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Nuclear War: The Bay Of Pigs Invasion

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The CIA would have never expected that a small, secret invasion would cause the United States to come close to nuclear war. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was this unexpected phenomenon, and it was a leading cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis. On April 17, 1961, 1,400 American-trained Cuban exiles began to invade an isolated spot on Cuba’s southern shore known as the Bay of Pigs. These Cuban exiles were battling the new revolutionary regime of Fidel Castro. Once the exiles landed on the beach, the invasion was already a disaster. The exiles were met with bullets and grenades from 20,000 of Castro’s troops, who were much better armed than the Cuban exiles. Many Cuban air force planes were patrolling the skies around the Bay of Pigs. These planes …show more content…

The CIA thought that if they could remove Castro from power, they would show the Soviet Union, China, and many skeptical Americans that the United States was winning the Cold War. President Eisenhower approved the CIA’s campaign to train a guerilla army of Cuban exiles, and President Kennedy inherited this plan. But, he had some lingering doubts. Kennedy was worried that the Soviets would see the invasion as an act of war, and they would retaliate, but the CIA reassured Kennedy that the Bay of Pigs Invasion would be a secret and the invasion would spark an anti-Castro uprising in Cuba. However, the Bay of Pigs Invasion was a massive failure, and the attack convinced Cuba to seek help from the Soviet …show more content…

Operation Mongoose aimed to spark a rebellion in Cuba that the United States could support. The CIA had many stations around Cuba, but the main station and headquarters for Operation Mongoose was in Miami. In Miami, the CIA would come up with ways to grow the rebellion to overthrow Castro. They would also come up with many plots to assassinate Fidel Castro and other high-ranking officials in Cuba. One of these assassination plots involved poison pills that the CIA gave to an undercover exile who was close to Castro. This assassination attempt failed because the exile got caught trying to slip the pill into one of Castro’s drinks. All of the CIA’s attempts to assassinate Castro failed.

After both the Bay of Pigs Invasion and Operation Mongoose had failed, the U.S. had no choice but to launch a trade embargo against Cuba. The CIA also planned to launch guerrilla operations to overthrow the Cuban Government beginning in August and

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The Kennedy administration would give it another try in 1961 and 1962 with Operation Mongoose which would even further put strain on the United States and Cuban relationship. During the one year period Operation Mongoose and the Cuban Missile Crisis would take center stage. It was brought to the attention of the administration by way of a U-2 spy plane that the Soviet Union was supplying materials and constructing nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba. (Figure 2, Atomic Archive)

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The US government turned the weapons to Cuba immediately. “I call upon Chairman Khrushchev to halt and eliminate this secret and reckless threat to the world peace” (Doc. A). Even though, it missile site is outside of US, it is still a dangerous nuclear threat to US from SU. Because behind Cuba, its biggest support was Soviet Union.

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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.

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“To hunt them down, the government responded with scorched-earth campaigns, pacifications programs and paramilitary death squads, often with assistance from the US Special Forces advisers” (137-138). This caused in 1976 more than twenty thousand deaths, also the spread of this to the countryside. The outcome is what the government wanted them to become powerful to produce this sham election. The US went to help the government for politics, but now the relations between the two are very different. Reading some articles I saw that the “US urges citizens not to travel to Cuba, cuts embassy safe and halts visa processing” (Chicagotribune).

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Operation Northwoods was one, in a series of proposals, by John F. Kennedy 's Joint Chiefs of Staff for the creation of a False Flag Operation against Fidel Castro 's government with the objective of destabilizing Cuba through the application of U.S. military forces. The proposal, approved under the authority of Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, detailed several ideas to destabilize the Cuban Government to include the perception of an attack by Cuban Nationals against US forces stationed in Guantanamo. In reality, the attack would have been manufactured by covert US forces and would utilize the services of anti-Castro Cuban exiles as Cuban agitators (Davis, 2006) (Meeting with president, 1962). In 1962, the spread of Communism was

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This operation was The Bay of Pigs Invasion in which JFK authorized a militia to enter Cuba and attempt a coup d 'état to overthrow Fidel Castro. The communist rule in Cuba knew well in advance of the CIA’s plan, making the attack a complete failure. Inside the museum sits a large portion of what was the Berlin Wall. Although the wall fell in 1989, its construction during Kennedy’s presidency in 1961 nearly started war.

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McNamara states that although President Kennedy wanted to keep the nation out of war, there was a clear division between the cabinet on whether we should have invaded Cuba or not. McNamara also reveals that he later found out that we had attempted to assassinate Castro under a number of occasions, under the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administration. Nations were tense and on the verge of chaos, and McNamara reveals that the only reason we escaped nuclear war was because we were lucky. Also, McNamara later found out that in January 1962, there were 162 nuclear warheads in Cuba at the time of the crisis, and not only was President Kennedy fully aware of it, but he was willing to accept that Cuba would have been obliterated if anything were to have happened to any of those missiles. In the end we got missiles out without war, but McNamara states that the human race needs to think more about killing and conflict and realize the repercussions of it.

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The CIA’s attempts to limit communism in Cuba and Guatemala during the Cold War proved to be embarrassing and made U.S. relations with Guatemala and Cuba worse. In Cuba, the CIA’s Bay of Pigs Invasion exemplified how foolish the United States was. According to the book, Milestone Events Throughout History Vol. 3, the CIA trained Cuban exiles to fight against a major threat to the U.S., communist leader, Fidel Castro. When the trained exiles invaded Cuba, it was hoped they could start an uprising to overthrow Castro.

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A large component of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile Crisis; this started when the U.S. attempted to assist the rebel Cubans to defeat the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro. The United States failed during the Bay of Pigs invasion by not properly taking out the Cuban Navy and solider as planned. After the attack, Fidel Castro gave a speech stating “Everybody, men and women, young and old, we are all one in this moment of danger. ”(Document H). This attacked caused the people of Cuba to fear what would happen if the U.S.—an omnipotent country of the time—attacked Cuba again.

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Jack was involved Bay of Pigs Invasion which, occurred on April 17, 1961 where 1,500 troops of Cuba, deported at the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the southern cost of Cuba. Their mission was to fall down the government of Fidel Castro by inciting encourage to rebel among the Cuban people. This mission complete failure. The unsuccessful invasion stands out as one of the major mistakes of Kennedy 's presidency.

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The Bay of Pigs Invasion took place on april 17th, 1961 and it was a failed military invasion/coup of Cuba and its government by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group known as Brigade 2506. This paramilitary group was trained and funded by the United States Central Intelligence agency (CIA). The invasion was partially caused by the Cuban Revolution of 1952 to 1959 in which dictator Fulgencio Batista, an ally of the United States, was forced into exile. On july 26th, 1959 Fidel Castro was put into power. He then cut the country 's formerly strong links with the US after expropriating the assets of US corporations and mobsters, and developing links with the Soviet Union.

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The Bay of Pigs affair was an unsuccessful invasion of Cuba on April 17 1961, at Playa Giron by close to two thousand Cubans who were in Exile after the 1959 revolution. President Kennedy had inherited the secret plan by the CIA to topple Fidel Castro. The large community of exile Cubans in the United States encouraged by members of the CIA who trained, equipped and financed them believed they would have air and naval support from the United States and that the invasion would cause the people of Cuba to rise up and overthrow the regime of communist Fidel Castro. Neither expectation materialized, Cuban army troops pinned down the exiles and forced them to surrender within seventy-two hours.

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The imperialistic mentality of the American government after the Civil War, led to some degree to the Spanish-American war that would render a great acquisition of land for the United States. However, imperialism would not be the sole factor that led to the war against Spain, but also the sympathy felt by the American government towards Cuba’s efforts in fighting for their independence; additionally, the United States would seek to protect its commercial interests (sugar) in the island. Therefore, after invoking the Spanish to secede from their brutal practices towards Cuban rebels and attain a peaceful end to the situation, the United States arbitrarily sent a navy ship, “The USS Maine” to monitor the area.

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During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis took place. It was when two superpowers were close to causing a nuclear war. Its main origin was when the United States invaded Cuba, on April 10, 1961; which is also known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. After the invasion, previous Prime Minister; Fidel Castro of Cuba, was ‘paranoid’ because he felt like America was planning another attack. So in order to protect his nation, he sought military and economic help from the Soviet Union.

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The Bay of Pigs ‘damaged US relations with foreign nations enormously” and “encouraged Khrushchev’s adventurism” resulting in increased Cold War tensions that demanded the President’s full

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