Essay: BAY OF PIGS REVISITED: Lessons from a Failure

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Meanwhile, exile-Cuban supply ships, which were supposed to carry ammunition to the men on the beach, had been either sunk or scattered by Castro's planes, and the crews threatened to mutiny rather than proceed to Cuba—unless the U.S. was willing to provide air and naval cover. Some of the Cuban exile leaders believed all along that the U.S. would have to come in fully on their side rather than let the operation fail. Schlesinger suggests that the CIA "unconsciously supposed" the same. Indeed Kennedy was under strong pressure to throw in U.S. air and naval forces. He refused, arguing that a U.S. invasion of Cuba would be far worse in its consequences than a temporary loss of prestige resulting from the failure at the Bay of Pigs—where 80 men died and 1,200 were captured. "What is prestige?" Kennedy asked. "Is it the shadow of power or the substance of power?" But it wasn't merely U.S. prestige that was at stake; it was a chance, perhaps never to return, to dispose of the single Communist regime in the Western hemisphere, a government bent on spreading subversion through Latin America.

Kennedy learned a lot from the disaster. "The impact of failure," says Schlesinger, "shook up the national security machinery," and Sorensen adds that it brought about "basic changes in personnel, policy and procedures." But Sorensen also quotes Kennedy as lamenting long after the event: "All my life I've known better than to depend on the experts. How could I have been so stupid, to let them go ahead?"

It is certainly true that he was much tougher and much sharper after the Bay of Pigs, and much more effective in the October 1962 missile confrontation against Cuba and the Soviet Union. But the lessons of the Bay of Pigs remained to haunt him and the U.S. The lessons were many. Secrecy and deviousness are necessary in the fight against Communism—but it is naive to assume that a nation like the U.S. can launch a sizable military operation and not be found out. It is useful to appeal to dissidents inside Communist countries—but given the known nature of Communist regimes, it is foolhardy to count on uprisings. It is right to make use of militant anti-Communists wherever they are—but it is impossible for the U.S. to achieve a major policy objective in a war by proxy. It is fine to use unorthodox and imaginative methods—but wrong to place essentially military decisions in the hands of amateurs.

Above all, it is deadly to start something one is not prepared to finish. In coping with the Dominican situation Lyndon Johnson may have used larger forces than necessary; but once he moved, he moved with power and decisiveness to assure the outcome, which was to prevent the establishment of a second Communist regime in the hemisphere.