From Rick Koerber's Free Capitalist, Lessons Lost
Watergate’s Forgotten Lessons
by Alan CarubaMay 7, 2007
“The United States was resolved to intervene on behalf of its interests, but it was also resolved to intervene in such a way as not to violate the principle of nonintervention,” wrote Prof. Han J. Morgenthau, examining the lessons of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion that was intended to overthrow Fidel Castro.
“In order to minimize the loss of prestige, the United States jeopardized the success of the intervention…and we lost much prestige as a great nation able to use its power successfully on behalf of its interests…It sought the best of both worlds and got the worst.”
The Bay of Pigs invasion which occurred April 15-19, 1962 failed because then-President John F. Kennedy lost his nerve and denied the air cover needed to protect the invading forces of CIA-trained Cuban freedom fighters. Earlier, the original point of invasion had been moved to the Bay of Pigs, sixty miles away from Havana, giving Castro’s forces tactical advantage. Mostly, though, the intelligence that underwrote the fiasco was just wrong.
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Captain Mark
1 comment:
If you read further in the article you reference, you also find this:
"Sometimes, though, it seems as if no lessons were ever learned or ever applied from the Bay of Pigs, the Watergate break-in, and the subsequent long nightmare of the Vietnam War. The generals we trained for military leadership often proved too timid to resist the hubris of political leaders and those that did sometimes found their careers ended abruptly."
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