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Castro Dead. NYT Obit by SHU Alumnus

Interestingly, the nyt wrote an inaccurate, poorly (non) researched article about the rebel Castro that way exaggerated the power of Castro ' s forces and had a positive effect on his efforts.

Hopefully Cuba sheds this govt that can't sustain an econony, sets themselves free and starts to prosper.

I have read some recently on bay of pigs recently. Didnt realize it could have succeeded if jfk agreed to bomb the Cuban airfields to take out their planes.

Of course, then we would have a beach head in a communist country / ussr ally and the world could have been blown up. Jfk learned from this and imo this lead to his independent thinking during the missile crisis which may have saved the world. And his actions in bay of pigs probably emboldened ussr to build the Cuban missile sites in the first place.

Hopeful for a new Cuba.
 
I read up on the Bay of Pigs Invasion a few years back as well. I knew very little about it prior to doing so. Funny how certain events are conspicuously missing from our history textbooks.
 
phi_pirates said:
I read up on the Bay of Pigs Invasion a few years back as well. I knew very little about it prior to doing so. Funny how certain events are conspicuously missing from our history textbooks.
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I never knew that success was a real possibility. As someone told jfk after the fact, the failure was the best thing to happen for jfk. And I read alot on the assassination (I can buy the Oswald alone theory, all real facts point that way) but given how jfk's refusal to destroy cubes minimal air force sealed the defeat, I can see how that Cuban Miami community hated jfk and how it fueled the anti communist right fringe too. I wonder if curtis lemay was as scary as he is always portrayed.
 
During the Bay of Pigs planning, Kennedy's politics overruled CIA planning.

He changed the invasion location. He failed to back up the 1,200 Cubans exiles who were fighting. He literally abandoned them in the middle of a crucial three-day battle. They were begging for help. CIA planners were literally in tears.

Kennedy wanted to hide U.S. involvement- "plausible deniability."

This was thoroughly idiotic because the USSR was openly supporting Castro. They did not feel the need to hide their involement. Why would a U.S. president want to hide the fact that they wanted to get rid of a communist who was stealing property, summarily executing thousands and flooding the country with Soviet advisors?

Then to add insult to injury, overnight the people who were fighting Castro on the island and in the U.S. became persona non grata in the U.S. The U.S. government went after them, constantly harassing anybody working against Castro.

The result? The Castros have spent 57 years spreading war, misery and destroying economies in Latin America, then Caribbean and in Africa.
 
The result of open invasion could have been nuclear war.

The plan was from the start to deny American involvement. That was not jfk's idea. It was how Cia operated, like 10 years earlier when red scare lead to the overthrow of a democratically elected pres in iran, installation of the shah and ultimately the takeover by Muslim zeolots. The equipment did not trace back to the us. The plan was Cubans take back cuba, not that we do. And jfk inherited the plan. But as you say, his decisions, like moving invasion to bay of pigs, not bombing their air force crippled the chance for success.

Imo, huge tactical mistake by jfk but huge strategic win cause of what was at stake.
 
Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Another seat taken in Hell.
 
Aside from all else Castro destroyed the economy of Cuba. First of all he alienated the biggest customer for their goods - the United States which was the leading purchaser of it's products Sugar Caine, Cigars, Bacardi Rum etc. The tourism became nonexistant with out American tourists to fill the hotels. He nationalized industry chasing Bacardi, the world's biggest distillery, out of the country. He also nationalized the hotels & casino's chasing the tourists out of the country. What happens to a country (business) when you don't have a market for its goods. Well that's what happened to Cuba economically.

TK
 
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SnakeTom said:
Aside from all else Castro destroyed the economy of Cuba. First of all he alienated the biggest customer for their goods - the United States which was the leading purchaser of it's products Sugar Caine, Cigars, Bacardi Rum etc. The tourism became nonexistant with out American tourists to fill the hotels. He nationalized industry chasing Bacardi, the world's biggest distillery, out of the country. He also nationalized the hotels & casino's chasing the tourists out of the country. What happens to a country (business) when you don't have a market for its goods. Well that's what happened to Cuba economically.

TK
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Correct.

The media focuses on the takeover of big businesses (as if it's OK to steal private property because it's owned by a rich person.) Big businesses happen to employ lots of people and they purchase a lot of equipment which, in turn, employs other people at other companies.

HOWEVER, it's a fact that thousands of small and medium business were taken over by the government. They took them over, put cronies in charge who knew nothing about the specific business.

That's why they took a strong economy (by the standards of the day) and ran it into the ground in about 18 months. Before Castro, Cuba had a large middle class.

One example: there was successful company that had existed for decades that was a smaller version of Colgate-Palmolive. They made soap, shampoo, perfume, talcum powder and various beauty products.

The Communists took over the factory (without compensation). They destroyed the company in less than two years with their utter incompetence and lack of any business common sense.
 
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