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Bay of Pigs

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The Bay of Pigs One of the most embarrassing things about the United States is the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. President at the time, John F. Kennedy, along with his administration, was the main one to blame for the failure of this invasion. This event was probably what led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which comes later on. The main objective of the invasion was to end communism in Cuba by putting an end to its leader, Fidel Castro (Hanson n.p). Unfortunately the invasion failed and Cuba still remained communist for many years.
Before becoming the dictator of Cuba, Fidel Castro led a revolution to overthrow the regime of General Batista. Castro, along with a group of rebels, was successful in overthrowing Batista and later, became the new dictator of Cuba (DePalma n.p). This raised concern for the United States because now Communist Cuba posed a threat to our country. Communism is defined in the dictionary as, a system where the government owns all means of production. The United States has always been anti-communist, so a country so close to our shores had to be taken seriously.
The plan to invade Cuba was actually already in place before President John F. Kennedy was elected. The Central Intelligence Agency was planning the invasion when President Eisenhower was in office. Although he did not plan the invasion all by himself, John F. Kennedy was still held responsible for the failure. The plan consisted of training roughly about 1,400 Cuban exiles that were living in Miami, to overthrow Castro. The first strikes of the invasion would be against the little airfields that Cuba had. The United States did not want Fidel Castro to know it was involved in this invasion, so they took old American planes and painted them to make them look as if they were Cuban planes (History.com Staff). All of this was obviously not carefully planned. Had it been planned more precisely, the outcome would be a different one.
As a reply to the invasion, Fidel Castro ordered nearly 20,000 troops to march to the beach where the invasion was taking place. The Cuban exiles, trained by the United States, were outnumbered and our country did not offer much support to them. American fighter planes were sent to help, but had arrived late to the scene and were shot down by the Cuban army (“The Bay of Pigs”). The exiles had no other choice but to surrender, seeing as they were outnumbered, they would not have success to be able to win the invasion. Many of them even confessed that the CIA was involved in the invasion. This probably upset Fidel Castro, and led to him being angry at our country. The Cubans held the exiles in captivity for many months. The prisoners were later negotiated their freedom by the President.
The invasion at the Bay of Pigs was probably not planned very well. In my opinion, President John F. Kennedy lacked experience to execute such invasion and be successful. If the President had involved the U.S military in the invasion, maybe the outcome would have been different. Maybe the United States would have ended communism in Cuba once and for all. If that were the case, Cuba today would be a very different Country.

Works Cited
DePalma, Anthony. (January 31, 2011) The New York Times Upfront vol. 143. Retrieved Feb 8, 2014
Hanson, S. (January 31, 2013) U.S.-Cuba Relations. Retrieved Feb 8, 2014, from www.cfr.org
Hershberg, Jim. The Cold War International Project Bulletin. 1995. February 20, 2014.
History.com Staff (2009) Bay of Pigs Invasion. February 21, 14, from http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion
The Bay of Pigs. Retrieved February 21, 14, from www.jfklibrary.org/

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