The Bay Of Pigs Invasion Into Cuba - 2257 Words

The Bay of Pigs invasion into Cuba can be seen as one of the most important political decisions in the history of the United States. Four months after John F. Kennedy took office as the thirty fifth President of the United States, he was blamed for the failed invasion of the Bay of Pigs. The failure was due to the lack of bad advice he received and then used to put into making his decision to invade. The decisions he made showed that the United States President and his Joint Chiefs were far from perfect. Bay of Pigs was a secretly organized coup in Cuba that resulted in many consequences that Kennedy would be forced to face. Politically, Kennedy decided to pursue the foreign policy decision to invade in order to stop the spread of†¦show more content†¦Then after a series of many miscalculations the invasion was a complete failure. This failure then served to strengthen Fidel Castro’s rise to more power and the Cuban ties with the Soviet Union. In the end Kennedy decid ed that plausible deniability would be insupportable and claimed full responsibility for the decision to invade Cuba: â€Å"There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan... I am the responsible officer of the government.† (Kornbluh 3) In 1961 international affairs and politics were dominated by consequences of the cold war in years past as Kennedy addressed in his State of the Union, â€Å"Our greatest challenge is still the world that lies beyond the Cold war†¦ To meet this array of challenges†¦ we must reexamine and revise our whole arsenal of tools: military, economic and political†¦ We intend to give equal attention to both.† (Gardner 24) The West was not holding any chance of winning; as stated in the Rockefeller Report in 1958 â€Å"Unless present trends are reversed, the world balance of power will shift in favor of the Soviet bloc.† (Rockefeller Annual Report 127) The Congo was being threatened by the Soviet Union, Laos was being threatened by Communist forces, and the Cuban revolution was gaining ground further and further left. This threat of a Communist state being so close to U.S. shores caused many Americans to believe the revolution was a threat to the