¶ … Bay of Pigs was an unsuccessful effort by the United States of America to bring Castro's dictatorship in Cuba to an end and Kennedy was mainly responsible for the failure.
The 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion is renowned worldwide as a failed attempt of United States government to invade Cuba with the help of Cuban exiles. It was on April 17th of the stated year that an armed force of Cuban exiles (more or less 1500 in number) entered in the territory of Bay of Pigs (Bahia de Cochinos) located on Cuba's southern coast. Those Cuban exiles had been given training by CIA members under the consent of the Eisenhower government. The main reason behind this plan was to stir up a rebellion and civil disobedience in Cuban land so that the Communist government of Fidel Castro could be brought to an end. However, the intentions and attempts of the United States government turned out as failures as the trained rebels were easily defeated by the Cuban army. The attacks aggravated protests against United States in the European continent and Latin America and encouraged embitterment in U.S.-Cuban relations ("Bay of Pigs Invasion," 2013).
The Cuban invasion put President Kennedy to a difficult position as he was strongly criticized for the poor planning and execution of the entire situation. While a number of critics put direct blame on Kennedy for the mentioned failure, others including Jose Miro Cardona, Cuban exile leader put blame on the CIA. If truth be told, the exiles had hoped a dramatic uprising in Cuba but their hopes shattered with the Kennedy's refusal to approve air cover for them. Afterwards, revelations made it clear that predictions had been made by the involved CIA task force that it was not possible to achieve the desired goals without the involvement of U.S. military. However it is still not clear whether this assessment was in the knowledge of Kennedy or CIA officials ("Bay of Pigs Invasion," 2013).
There are a number of reasons why the paramilitary attack of USA on the Bay of Pigs is considered as one of the most terrible U.S. foreign policy debacles. Firstly, America failed to tear down the Cuban planes in the incursion that proved as a major hindrance for the exiles to acquire their goals. Kennedy wanted to hide the fact that the invasion was planned by United States and thus refused to allow any air raid. However, the resentment of USA for Fidel Castro was not a secret to the world and it was highly unlikely to consider that the Cubans would not know who was behind the invasion. This unrealistic approach by Kennedy later proved to be disastrous for USA. The Kennedy administration could be blamed on the ground that it did not make itself aware of the Cuban force and competence to defend it under Castro's leadership. The wrong overestimation of exiles' strength and underestimation of Cuban forces caused a great setback to Kennedy administration. The misjudgment of Cuba's strengths caused dejection to the U.S.A. As its attempt to throwback Castro's regime failed.
Another wrong assumption of the U.S.A. was that they predicted that the exiles would be helped by the Cuban civilians to remove Castro from power Castro. There were no intelligence reports that could verify the civilians' involvement in the scenario. No group of people openly opposed Castro's power in Cuba. Thus, it was again a mistake on the part of American government to assume that the citizens or officials in Cuba would help the exiles to get rid of Castro. Instead, Castro's forces defeated the CIA-trained exiles in less than 72 hours. This defeat not only exposed C.I.A. undercover and stealthy operations but also made Kennedy to accept the blame openly. The whole world expressed its disapproval of Washington's policy of imposing imperial aggression on Cuba. This is the reason why Bay of Pigs Invasion is regarded by historians as...
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