Kennedy called the defeat at the Bay of Pigs “the worst experience of my life.” Only in office 12 weeks, the failed operation became a personal embarrassment in front of the entire world for his young presidency. At his first post-invasion press conference, Kennedy famously observed, “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan,” conceding, “I am the responsible officer of the government.”
Moreover, the invasion dealt a harsh blow to US international credibility. The Kennedy administration was caught red-handed lying to the world community about its role in an unprovoked attack on a small Caribbean nation. “Acute shock and disillusion” dominated the reaction in Western Europe, as White House aide Arthur Schlesinger (who had opposed the invasion) reported back to Kennedy. It was not the failure of the operation but the decision to invade that bothered European leaders. “Why was Cuba such a threat to you?” they asked. “Why couldn’t you live with Cuba, as the USSR lives with Turkey and Finland?” US allies, as Kennedy would later acknowledge, “think we are a little demented on Cuba.”
David vs. Goliath
Hundreds of Cubans were killed or injured in the US attack, which also cost the lives of over 100 members of the exile force, Brigade 2506. But for Cuba, the outcome of the battle was a historic victory of almost biblical proportions. In the eyes of the world, particularly the Third World, Castro’s fledgling revolution had stood up to the Colossus of the North—like a David vs. Goliath. At home and abroad, Castro emerged as a nationalist leader of the anti-imperialist movement that expanded throughout the 1960s.
In a post-invasion, secret meeting between Che Guevara and White House aide Richard Goodwin, Che “wanted to thank us for the invasion,” according to a memorandum of their conversation provided to President Kennedy. “It had been a great political victory for them, enabled them to consolidate, and transformed them from an aggrieved little country into an equal.”
That meeting remains a relevant addendum to the Bay of Pigs history. In the aftermath of what was at the time the most flagrant act of US aggression against Cuba, Fidel Castro’s government sought what Che called “a modus vivendi” with the United States. His message for President Kennedy was that Cuba was ready and willing to address Washington’s concerns through a diplomatic dialogue, with one exception: Cuba “could discuss no formula that would mean giving up the type of society to which they were dedicated.”
Sixty-five years later, that continues to be Cuba’s position as the post-Castro government of Miguel Diaz-Canel faces the most dangerous threat of US military action since the Bay of Pigs. The world has changed considerably since Cuba’s victorious defiance of US military might in April 1961. Under Trump, there is no lip service to international law or the sovereign rights of nations. There is only the unrestricted, unconstrained exercise of surgical force to crush smaller nations into submission. But the history of Playa Giron still remains immediately relevant.