the mountains around Trinidad, and the plan was to land an amphibious force just west of Trinidad. But one week before the operation, this article details, the landing site was moved 100 miles west, to a beach on a swampy, barely inhabited peninsula, a world away from Trinidad.

The idea was to conceal the American role in supporting the operation – one of many decisions that produced a complete, tragic, and costly fiasco.

[Photos: a billboard near the invasion beach that proclaims victory over “Yanqui” forces, and one of many monuments to fallen soldiers on the road leading to the beach.]

7 comments:

leftside said...

Facinating details of an operation overseen by the highest levels of the United States Govt. The description of State sponsored terrorism could not be more stark. Prior to invastion, my government thought it was ok to:

1) Set 800 fires to sugar cane fields.
2) Set 150 other fires to tobacco warehouses, paper plants, sugar refinaries, dairies, stores and 21 "communist homes"
3) Set off 110 bombs, at CP offices, Havana power sttions, 2 stores, RR terminals, bus stops, militia barracks...
4) Set off "200 nuisance bombs" in Havana
5) Derail 6 trains, destruction of numerous power transformers and microwave cable and station.

In concusion, the report says these activities "had considerable psychological value, but accomplished no significant results otherwise."

Anonymous said...

Typical leftside bullshit. In the Castro hagiography -- which leftside no doubt accepts as gospel -- the Cuban Revolution ended the day Batista fled the country. The reality is that it lasted for several more years and it was between anti-Batista factions led by Castro and those who were not willing to accept him as leader of the new Cuban government (and boy has history proven them right). The U.S. Government weighed in with (tepid) support for the latter and then cut them off completely. Yeah, there's plenty of room for criticism of the U.S. government's actions, but not of the variety the cretinous leftside is foisting on us.

leftside said...

"tepid support"...

yeah if only the US would have set off thousands of more bombs and fires in Cuba... and you wonder why the population never supported the counter-revolutionaries wishing for more destruction.

Anonymous said...

it was a civil war, you illiterate. It was not "the US" that that waged it but Cuban patriots unwilling to swap one dictator for another. I wonder what "the population" would say today about who should have won....

leftside said...

No, it was the US training, funding and directing these so-called patriotic actions.

Phil Peters said...

Lefty, there's no doubt that the operation occurred because of US training, logistics, funding, and planning. Nor is there any doubt that the Kennedy Administration's planning and management of the operation was incompetent, one might say criminally so. But it's undeniable that the operation could not have occurred at all were those Cubans not willing to fight, and their will and inspiration were not of American manufacture. And the Cuban fighting in the Escambray were a national force fighting a Cuban fight. The whole point of the Bay of Pigs operation, after all, was to create an external force, insert it into Cuba, and link it up with those alzados in the mountains.

leftside said...

Phil, I was never talking about the minor war in the Escambray. I was talking about the acts of terrorism and sabotage that was listed in the report.