The Bay Of Pigs

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The background of the author: Howard Jones earned a History Ph.D from Indiana University in 1973. He later became a history professor at the University of Alabama. He is also an American author and editor and won the Blackmon-Moody Outstanding Professor Award from the University of Alabama and Burnum. Jones wrote a book named The Bay of Pigs; it was published in 2008. He chose to write the book because new documents from the CIA had been released, regarding the Bay of Pigs. In this book, Jones describes, in numerous ways, that the invasion was poorly planned and suffered from a lack of communication. The CIA case officers had been aware of the plot since the early stages of planning the invasion. The author used new information about the Bay …show more content…

The Bay of Pigs was an invasion that the CIA had financed which involved training a group of Cuban refugees to land in Cuba. The primary goal of the invasion was to get rid of the communist government led by Fidel Castro. The Outcome of the invasion was unexpected, and the invasion failed miserably. The plan failed due to last minute cancellations of airstrikes, and the lack of knowledge that Castro had ordered 20,000 troops in advance to go to the attack site; this resulted in having the Cuban Air Force dominating the sky, which did not allow the U.S army to fight back. As the invasion went on, the chance of the U.S winning decreased within every hour. President Kennedy then ordered an “air-umbrella” at dawn. This plan demolished the U.S military. Because Kennedy was new in office, he wanted to do the “right thing” and make everyone proud that they voted for him. Unfortunately the CIA had created the plans before Kennedy was in office, and they did not share all of the information with him and manipulated him into approving it. The blame for this failure lies with both Kennedy and the CIA. The motivation behind the invasion was the United States’ tremendous fear of communism. “I mean, now we look back on that and it can seem sort of ridiculous that we ever had a time when we thought the Communists were going to take over the world. But that is indeed what most Americans thought at the time” (Rasenberg 1). The fear communism was more powerful than the desire to respect the sovereignty if other nations, especially one so close to America as