Experts argue that risk and cost must be taken into consideration when deciding to enter into war. An example could be the Korean War in 1950, where the US jumped in to defend South Korea. However, not doing so would not have been the end of the war. So the question becomes, is any war really, really necessary. Going to war is always a choice, and this holds true for Afghanistan. Obama’s choice to escalate the situation in Afghanistan is really no different than George Bush’s so called preemptive strike against Iraq.

Some contend that Obama claiming necessity in Afghanistan is a grab for moral purity in international affairs, that while apologizing for past American actions, this administration seems to be saying that it won’t commit any new sins, including fighting wars of any kind. All collateral damage in a necessary war is usually forgiven as are all moral ambiguities which are part of any exercise of power. But it’s a dream to think that moral burdens can be shed so easily. Just because America says it doesn’t make it so in the rest of the world. Claiming necessity does not and will not absolve the Obama administration from responsibility for its actions. The problem with Americans, some say, is that America can’t seem to reconcile the fact that exercises of power are always morally ambiguous even when good can and is accomplished.

To put it bluntly claiming to fight a war because you have no choice is bogus reasoning and will not avoid the moral dilemma , costs and burdens of fighting. If America really wants to win the war in Afghanistan, then it needs to pursue it’s opponent more seriously, with the intent of eliminating them from the scene altogether. The Obama administration must realize the immense damage that will be done should a small ragtag band of fanatics defeat the world’s best army. Such a defeat would do a great deal of harm to the world order and stability of the global hierarchy. Many actions are right or just, but are still sometimes not necessary no matter how you paint it. Several months into this latest uptick or surge, the jury is still is still out on why it was better to march forward than to think about pulling out.

Much of the global community continues to see the war in Afghanistan as an imperialistic act on the part of the United States. Many have wondered why the world’s only super power has been warring for so long over a country that is made up of mountains and little else. Few understand that simply pulling out after all this time will be painted as a loss for the Americans, and after Vietnam, this is unacceptable. So it remains to be seen what success will manifest from this latest military action on the Taliban strong hold called Marjah.

Part I: The Invasion and its Origins.

The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba¤os and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were
killed at other sites on the island.

Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the government in exile, in New York City released a statement saying that the bombings in Cuba were “. . . carried out by ‘Cubans inside Cuba’ who were ‘in contact with’ the top command of the Revolutionary Council . . . .” The New York Times reporter covering the story alluded to something being wrong with the whole situation when he wondered how the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday after ” . . . a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had precipitated a plot to strike . . . .” Whatever the case, the planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key West Naval Air Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami
International Airport at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged and their tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26s was shown along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hat and hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense of conspiracy was even at this early stage beginning to envelope the events of that week.

In the early hours of April 17th the assault on the Bay of Pigs began. In the true cloak and dagger spirit of a movie, the assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of frogmen going ashore with orders to set up landing lights to indicate to the main assault force the precise
location of their objectives, as well as to clear the area of anything that may impede the main landing teams when they arrived. At 2:30 a.m. and at 3:00 a.m. two battalions came
ashore at Playa Gir¢n  and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Gir¢n
had orders to move west, northwest, up the coast and meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it as well. (See figure 1).

When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that the troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marsh land area which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast was the command and control ship and another vessel carrying
supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force made quick work of the supply ships, sinking the command vessel the Marsopa and the supply ship the Houston, blasting them to pieces with five- inch rockets. In the end the 5th battalion was lost, which was on the Houston, as well as the supplies for the landing teams and eight other smaller vessels. With some of the invading forces’ ships destroyed, and no command and control ship, the logistics of the operation soon broke down as the other supply ships were kept at bay by Casto’s air force. As with many failed military adventures, one of the problems with this one was with supplying the troops.

In the air, Castro had easily won superiority over the invading force. His fast moving T-33s, although unimpressive by today’s standards, made short work of the slow moving B-26s of the invading force. On Tuesday, two were shot out of the sky and by Wednesday the invaders had lost 10 of their 12 aircraft. With air power firmly in control of Castro’s forces, the end was near for the invading army.

Over the 72 hours the invading force of about 1500 men were pounded by the Cubans. Casto fired 122mm. Howitzers, 22mm. cannon, and tank fire at them. By Wednesday the invaders were pushed back to their landing zone at Playa Gir¢n. Surrounded by Castro’s forces some began to surrender while others fled into the hills. In total 114 men were killed in the slaughter while thirty-six died as prisoners in Cuban cells. Others were to live out twenty years or
more in those cells as men plotting to topple the government of Castro.

The 1500 men of the invading force never had a chance for success from almost the first days in the planning stage of the operation. Operation Pluto, as it came to be known as, has its
origins in the last dying days of the Eisenhower administration and that murky time period during the transition of power to the newly elected president John F. Kennedy.

The origins of American policy in Latin America in the late 1950s and early 1960s has its origins in American’s economic interests and its anticommunist policies in the region. The same man who had helped formulate American containment policy towards the Soviet threat, George Kennan, in 1950 spoke to US Chiefs of Mission in Rio de Janeiro about Latin America. He said that American policy had several purposes in the region,

. . . to protect the vital supplies of raw materials
which Latin American countries export to the USA; to
prevent the ‘military exploitation of Latin America by
the enemy’ [The Soviet Union]; and to avert ‘the
psychological mobilization of Latin America against us.’
. . . .

By the 1950s trade with Latin America accounted for a quarter of American exports, and 80 per cent of the investment in Latin America was also American. The Americans had a vested interest in the region that it would remain pro-American.

The Guatemalan adventure can be seen as another of the factors that lead the American government to believe that it could handle Casto. Before the Second World War ended, a coup in Guatemala saw the rise to power of Juan Jose Ar‚valo. He was not a communist in the traditional sense of the term, but he “. . . packed his government with Communist Party members and Communist sympathizers.” In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz succeeded Ar‚valo after an election in March of that year. The party had been progressing with a series of reforms, and the newly elected leader continued with these reforms. During land reforms a major American company, the United Fruit Company, lost its land and other holdings without any compensation from the Guatemalan government. When the Guatemalans refused to go to the International Court of Law, United Fruit began to lobby the government of the United States to take action. In the government they had some very powerful supporters. Among them were Foster Dulles, Secretary of State who had once been their lawyer, his brother Allen the Director of Central Intelligence who was a share holder, and Robert Cutler head of the National Security
Council. In what was a clear conflict of interest, the security apparatus of the United States decided to take action against the Guatemalans.

From May 1st, 1954, to June 18th, the Central Intelligence Agency did everything in its power to overthrow the government of Arbenz. On June 17th to the 18th, it peaked with an invasion of 450 men lead by a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the help of air support the men took control of the country and Arbenz fled to the Mexican Embassy. By June 27th, the country was firmly in control of the invading force. With its success in Guatemala, CIA had the confidence that it could now take on anyone who interfered with American interests.

In late 1958 Castro was still fighting a guerilla war against the corrupt regime of ulgencio Batista. Before he came to power, there was an incident between his troops and some vacationing American troops from the nearby American naval base at Guantanamo Bay. During the incident some US Marines were held captive by Casto’s forces but were later released after a ransom was secretly paid. This episode soured relations with the United States and
the chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Burke, wanted to send in the Marines to destroy Castro’s forces then but Secretary of State Foster Dulles disagreed with the measures suggested and stopped the plan.

Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Originally Castro was not a communist either and even had meetings with then Vice-President Richard Nixon. Fearful of Castro’s revolution, people with money, like doctors, lawyers, and the mafia, left Cuba for the United States. To prevent the loss of more capital Castro’s solution was to nationalize some of the businesses in Cuba. In the process of nationalizing some business he came into conflict with American interests just as Arbenz had in Guatemala. “. . . legitimate U.S. Businesses were taken over, and the process of socialization begun with little if any talk of compensation.” There were also
rumours of Cuban involvement in trying to invade Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic and by this time Castro had been turn down by the United States for any economic aid. Being rejected by the Americans, he met with foreign minister Anasta Mikoyan to
secure a $100 million loan from the Soviet Union. It was in this atmosphere that the American Intelligence and Foreign Relations communities decided that Castro was leaning towards communism and had to be dealt with.

In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to send small groups of American trained, Cuban exiles, to work in the underground as guerrillas to overthrow Castro. By the fall, the plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exile Cubans in American supplied planes. The original group was to be trained in Panama, but with the growth of the operation and the quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to move things to
a base in Guatemala. The plan was becoming rushed and this would start to show, the man in charge of the operation, CIA Deputy Director Bissell said that,

. . . There didn’t seem to be time to keep to the
original plan and have a large group trained by this
initial cadre of young Cubans. So the larger group was
formed and established at La finca, in Guatemala, and
there the training was conducted entirely by Americans .
. . .

It was now fall and a new president had been elected. President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to, but he probably didn’t do so for several reasons. Firstly, he had campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles travelling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of his campaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn’t abort the operation is the main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA.

Part II: Failure and Ramifications.

The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy making poor decisions which would affect future relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrong people were handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of the operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, and thirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed with security the operation had security problems.

In charge of the operation was the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan Dulles and main responsibility for the operation was left to one of his deputies, Richard Bissell. In an
intelligence community geared mainly for European operations against the USSR, both men were lacking in experience in Latin American affairs. Those in charge of Operation Pluto, based
this new operation on the success of the Guatemalan adventure, but the situation in Cuba was much different than that in Guatemala. In Guatemala the situation was still chaotic and Arbenz never had the same control over the country that Castro had on Cuba. The CIA had
the United States Ambassador, John Puerifoy, working on the inside of Guatemala coordinating the effort, in Cuba they had none of this while Castro was being supplied by the Soviet block. In addition, after the overthrow of the government in Guatemala, Castro was aware that this may happen to him as well and probably had his guard up waiting for anything that my indicate that an invasion was imminent.

The second problem was the nature of the bureaucracy itself. The CIA was a new kid on the block and still felt that it had to prove itself, it saw its opportunity in Cuba. Obsessed with secrecy, it kept the number of people involved to a minimum. The intelligence wing of CIA was kept out of it, their Board of National Estimates could have provided information on the situation in Cuba and the chances for an uprising against Castro once the invasion started. Also kept out of the loop were the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who could have provided help on the military side of the adventure. In the end, the CIA
kept all the information for itself and passed on to the president only what it thought he should see. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, in Political Science Quarterly of 1984, based his analysis of the Bay of Pigs failure on organizational behaviour theory.  He says that
the CIA “. . . supplied President Kennedy and his advisers with chosen reports on the unreliability of Castro’s forces and the extent of Cuban dissent.” Of the CIA’s behaviour he concludes that,

. . . By resorting to the typical organization strategy
of defining the options and providing the information
required to evaluate them, the CIA thus structured the
problem in a way that maximized the likelihood the
president would choose the agency’s preferred option . .
. .

The CIA made sure the deck was stacked in their favour when the time came to decide whether a project they sponsored was sound or not. President Kennedy’s Secretary of State at the time was Dean Rusk, in his autobiography he says that,

. . . The CIA told us all sorts of things about the
situation in Cuba and what would happen once the brigade
got ashore. President Kennedy received information which
simply was not correct. For example, we were told that
elements of the Cuban armed forces would defect and join
the brigade, that there would be popular uprisings
throughout Cuba when the brigade hit the beach, and that
if the exile force got into trouble, its members would
simply melt into the countryside and become guerrillas,
just as Castro had done . . . .

As for senior White House aides, most of them disagreed with the plan as well, but Rusk says that Kennedy went with what the CIA had to say. As for himself, he said that he “. . . did not serve President Kennedy very well . . .” and that he should have voiced his opposition louder. He concluded that “. . . I should have made my opposition clear in the meetings themselves because he [Kennedy] was under pressure from those who wanted to proceed.” When faced with biased information from the CIA and quiet advisors, it is no wonder that the president decided to go ahead with the operation.

For an organization that deals with security issues, the CIA’s lack of security in the Bay of Pigs operation is ironic. Security began to break down before the invasion when The New York Times reporter Tad Szulc “. . . learned of Operation Pluto from Cuban friends. . .” earlier that year while in Costa Rica covering an Organization of American States meeting. Another breakdown in security was at the training base in Florida,

. . . Local residents near Homestead [air force base] had
seen Cubans drilling and heard their loudspeakers at a
farm. As a joke some firecrackers were thrown into the
compound . . . .

The ensuing incident saw the Cubans firing their guns and the federal authorities having to convince the local authorities not to press charges. Operation Pluto was beginning to get blown wide open, the advantage of surprise was lost even this early in the game.

After the initial bombing raid of April 15th, and the landing of the B-26s in Florida, pictures of the planes were taken and published in newspapers. In the photo of one of the planes, the nose of it is opaque whereas the model of the B-26 the Cubans really used had a plexiglass nose,

. . . The CIA had taken the pains to disguise the B-26
with “FAR” markings [Cuban Air Force], the agency
overlooked a crucial detail that was spotted immediately
by professional observers . . . .

All Castro’s people had to do was read the newspapers and they’d know that something was going to happen, that those planes that had bombed them were not their own but American.

In The New York Times of the 21st of April, stories about the origins of the operation in the Eisenhower administration appeared along with headlines of “C.I.A. Had a Role In Exiles’ Plans” revealing the CIA’s involvement. By the 22nd, the story is fully known with headlines in The New York Times stating that “CIA is Accused by Bitter Rebels” and on the second page of that day’s issue is a full article on the details of the operation from its beginnings.

The conclusion one can draw from the articles in The New York Times is that if reporters knew the whole story by the 22nd, it can be expected that Castro’s intelligence service and that of the Soviet Union knew about the planned invasion as well. Tad Szulc’s report in the April 22nd edition of The New York Times says it all,

. . . As has been an open secret in Florida and Central
America for months, the C.I.A. planned, coordinated and
directed the operations that ended in defeat on a
beachhead in southern Cuba Wednesday . . . .

It is clear then that part of the failure of the operation was caused by a lack of security and attention to detail on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency, and misinformation given to the president.

On the international scene, the Bay of Pigs invasion lead directly to increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the invasion messages were exchanged between Kennedy and Khrushchev regarding the events in Cuba. Khrushchev accused the Americans of being involved in the invasion and stated in one of his messages that a,

. . . so-called “small war” can produce a chain reaction
in all parts of the world . . . we shall render the Cuban
people and their Government all necessary assistance in
beating back the armed attack on Cuba . . . .

Kennedy replied giving American views on democracy and the containment of communism, he also warned against Soviet involvement in Cuba saying to Khrushchev,

. . . In the event of any military intervention by
outside force we will immediately honor our obligations
under the inter-American system to protect this
hemisphere against external aggression . . . .

Even though this crisis passed, it set the stage for the next major crisis over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and probably lead to the Soviets increasing their military support for Castro.

In the administration itself, the Bay of Pigs crisis lead to a few changes. Firstly, someone had to take the blame for the affair and, as Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles was forced to resign and left CIA in November of 1961 Internally, the CIA was never the same, although it continued with covert operations against Castro, it was on a much reduced scale.

According to a report of the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, future operations were “. . . to nourish a spirit of resistance and disaffection which could lead to significant
defections and other by-products of unrest.” The CIA also now came under the supervision of the president’s brother Bobby, the Attorney General. According to Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, the outcome of the Bay of Pigs failure also made the White House suspicious of an operation that everyone agreed to, made them less reluctant to question the experts, and made them play “devil’s advocates” when questioning them. In the end, the lessons learned from the Bay of Pigs failure may have contributed to the successful handling of the Cuban missile crisis that followed.

The long term ramifications of the Bay of Pigs invasion are a little harder to assess. The ultimate indication of the invasions failure is that thirty-four years later Castro is still in power. This not only indicates the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, but American policy towards Cuba in general. The American policy, rather than undermining Castro’s support, has probably contributed to it. As with many wars, even a cold one, the leader is able to rally his people around him against an aggressor.

When Castro came to power he instituted reforms to help the people and end corruption, no longer receiving help from the Soviet Union things are beginning to change. He has opened up the Cuban economy for some investment, mainly in telecommunications, oil exploration, and joint ventures. In an attempt to stay in power, he is trying to adapt his country to the new reality of the world. Rather than suppressing the educated elite, he is giving them a place in guiding Cuba. The question is, will they eventually want more power and a right to control Cuba’s fate without Castro’s guidance and support? If the collapse of past regimes is any indication, they will eventually want more power.

When Castro came to power in 1959, the major opponents in America to him, as with Guatemala, were the business interests who were losing out as a result of his polices. The major pressure for the Americans to do something came, not only from the Cuban exiles in Florida, but from those businesses. Today, the tables are turned and businesses are loosing out because of the American embargo against Cuba. It is estimated that if the embargo were lifted, $1 billion of business would be generated for US companies that first year. Right now, 100 firms have gone to Cuba to talk about doing business there after the embargo is lifted. Will American policy change toward Cuba because of pressure from business interests and growing problems with refugees from Cuba? Given the reasons why the United States got involved in Latin American politics in the first place, it is very likely that their position will change if they can find a face saving way to do so. American policy at this time though is still stuck in the cold war, the chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms said that,

. . . Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or
horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people.
But he must and will leave Cuba . . . .

The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was caused by misinformation and mismanagement, the consequences of that was egg in the face for the Americans and an increase in tension between the superpowers at the height of the cold war. We will only have to wait and see if the Americans have really learned their lesson and will not miss another opportunity to set things right in Cuba. Bibliography

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Economy, Fidel Turns to an Unusual Solution: Capitalism.” Time
Magazine, week of February 20th, 1995. Internet,
http://www.timeinc.com, 1995.

Meyer, Karl E. and Szulc, Tad.     The Cuban Invasion: The
Chronicle of a Disaster. New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
Publishers, 1962 and 1968.

Mosley, Leonard.    Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John
Foster Dulles and their Family Network. New York: The Dail
Press/James Wade, 1978.

Prados, John.  Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert
Operations Since World War II. New York: William Morrow and
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Ranelagh, John.     CIA: A History. London: BBC Books, 1992.

Rositzke, Harry, Ph.d.   The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage,
Counterespionage, and Covert Action. New York: Reader’s Digest
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Rusk, Dean and Richard.  As I Saw It.   New York and London: W.W.
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The English inheritance of the Duchy of Aquitaine began when Eleanor of Aquitaine married King Henry II in 1152. Edward III inherited it when he became king in 1327. Edward also had the right to lay claim to the French throne when King Charles IV died in 1328. Charles was the last remaining son of Phillip IV, all three of Phillip’s sons died without producing a male heir to the throne. Since Edward III was the son of Isabella, Phillip IV’s daughter, he lay in direct bloodline of the French King. Although ” King Edward III was a more direct descendent, he at first conceded the throne to the favourite among the French nobility, Phillip of Valois.” He did this under the circumstances that he would maintain ownership of the Duchy of Aquitaine. Phillip of Valois was son to Count Charles of Valois, and nephew to Phillip IV. Edward eventually decided that he would lay claim to the French throne. This caused an uproar between the French and English sides. The main French deterrent was Edward’s forfeiture of the Duchy of Aquitaine, the main English deterrent was to lay claim to the French crown itself. Both sides attempted to reach these goals, and the result was the beginning of The Hundred Years War.

By the end of the first two years of war ” Edward had merely saddled himself with a mountain of debt and constitutional crisis.” To make the English problems worse the French navy was pressing. The French raided Portsmouth and Southampton in 1338, Dover and Folkestone in 1339. By the summer of 1340 word had reached Edward that an enemy armada was located near Sluys, and was preparing to clear English vessels from the sea lanes to provide room for an invasion of England. Edward saw this as his chance to make a strike on the French navy, he decided that he would lead the attack. “His tactics were essentially military: Froissart says that he manned ships so that each vessel filled with men-at-arms was flanked by 2 of archers, his invariable procedure on land.” Edward, a great military leader simply used his ships to create a land battle of close combat. The English arrived while the French fleet was still in the Zwin Channel. This proved to be a great advantage for the English because the French had 213 ships, which proved to be far too many. They were clustering together and making it difficult for them to defend themselves. Edward invited the French to make a head on attack, because of the restricted area. Indeed the French admirals ordered a massive frontal attack. This played directly into the hands of Edward and his archers. “The decisive advantage of the English ships lay in their much larger complement of non-mariners, experienced and well-equipped men-at-arms and archers. The longbow once again proved to be greatly superior to the crossbow and their Italian auxiliaries.” The battle of the front lines began in the afternoon, the French rear lines could only watch in dismay the massacre of their front lines. They lacked the space to join or escape the fight. When the English had fought through the front lines, they found the rear ships to be smaller than those in the front line, making them easier to capture. By the end of the battle the French suffered a moral catastrophe on a scale unequalled until modern times. Of 213 French ships present at the battle the English captured 190.” The only part of the French fleet to escape without major casualties were the Genoese, led by Barbenera. The French fleet was nearly wiped out entirely, both admirals Quieret and Behuchet were killed along with nearly 18 000 Frenchmen. “We must admire the confidence with which Edward, a wholly inexperienced naval commander – and a man who suffered from sea sickness and was afraid of storms – embraced the opportunity to fight a fleet action.” “Sluys ended the threat of French invasion, gave the English command of sea-lanes, at least for the time, and enormously enhanced Edward’s reputation”. It also enhanced the reputation of the English archer, who emerged as the most overpowering warrior in battle.

The longbow proved to be the dominating weapon for the English armies. The French had never developed the longbow because of the great skilled needed to effectively use it. It required years of training. Because Edward had come up with the system of indenture of recruitment, he was able to produce professional archers. In fact, “in the 14th century, parliament passed repeated statutes forbidding other forms of village entertainment, anything, in short, that diverted men from archery”. The bows were roughly six feet long, they could pierce some armour from up to 400 yards away, and had a firing rate 6 times as great of a cross bow. It was also much less complicated, making weapon malfunctions far less common. Even if the string were to break, the longbow was light enough that an archer could carry an extra with him. The longbow was superior to the cross bow, and also proved to be superior to the feudal knight tion of the English archer, who turned out to be the most dominant !
 warrior in battle.

With the devastation of the French navy, the English had clear access to France. Edward launched small chevauchee campaigns not long after Sluys. He and his son Prince Edward, led men through northern France burning and raiding the towns. This was done in attempt to lure the Phillip VI into battle. Finally Phillip planned an attack to expel Edward and his men from France. The French followed the English army to Crecy. It was here between the towns of Crecy and Wadicourt that Edward prepared for battle. “Edward had deployed his troops in person, laughing with them according to Jean le Bel and urging every one of them to do his duty, making even cowards into heroes.” He placed his men in three sections. The first of which was the front line, consisting of dismounted men-at-arms with archers on the left and right flanks. They were led by Edwards son the Prince of Wales and a host of nobles. The second was a group of men-at-arms placed behind the front line, they were used to replace the dead or fallen men of the front lines. Edward commanded the reserves at the rear. Edward used many strategies defensively to give his men the advantage. “A large number of pit-traps had been dug across the approaches to the English lines.” This would cause the French cavalry difficulty when charging, making horses stumble or fall to give the archers a chance to kill many of the riding knights. Along with this, the archers were protected by baggage carts, which were encircled around them, preventing any French cavalry from reaching them. Beneath the carts were “a number of gunpowder cannons.” These were used mostly to cause noise and fear. Edward had decided to defend his ground in the best possible place. The English were protected by the Maie river and the marshes that surround it on their right flanks. The Crecy Grange protected their rear, and baggage carts that Edward set up in the town of Wadicourt protected their left flank. The French were forced to attack from the front because of a lack of space, just as they did at Sluys.

Edward had forced the French to cross into a valley, making them run uphill to reach the English front lines. This was a great advantage for the English archers. “The heroes of the French side were so confident in their numbers of their army that individuals asked for specific men on the English side as their prisoners”. The French had 6,000 Genoese fighting with them, along with 12,000 men-at-arms and a total of 20,000 to 25,000 total men under Phillip’s control. Although, Davis in his book 100 decisive battles tells us there were 20,000 knights and as many as 60,000 total men on the French side. The French armies were divided into 9 battalions, which were split into 3 lines of men. The front line was made up of the Genoese cross bowmen and about 300 cavalry, it was led by King John of Bohemia. The second line was made up of the elite French cavalry and led by the Count of Alencon, King Phillip’s younger brother. The third line was commanded by Phillip and made up the remainder of the cavalry. “It is probable that the infantry were placed in their own formations on the wings of each of the three battalions”. As the sun began to set on the 26th of August the first line of the French began to advance.

“The French crossbowmen began the attack; their crossbow bolts did not reach the English, however, but fell a long way off. Much to the terror of the crossbowmen, the English archers began to pick off their closely packed enemies with arrows, and they ended the hail of crossbow bolts with a rain of arrows”. This put the advancing Genoese cross bowmen into a panic and they turned back to retreat. The French knights proclaimed them traitors, the cavalry charged straight through the Genoese, slaughtering them on their way to battle. The cavalry charge was easily turned away by the archers. The archer’s strategy was to shoot the first line of horses, making it difficult for the others to go over or around them. Many of the horses were already having difficulty keeping their feet because of the pits dug in front of the English lines. “The French line was badly disordered by stumbling horses.” The few cavalry that reach English lines were massacred by the young Prince and his men. Prince Edward “displayed marvellous courage against the French in the front line, running through horses, felling knights, crushing helmets, cutting lances apart, avoiding the enemy missiles; as he did so, he encouraged his men, defended himself, helped fallen friends to their feet, and set everyone an example”. Still the French nobles rallied against Edwards defence, they charged again, and were once again slaughtered and driven back. The French put together 15 cavalry charges by the waning hours of the night, and charge 4 times in the morning. “When (King Edward) was pressed for reinforcements he is said to have replied, let the boy win his spurs. He did so”. And so did the whole of the English army.

Alongside the 16 year old prince earning a name for himself, so did the English army as a whole. “Approximately 1,500 French knights were killed or captured, and another 10,000 foot soldiers lay dead. The English casualties numbered less than 100″. The English army became recognized as an elite force. Edward III was the cause of this great success. He imposed the system of indenture, he also made laws requiring men to spend time practising their weapons. This gave King Edward and his nobles a vast pool of talented men to choose from. It also meant that men would be selected form local areas, men who knew each other. This local recruiting made an army of higher morale, and great unit cohesion. This great force that Edward put together became an army of professional soldiers, one that put France in their place during the first forty years of Hundred Years War. The second major result of the Crecy victory was the decline of the chivalrous mounted knight. The knight, previous to Crecy was an armoured fighting machine, he could overwhelm lesser enemies and was dominant in battle. But the longbow changed that, “able to pierce armour at more than 200 yards, the longbow meant that the mounted knight became little more than a large target”. This fact left the French in shock after their defeat at Crecy. The extreme loss of knights and nobles, along with 10,000 foot soldiers depleted their forces. Edwards war began with a bang, or rather the twang of a longbow slicing through the heart of the French military.

“Control in battle was all important-it was Edward’s great strength, as was his skill in choosing ground and deploying units to suit it”. This was the theme of the first major battles of The Hundred Years War. Edward dominated the war with his great tactics, his ability to control his men, and his wonderful presence around his men. Edward made the French doubt themselves. They questioned themselves, and no one was there to answer it, at least not until the 15th century, long after Edward’s death. The French were in pieces after Crecy, their greatest warrior, the knight was one of the most ineffective soldiers in battle. Edward, in his battles, was able to make numbers a disadvantage, he would turn a mighty host of enemy soldiers into a stampeding mob. This is why King Edward III was such a dominant factor in the Hundred Years War, and also why the first forty years of the war, is now called, Edward’s War.

It is first necessary to understand what happened in the battle before any judgment can be made. A careful study performed by Dr. John Wyeth revealed the following information: from April 9-11, 1864, troops under the command of Ben McCulloch, Tyree Harris Bell, and Brig. General James Chalmers marched non-stop to Fort Pillow to begin their assault under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Confederate sharpshooters claimed the lives of several key Union officers during the morning assault on the fort. The losses included the commanding officer Major Loinel F. Booth, and his second in command shortly after that. These losses created a complete breakdown of order and leadership among the Union troops within the fort. (251) During the morning engagement, the gun boat the New Era was continually attempting to shell the Confederate forces from the Mississippi, but with minimal success. The Union forces fought back heartily until around one o¦clock in the afternoon, when both sides slowed down.

Around that time the New Era steamed out of range to cool its weapons. It had fired a total of 282 rounds, and its supplies were almost totally exhausted. During this hiatus in the firing, while Confederate troops waited for supplies that would arrive around three o¦clock, Forrestwas injured when his horse fell on him after being mortaily wounded (252). When the supplies arrived, Confederate troops under a flag of truce delivered a message from Forrest that said, ¦My men have received a fresh supply of ammunition, and from their present position can easily assault and capture the fort,_ (253). Forrest demanded ¦the unconditional surrender of the garrison,_ promising that you shall be treated as prisoners of war_ ( 253). This agreement was refused by Major William F. Bradford using the name of Major Booth, and Forrest was left with no option but to attack (Long & Long 484). Without a word, Forrest rode to his post, and a bugle call began the charge. The soldiers stormed the fort under the cover of sharpshooter fire. The Union spent their rounds on the charging mass, and the second wave was to all intents and purposes a ¦turkey shoot._ As hordes of soldiers came over the wall, a considerable number of Union lives were lost to point blank fire, an action that was deemed murder by the northern press. (255) However, it must not be forgotten that those Union troops who died were in the process of reloading their rifles. Even knowing that they were severely outnumbered, they had demanded the fight (Henry 255).

By this point most of the Union officers in the fort had been killed, and the remaining troops fled the fort toward the river where they had provisions waiting . There was also a plan for the New Era to shell the Confederate troops in the fort with canister, but the shelling never happened(. Confederate troops were waiting at the bottom of the fort to prevent access to the supplies by the Union forces. With the Union flag still flying upon the fort and Union forces still firing on the run, Confederate troops claimed many more lives on the river bank. It was reported by Colonel FIRST NAME Barteau that they made a wild, crazy, scattering fight. They acted like a crowd of drunken men. They would at one moment yield and throw down their guns, and then would rush again to arms, seize their guns and renew the fire. If one squad was left as prisoners … it would soon discover that they could not be trusted as having surrendered, for taking the first opportunity they would break lose again and engage in the contest. Some of our men were killed by Negroes who had once surrendered (256).

With this type of activity, it is understandable how a superior force could claim so many casualties. However, the issue is not so clear to Civil War historians. The first and biggest problem has to do with the information that different historians base their opinions on. For example, in a historical account written by Carl Sandburg it is reported that Forrest¦s troops stood 6,000 strong. This is slightly inflated from the actual 1,500 that were present. In this same account Sandburg claims that the ¦battle ended as a mob scene with wholesale lynching_(Sandburg 247). It was distorted information such as this that was used by the Union as propaganda against the South. After the incident General FIRST NAME Kilpatrick was quoted saying Forrest had ¦nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death_(Hurst 321). With reports like this, it is understandable why abolitionist were outraged.

The Congressional Committee released a summary after the event. It stated that the rebels took advantage of a flag of truce to place themselves in position from which the more readily to charge the upon the fort that after the fall of the fort ¦the rebels commenced in an indiscriminate slaughter sparing neither age nor sex, white or black, soldier or civilian; that this was not the results passions excited by the heat of conflict, but of a policy deliberation decided upon and unhesitatingly announced; that several of the wounded were intentionally burned to death in huts and tents about the fort; and the ¦the rebels buried some of the living the dead._(Henry 260)

In the intensive studies performed by Dr. John Wyeth there were more than fifty soldiers that were present at this battle who gave sworn testimonies contradicting these findings.(260) This suggests that the Union fabricated the truth to aid in its own cause.

The fact is that most of what was said about Forrest¦s unethical actions were false accusations. Testimonies from several different sources (both Union and Confederate) claim that there were no movements under the flag of truce, but that they had their positions hours before. (Henry 260) It is true that the losses were huge in this battle, but that is typical of many significantly unbalanced battles. According to Wyeth there was only one incident of force against the Union after the Union flag came down, and that resulted in an on the spot arrest .

This entire incident was blown totally of proportion. It is tragic to lose even one life, but on a battle field, death is inevitable. This event became a monumental point in the war because of exaggeration and lies told by Union supporters. These lies strengthened the Union cause and further blemished the reputation of Confederate forces. Morally, there is no fault in Forrest¦s actions.

Works Cited

Henry, Robert Selph. ¦First the Most_-Forrest. . New York: The
Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944.

Hurst, Jack. Nathan Bedford Forrest-A Biography. New York:
Alfred Knoph, 1993.

Lee, Guy Carleton. The True History of the Civil War.
Philadelphia: I.B. Lippincott, 1903.

Long, E. B. and Barbara Long. The Civil War Day by Day-An
Almanac. New York: Doubleday, 1971.

Sandburg, Carl. Storm over the Land–A Profile of the Civil War.
New York: Harcourt Brace: 1939.

Wyeth, John Allan. That Devil Forrest -The Life of Gen. Nathan
Bedford Forrest. New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1959.

Part I: The Invasion and its Origins.
 
The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961, started a few days before on April 15th with the bombing of Cuba by what appeared to be defecting Cuban air force pilots. At 6 a.m. in the morning of that Saturday, three Cuban military bases were bombed by B-26 bombers. The airfields at Camp Libertad, San Antonio de los Ba¤os and Antonio Maceo airport at Santiago de Cuba were fired upon. Seven people were killed at Libertad and forty-seven people were killed at other sites on the island.

Two of the B-26s left Cuba and flew to Miami, apparently to defect to the United States. The Cuban Revolutionary Council, the government in exile, in New York City released a statement saying that the bombings in Cuba were “. . . carried out by ‘Cubans inside Cuba’ who were ‘in contact with’ the top command of the Revolutionary Council . . . .” The New York Times reporter covering the story alluded to something being wrong with the whole situation when he wondered how the council knew the pilots were coming if the pilots had only decided to leave Cuba on Thursday after ” . . . a suspected betrayal by a fellow pilot had precipitated a plot to strike . . . .” Whatever the case, the planes came down in Miami later that morning, one landed at Key West Naval Air Station at 7:00 a.m. and the other at Miami International Airport at 8:20 a.m. Both planes were badly damaged and their tanks were nearly empty. On the front page of The New York Times the next day, a picture of one of the B-26s was shown along with a picture of one of the pilots cloaked in a baseball hat and hiding behind dark sunglasses, his name was withheld. A sense of conspiracy was even at this early stage beginning to envelope the events of that week.

In the early hours of April 17th the assault on the Bay of Pigs began. In the true cloak and dagger spirit of a movie, the assault began at 2 a.m. with a team of frogmen going ashore with orders to set up landing lights to indicate to the main assault force the precise location of their objectives, as well as to clear the area of anything that may impede the main landing teams when they arrived. At 2:30 a.m. and at 3:00 a.m. two battalions came ashore at Playa Gir¢n  and one battalion at Playa Larga beaches. The troops at Playa Girn had orders to move west, northwest, up the coast and meet with the troops at Playa Larga in the middle of the bay. A small group of men were then to be sent north to the town of Jaguey Grande to secure it as well. (See figure 1).

When looking at a modern map of Cuba it is obvious that the troops would have problems in the area that was chosen for them to land at. The area around the Bay of Pigs is a swampy marsh land area which would be hard on the troops. The Cuban forces were quick to react and Castro ordered his T-33 trainer jets, two Sea Furies, and two B-26s into the air to stop the invading forces. Off the coast was the command and control ship and another vessel carrying supplies for the invading forces. The Cuban air force made quick work of the supply ships, sinking the command vessel the Marsopa and the supply ship the Houston, blasting them to pieces with five- inch rockets. In the end the 5th battalion was lost, which was on the Houston, as well as the supplies for the landing teams and eight other smaller vessels. With some of the invading forces’ ships destroyed, and no command and control ship, the logistics of the operation soon broke down as the other supply ships were kept at bay by Casto’s air force. As with many failed military adventures, one of the problems with this one was with supplying the troops.

In the air, Castro had easily won superiority over the invading force. His fast moving T-33s, although unimpressive by today’s standards, made short work of the slow moving B-26s of the invading force. On Tuesday, two were shot out of the sky and by Wednesday the invaders had lost 10 of their 12 aircraft. With air power firmly in control of Castro’s forces, the end was near for the invading army.

Over the 72 hours the invading force of about 1500 men were pounded by the Cubans. Casto fired 122mm. Howitzers, 22mm. cannon, and tank fire at them. By Wednesday the invaders were pushed back to their landing zone at Playa Gir¢n. Surrounded by Castro’s forces some began to surrender while others fled into the hills. In total 114 men were killed in the slaughter while thirty-six died as prisoners in Cuban cells. Others were to live out twenty years or more in those cells as men plotting to topple the government of Castro.
 
The 1500 men of the invading force never had a chance for success from almost the first days in the planning stage of the operation. Operation Pluto, as it came to be known as, has its origins in the last dying days of the Eisenhower administration and that murky time period during the transition of power to the newly elected president John F. Kennedy.

The origins of American policy in Latin America in the late 1950s and early 1960s has its origins in American’s economic interests and its anticommunist policies in the region. The same man who had helped formulate American containment policy towards the Soviet threat, George Kennan, in 1950 spoke to US Chiefs of Mission in Rio de Janeiro about Latin America. He said that American policy had several purposes in the region,
 

     . . . to protect the vital supplies of raw materials
     which Latin American countries export to the USA; to
     prevent the ‘military exploitation of Latin America by
     the enemy’ [The Soviet Union]; and to avert ‘the
     psychological mobilization of Latin America against us.’
     . . . .
 

By the 1950s trade with Latin America accounted for a quarter of American exports, and 80 per cent of the investment in Latin America was also American. The Americans had a vested interest in the region that it would remain pro-American.

The Guatemalan adventure can be seen as another of the factors that lead the American government to believe that it could handle Casto. Before the Second World War ended, a coup in Guatemala saw the rise to power of Juan Jose Ar‚valo. He was not a communist in the traditional sense of the term, but he “. . . packed his government with Communist Party members and Communist sympathizers.” In 1951 Jacobo Arbenz succeeded Ar‚valo after an election in March of that year. The party had been progressing with a series of reforms, and the newly elected leader continued with these reforms. During land reforms a major American company, the United Fruit Company, lost its land and other holdings without any compensation from the Guatemalan government. When the Guatemalans refused to go to the International Court of Law, United Fruit began to lobby the government of the United States to take action. In the government they had some very powerful supporters. Among them were Foster Dulles, Secretary of State who had once been their lawyer, his brother Allen the Director of Central Intelligence who was a share holder, and Robert Cutler head of the National Security Council. In what was a clear conflict of interest, the security apparatus of the United States decided to take action against the Guatemalans.

From May 1st, 1954, to June 18th, the Central Intelligence Agency did everything in its power to overthrow the government of Arbenz. On June 17th to the 18th, it peaked with an invasion of 450 men lead by a Colonel Carlos Castillo Armas. With the help of air support the men took control of the country and Arbenz fled to the Mexican Embassy. By June 27th, the country was firmly in control of the invading force. With its success in Guatemala, CIA had the confidence that it could now take on anyone who interfered with American interests.

In late 1958 Castro was still fighting a guerilla war against the corrupt regime of ulgencio Batista. Before he came to power, there was an incident between his troops and some vacationing American troops from the nearby American naval base at Guantanamo Bay. During the incident some US Marines were held captive by Casto’s forces but were later released after a ransom was secretly paid. This episode soured relations with the United States and the chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Burke, wanted to send in the Marines to destroy Castro’s forces then but Secretary of State Foster Dulles disagreed with the measures suggested and stopped the plan.

Castro overthrew Batista in 1959. Originally Castro was not a communist either and even had meetings with then Vice-President Richard Nixon. Fearful of Castro’s revolution, people with money, like doctors, lawyers, and the mafia, left Cuba for the United States. To prevent the loss of more capital Castro’s solution was to nationalize some of the businesses in Cuba. In the process of nationalizing some business he came into conflict with American interests just as Arbenz had in Guatemala. “. . . legitimate U.S. Businesses were taken over, and the process of socialization begun with little if any talk of compensation.” There were also rumours of Cuban involvement in trying to invade Panama, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic and by this time Castro had been turn down by the United States for any economic aid. Being rejected by the Americans, he met with foreign minister Anasta Mikoyan to secure a $100 million loan from the Soviet Union. It was in this atmosphere that the American Intelligence and Foreign Relations communities decided that Castro was leaning towards communism and had to be dealt with.

In the spring of 1960, President Eisenhower approved a plan to send small groups of American trained, Cuban exiles, to work in the underground as guerrillas to overthrow Castro. By the fall, the plan was changed to a full invasion with air support by exile Cubans in American supplied planes. The original group was to be trained in Panama, but with the growth of the operation and the quickening pace of events in Cuba, it was decided to move things to a base in Guatemala. The plan was becoming rushed and this would start to show, the man in charge of the operation, CIA Deputy Director Bissell said that,
 

     . . . There didn’t seem to be time to keep to the
     original plan and have a large group trained by this
     initial cadre of young Cubans. So the larger group was
     formed and established at La finca, in Guatemala, and
     there the training was conducted entirely by Americans .
     . . .
 

It was now fall and a new president had been elected. President Kennedy could have stopped the invasion if he wanted to, but he probably didn’t do so for several reasons. Firstly, he had campaigned for some form of action against Cuba and it was also the height of the cold war, to back out now would mean having groups of Cuban exiles travelling around the globe saying how the Americans had backed down on the Cuba issue. In competition with the Soviet Union, backing out would make the Americans look like wimps on the international scene, and for domestic consumption the new president would be seen as backing away from one of his campaign promises. The second reason Kennedy probably didn’t abort the operation is the main reason why the operation failed, problems with the CIA.

Part II: Failure and Ramifications.

The failure at the CIA led to Kennedy making poor decisions which would affect future relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union. The failure at CIA had three causes. First the wrong people were handling the operation, secondly the agency in charge of the operation was also the one providing all the intelligence for the operation, and thirdly for an organization supposedly obsessed with security the operation had security problems.

In charge of the operation was the Director of Central Intelligence, Allan Dulles and main responsibility for the operation was left to one of his deputies, Richard Bissell. In an intelligence community geared mainly for European operations against the USSR, both men were lacking in experience in Latin American affairs. Those in charge of Operation Pluto, based this new operation on the success of the Guatemalan adventure, but the situation in Cuba was much different than that in Guatemala. In Guatemala the situation was still chaotic and Arbenz never had the same control over the country that Castro had on Cuba. The CIA had the United States Ambassador, John Puerifoy, working on the inside of Guatemala coordinating the effort, in Cuba they had none of this while Castro was being supplied by the Soviet block. In addition, after the overthrow of the government in Guatemala, Castro was aware that this may happen to him as well and probably had his guard up waiting for anything that my indicate that an invasion was imminent.

The second problem was the nature of the bureaucracy itself. The CIA was a new kid on the block and still felt that it had to prove itself, it saw its opportunity in Cuba. Obsessed with secrecy, it kept the number of people involved to a minimum. The intelligence wing of CIA was kept out of it, their Board of National Estimates could have provided information on the situation in Cuba and the chances for an uprising against Castro once the invasion started. Also kept out of the loop were the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who could have provided help on the military side of the adventure. In the end, the CIA kept all the information for itself and passed on to the president only what it thought he should see. Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, in Political Science Quarterly of 1984, based his analysis of the Bay of Pigs failure on organizational behaviour theory.  He says that the CIA “. . . supplied President Kennedy and his advisers with chosen reports on the unreliability of Castro’s forces and the extent of Cuban dissent.” Of the CIA’s behaviour he concludes that,
 

     . . . By resorting to the typical organization strategy
     of defining the options and providing the information
     required to evaluate them, the CIA thus structured the
     problem in a way that maximized the likelihood the
     president would choose the agency’s preferred option . .
     . .
 

The CIA made sure the deck was stacked in their favour when the time came to decide whether a project they sponsored was sound or not. President Kennedy’s Secretary of State at the time was Dean Rusk, in his autobiography he says that,
 

     . . . The CIA told us all sorts of things about the
     situation in Cuba and what would happen once the brigade
     got ashore. President Kennedy received information which
     simply was not correct. For example, we were told that
     elements of the Cuban armed forces would defect and join
     the brigade, that there would be popular uprisings
     throughout Cuba when the brigade hit the beach, and that
     if the exile force got into trouble, its members would
     simply melt into the countryside and become guerrillas,
     just as Castro had done . . . .
 

As for senior White House aides, most of them disagreed with the plan as well, but Rusk says that Kennedy went with what the CIA had to say. As for himself, he said that he “. . . did not serve President Kennedy very well . . .” and that he should have voiced his opposition louder. He concluded that “. . . I should have made my opposition clear in the meetings themselves because he [Kennedy] was under pressure from those who wanted to proceed.” When faced with biased information from the CIA and quiet advisors, it is no wonder that the president decided to go ahead with the operation.

For an organization that deals with security issues, the CIA’s lack of security in the Bay of Pigs operation is ironic. Security began to break down before the invasion when The New York Times reporter Tad Szulc “. . . learned of Operation Pluto from Cuban friends. . .” earlier that year while in Costa Rica covering an Organization of American States meeting. Another breakdown in security was at the training base in Florida,
 

     . . . Local residents near Homestead [air force base] had
     seen Cubans drilling and heard their loudspeakers at a
     farm. As a joke some firecrackers were thrown into the
     compound . . . .
 

The ensuing incident saw the Cubans firing their guns and the federal authorities having to convince the local authorities not to press charges. Operation Pluto was beginning to get blown wide open, the advantage of surprise was lost even this early in the game.
 
After the initial bombing raid of April 15th, and the landing of the B-26s in Florida, pictures of the planes were taken and published in newspapers. In the photo of one of the planes, the nose of it is opaque whereas the model of the B-26 the Cubans really used had a plexiglass nose,
 

     . . . The CIA had taken the pains to disguise the B-26
     with “FAR” markings [Cuban Air Force], the agency
     overlooked a crucial detail that was spotted immediately
     by professional observers . . . .
 

All Castro’s people had to do was read the newspapers and they’d know that something was going to happen, that those planes that had bombed them were not their own but American.

In The New York Times of the 21st of April, stories about the origins of the operation in the Eisenhower administration appeared along with headlines of “C.I.A. Had a Role In Exiles’ Plans” revealing the CIA’s involvement. By the 22nd, the story is fully known with headlines in The New York Times stating that “CIA is Accused by Bitter Rebels” and on the second page of that day’s issue is a full article on the details of the operation from its beginnings.

The conclusion one can draw from the articles in The New York Times is that if reporters knew the whole story by the 22nd, it can be expected that Castro’s intelligence service and that of the Soviet Union knew about the planned invasion as well. Tad Szulc’s report in the April 22nd edition of The New York Times says it all,
 

     . . . As has been an open secret in Florida and Central
     America for months, the C.I.A. planned, coordinated and
     directed the operations that ended in defeat on a
     beachhead in southern Cuba Wednesday . . . .
 

It is clear then that part of the failure of the operation was caused by a lack of security and attention to detail on the part of the Central Intelligence Agency, and misinformation given to the president.

On the international scene, the Bay of Pigs invasion lead directly to increased tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. During the invasion messages were exchanged between Kennedy and Khrushchev regarding the events in Cuba. Khrushchev accused the Americans of being involved in the invasion and stated in one of his messages that a,

     . . . so-called “small war” can produce a chain reaction
     in all parts of the world . . . we shall render the Cuban
     people and their Government all necessary assistance in
     beating back the armed attack on Cuba . . . .
 

Kennedy replied giving American views on democracy and the containment of communism, he also warned against Soviet involvement in Cuba saying to Khrushchev,

     . . . In the event of any military intervention by
     outside force we will immediately honor our obligations
     under the inter-American system to protect this
     hemisphere against external aggression . . . .
 

Even though this crisis passed, it set the stage for the next major crisis over Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and probably lead to the Soviets increasing their military support for Castro.

In the administration itself, the Bay of Pigs crisis lead to a few changes. Firstly, someone had to take the blame for the affair and, as Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles was forced to resign and left CIA in November of 1961 Internally, the CIA was never the same, although it continued with covert operations against Castro, it was on a much reduced scale.

According to a report of the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, future operations were “. . . to nourish a spirit of resistance and disaffection which could lead to significant defections and other by-products of unrest.” The CIA also now came under the supervision of the president’s brother Bobby, the Attorney General. According to Lucien S. Vandenbroucke, the outcome of the Bay of Pigs failure also made the White House suspicious of an operation that everyone agreed to, made them less reluctant to question the experts, and made them play “devil’s advocates” when questioning them. In the end, the lessons learned from the Bay of Pigs failure may have contributed to the successful handling of the Cuban missile crisis that followed.

The long term ramifications of the Bay of Pigs invasion are a little harder to assess. The ultimate indication of the invasions failure is that thirty-four years later Castro is still in power. This not only indicates the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, but American policy towards Cuba in general. The American policy, rather than undermining Castro’s support, has probably contributed to it. As with many wars, even a cold one, the leader is able to rally his people around him against an aggressor.

When Castro came to power he instituted reforms to help the people and end corruption, no longer receiving help from the Soviet Union things are beginning to change. He has opened up the Cuban economy for some investment, mainly in telecommunications, oil exploration, and joint ventures. In an attempt to stay in power, he is trying to adapt his country to the new reality of the world. Rather than suppressing the educated elite, he is giving them a place in guiding Cuba. The question is, will they eventually want more power and a right to control Cuba’s fate without Castro’s guidance and support? If the collapse of past regimes is any indication, they will eventually want more power.

When Castro came to power in 1959, the major opponents in America to him, as with Guatemala, were the business interests who were losing out as a result of his polices. The major pressure for the Americans to do something came, not only from the Cuban exiles in Florida, but from those businesses. Today, the tables are turned and businesses are loosing out because of the American embargo against Cuba. It is estimated that if the embargo were lifted, $1 billion of business would be generated for US companies that first year. Right now, 100 firms have gone to Cuba to talk about doing business there after the embargo is lifted. Will American policy change toward Cuba because of pressure from business interests and growing problems with refugees from Cuba? Given the reasons why the United States got involved in Latin American politics in the first place, it is very likely that their position will change if they can find a face saving way to do so. American policy at this time though is still stuck in the cold war, the chairmen of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Jesse Helms said that,
 

     . . . Whether Castro leaves Cuba in a vertical or
     horizontal position is up to him and the Cuban people.
     But he must and will leave Cuba . . . .
 
 
 

The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was caused by misinformation and mismanagement, the consequences of that was egg in the face for the Americans and an increase in tension between the superpowers at the height of the cold war. We will only have to wait and see if the Americans have really learned their lesson and will not miss another opportunity to set things right in Cuba. Bibliography
 

Fedarko, Kevin.     “Bereft of Patrons, Desperate to Rescue his
     Economy, Fidel Turns to an Unusual Solution: Capitalism.” Time
     Magazine, week of February 20th, 1995. Internet,
     http://www.timeinc.com, 1995.
 

Meyer, Karl E. and Szulc, Tad.     The Cuban Invasion: The
     Chronicle of a Disaster. New York: Frederick A. Praeger,
     Publishers, 1962 and 1968.
 

Mosley, Leonard.    Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John
     Foster Dulles and their Family Network. New York: The Dail
     Press/James Wade, 1978.
 

Prados, John.  Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert
     Operations Since World War II. New York: William Morrow and
     Company, Inc., 1986.
 

Ranelagh, John.     CIA: A History. London: BBC Books, 1992.
 

Rositzke, Harry, Ph.d.   The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage,
     Counterespionage, and Covert Action. New York: Reader’s Digest
     Press, 1977.
 

Rusk, Dean and Richard.  As I Saw It.   New York and London: W.W.
     Norton and Company, 1990.
 

The New York Times. 16 April to 22 April, 1961. New York: The New
     York Times, 1961.
 

United States. Central Intelligence Agency.  Cuba. Map, 22 by 52
     cm, No. 502988 1-77. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence
     Agency, 1977.
 

Vandenbroucke, Lucien S. “Anatomy of a Failure: The Decision to
     Land at the Bay of Pigs.” Political Science Quarterly, Volume
     99, Number 3, Fall 1984.

These weapons are nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons cost the citizens of the United States billions of dollars in taxes each year, the testing and maintenance of these weapons pose serious health risks, and the actual need for these weapons is not and has not been around for years. For the above reasons, I feel the United States should reduce its nuclear arsenal.

Nuclear weapons derive their power from the energy released when a heavy nucleus is divided, called fission or when light nuclei are forced together, called fusion. In fission, a nucleus from a heavy element is bombarded with neutrons. The nucleus breaks into two pieces, releasing energy and two or more neutrons. Each of these neutrons has enough energy to split another heavy nucleus, allowing the process to repeat itself.

This is the chain reaction that makes nuclear weapons possible. In a fusion nuclear device such as a hydrogen bomb, lightweight nuclei are forced to fuse at very high temperatures into heavier nuclei, releasing energy and a neutron. In order to squeeze the two nuclei together, an atomic fission bomb is usually used. A fusion reaction releases about four times more energy per unit mass than a fission reaction. The United States supervised the development of the atomic bomb under the code name Manhattan Project, during World War II. The first nuclear chain reaction occurred in December 1942, at the University of Chicago. Soon after the first bomb test, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The first hydrogen bomb was developed by a team of United States scientists and was first tested on November 1, 1952. After World War II, a new age of military strategy occurred. The United States built up massive nuclear weapons arsenals and developed highly sophisticated systems of delivery and defense. Today’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) carry one or more multiple, independently targeted reentry vehicles (MIBVs), each with its own nuclear war head.

Billions of dollars are wasted in taxes, each year, to pay for nuclear weapons. The United States has spent about four trillion dollars for its nuclear arsenal since government supported work began on the atomic bomb in 1940 (Schwartz 1). This number is three times larger than the entire United States budget for World War II (Schwartz 1). This number covers most, but not all, of the costs required to develop, produce, display, operate, support and control nuclear forces over the past fifty years. Anywhere from five-hundred billion to one trillion dollars could be added to this, to cover the remaining costs (Schwartz 1). Nuclear weapons are estimated to have used between one quarter and one third of all military spending since World War II (Schwartz 2). Today, Congress and the Administration are watching government spending, shrinking and eliminating programs and taking other measures to reduce the deficit. Despite this, the central feature of national security spending for the past fifty years, nuclear weapons, has been rarely touched. The United States spends at least thirty-three billion dollars a year on nuclear weapons and their related activities (Schwartz 3). Although, about eight billion dollars is being spent on waste management, environmental remediation, dismantlement and disposition activities, most of it goes to maintaining, improving and controlling the existing arsenal and toward the capability to produce new weapons (Schwartz 3).

The United States nuclear weapons program poses serious health risks to its citizens. A combination of secrecy, lax enforcement, reckless neglect and an emphasis on production at the cost of health, safety and the environment created toxic and radioactive pollution at thousands of sites around the country. United States nuclear weapons production facilities have left a mess that, if it can be cleaned up at all, will take decades and billions of dollars. Also, a great amount of United States citizens were needlessly exposed to high levels of radiation.

Those most affected were the workers at the Atomic Energy Commission (Department of Energy) weapons facilities (Schwartz 5). Another quarter of a million military personnel took part in exercises in the Pacific and Nevada test sites, to see their ability to engage the enemy on an atomic battlefield (Schwartz 5).

Nuclear weapons are not needed, and have not been, for years. While nuclear weapons have influenced politics, public opinion and defense budget, they have not had a significant impact on world affairs since World War II. Nor have they been crucial assets in the cold war developments, alliance patterns, or the way the major world powers have acted in times of crisis (Cameron 64). The main question is, would there actually have been another world war if these weapons did not exist? In my opinion, probably not. A nuclear war would be costly and destructive (Cameron 65). Anyone with the experiences of World War II behind them would not want to repeat the horror of that.

Even before the nuclear bomb had been perfected, world war had become spectacularly costly and destructive, killing over fifty million people world wide (Cameron 66).

Nuclear weapons are weapons of great destruction. Our government wastes over thirty-three billion dollars a year of our tax money. Also, nuclear weapons pose serious health risks to those around them, including the citizens of the United States. There has not been a significant impact on world affairs by nuclear weapons since World War II. For these reasons, I feel that the United States should reduce its nuclear arsenal.

Bibliography

1) Cameron, Kevin. “Taking Apart the Bomb.” Popular Science.
April 1993: 64-70.
2) “Nuclear Weapons.” Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia.
1995 ed.
3) Schwartz, Stephen, Project Director. “The U.S. Nuclear Cost
Study Project.” Prodigy Web Browser. started in 1994

After the war Nixon returned to the United States, where he was assigned to work on Navy contracts while awaiting discharge. He was working in Baltimore, Maryland, when he received a telephone call that changed his life. A Republican citizen’s committee in Whittier was considering Nixon as a candidate for Congress in the 12th Congressional District. In December 1945 Nixon accepted the candidacy with the promise that he would “wage a fighting, rocking, socking campaign.” Jerry Voorhis, a Democrat who had represented the 12th District since 1936, was running for reelection. Earlier in his career Voorhis had been an active Socialist. He had become more conservative over the years and was now an outspoken anti-Communist. Despite Voorhis’ anti-Communist stand the Los Angeles chapter of the left-wing Political Action Committee (PAC) endorsed him, apparently without his knowledge or approval. The theme of Nixon’s campaign was “a vote for Nixon is a vote against the Communist-dominated PAC.” The approach was successful. On November, 5 1946, Richard Nixon won his first political election. The Nixons’ daughter Patricia (called Tricia) was born during the campaign, on February 21, 1946. Their second daughter, Julie, was born July 5, 1948.

As a freshman congressman, Nixon was assigned to the Un-American Activities Committee. It was in this capacity that in August 1948 he heard the testimony of Whittaker Chambers, a self-confessed former Communist espionage agent. Chambers named Alger Hiss, a foreign policy advisor during the Roosevelt years, as an accomplice while in government service. Hiss, a former State Department aide, asked for and obtained a hearing before the committee. He made a favorable impression, and the case would then have been dropped had not Nixon urged investigation into Hiss’s testimony on his relationship with Chambers. The committee let Nixon pursue the case behind closed doors. He brought Chambers and Hiss face to face. Chambers produced evidence proving that Hiss had passed State Department secrets to him. Among the exhibits were rolls of microfilm which Chambers had hidden in a pumpkin on his farm near Westminster, Md., as a precaution against theft. On December 15, 1948, a New York federal grand jury indicted Hiss for perjury. After two trials he was convicted, on Jan. 21, 1950, and sentenced to five years in prison. The Hiss case made Nixon nationally famous. While the case was still in the courts, Nixon decided to run for the Senate. In his senatorial campaign he attacked the Harry S. Truman Administration and his opponent, Helen Gahagan Douglas, for being “soft” toward the Communists.

Nixon won the election, held on Nov. 7, 1950, by 680,000 votes, and at 38 he became the youngest member of the Senate. His Senate career was uneventful, and he was able to concentrate all his efforts on the upcoming 1952 presidential election. The “Secret Fund” Nixon did his work well. He hammered hard at three main issues–the war in Korea, Communism in government, and the high cost of the Democratic party’s programs. At their 1952 national convention the Republicans chose him as Eisenhower’s running mate, to balance the ticket with a West coast conservative.

Only a few days after the young senator’s triumph his political career seemed doomed. The New York Post printed a story headed “Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.” The public was shocked. The Republicans were panic-stricken. Prominent members of the party urged Eisenhower to dump Nixon before it was too late.

There was really nothing secret about the fund. Nixon was a man of limited means, and when he won his Senate seat a group of businessmen had publicly solicited funds to enable him to keep in touch with the voters in his home state while he served in the Senate. Nixon took his case directly to the people in a nationwide television hookup. He invited investigation of his finances and explained that no donor had asked for or received any favors. The best-remembered part of his speech was his admission that an admirer had once sent the Nixons a small cocker spaniel named Checkers. “The kids love that dog, and I want to say right now that regardless of what they say, we’re going to keep it,” he declared. The speech was a political triumph. Eisenhower asked Nixon to come to Wheeling, W. Va., where he was campaigning. The president-to-be met his running mate at the airport with the words “Dick, you’re my boy.” The Republicans won by a landslide.

The only duties listed for the vice-president in the Constitution are to preside over the Senate and to vote if there is a tie. Eisenhower, however, groomed his vice-president for active duty. Nixon regularly attended Cabinet meetings and meetings of the National Security Council. In the absence of the president he presided over these sessions. Thus Nixon was able to assume the president’s duties when Eisenhower was incapacitated by illness–after a major heart attack in 1955, abdominal surgery in 1956, and a mild stroke in 1957. During his eight years as vice-president Nixon made a series of goodwill tours that took him to every continent. In 1958 he faced rioting, rock-throwing mobs in Peru and Venezuela. In 1959 he engaged the Soviet Union’s premier, Nikita Khrushchev, in an impromptu debate in Moscow.

In 1960 the Republican party chose its seasoned vice-president to run for the nation’s highest office. His running mate was Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., a veteran of eight years as ambassador to the United Nations. Voters turned out in record numbers. When the 68 million votes were counted John F. Kennedy had become the nation’s first Roman Catholic president, and Richard Nixon had lost the presidential race by the narrow margin of about 100,000 votes. Nixon got 49.55 percent of the vote; Kennedy, 49.71 percent. Nixon carried 26 states for a total of 219 electoral votes. Kennedy carried 22 states and received 303 electoral votes.

Although defeated in 1960, Nixon reemerged as the Republican presidential candidate in 1968. For his running mate Nixon chose Spiro T. Agnew, the governor of Maryland, a man little known outside his own state. The choice was a surprise to political forecasters and a disappointment to some Republicans. Nixon realized, however, that a conservative Southern candidate would have lost him badly needed big-city and liberal votes in the North and that a liberal Northern Republican would have alienated the South, which backed him solidly at the convention. Agnew was a compromise choice acceptable to both the North and the South. Throughout the election campaign Nixon directed his attacks against the failures of the Democratic Administration. He deplored the growing rate of crime in the streets, called attention to the high cost and the limitations of the Democrats’ welfare programs, and denounced their inaction against inflation. Early in the campaign the Republican candidates announced that they would refrain from comments on the settlement of the Vietnamese conflict. The policy was adopted to prevent interference with peace negotiations begun in May between government representatives from the United States and from North Vietnam in Paris, France. Nixon emphasized his determination to curb violence in the cities. At the same time he proposed a program of increased “black capitalism” and of tax incentives for private investors locating in the cities. On November 5, 1968, Nixon’s long and loyal support of his party was repaid, and he was elected the 37th president of the United States. About a month before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 1969, his younger daughter, Julie, was married to David Eisenhower, the grandson of former President Eisenhower.

In his inaugural address President Nixon emphasized his determination to seek peace abroad, especially in Vietnam, and to bring about a reconciliation of the differences that divided the United States. All the men nominated by the president for Cabinet posts were approved by the Senate. William P. Rogers was Nixon’s choice as secretary of state. David M. Kennedy became secretary of the treasury; Melvin R. Laird, the secretary of defense. Clifford M. Hardin was named the new secretary of agriculture; Walter J. Hickel, secretary of the interior; Maurice H. Stans, secretary of commerce; George P. Shultz, secretary of labor; John A. Volpe, secretary of transportation. Robert H. Finch was designated to head the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare; George Romney, Housing and Urban Development. John N. Mitchell was appointed attorney general; Winton M. Blount, postmaster general. The first changes in the original Cabinet were made in mid-1970. Elliot L. Richardson replaced Finch. James D. Hodgson succeeded Shultz, who became head of the Office of Management and Budget, a new agency created to replace the Bureau of the Budget. Later in 1970 Nixon dismissed Hickel, with whom he had differences, and appointed former Republican national chairman Rogers C.B. Morton in his stead. Early in 1971 John B. Connally, Jr., a former governor of Texas, replaced Kennedy as secretary of the treasury. When the Post Office Department was reorganized in 1971, Blount lost his Cabinet status. Also in 1971, Earl L. Butz succeeded Hardin. Early in 1972 Mitchell resigned to head Nixon’s reelection campaign; Deputy Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst replaced him. Mitchell left the campaign in early July. Peter G. Peterson replaced Stans, who also resigned to work for the campaign. Shultz succeeded Connally. Nixon’s most important selection, perhaps, was that of a successor to retiring Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren. The Senate approved his nominee, Warren E. Burger, a district judge in the federal court system. He had difficulty, however, in getting Senate approval of an associate justice to fill a later vacancy on the Supreme Court. After rejecting Nixon’s first two nominees–both Southerners–the Senate accepted Harry A. Blackmun of Minnesota, a United States court of appeals judge. Two more Nixon nominees, William H. Rehnquist and Lewis F. Powell, were accepted as associate justices to replace Hugo L. Black and John M. Harlan, who retired in 1971.

Upon becoming president, Nixon turned his attention primarily to foreign affairs. In February 1969 he visited Belgium, England, West Germany, Italy, and France in an effort to strengthen the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To assure non-Communist Asian nations of continued United States support, Nixon embarked in late July on a tour of the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, and South Vietnam. Nixon then visited Romania. He was the first American president to enter a Soviet-bloc nation since World War II.

In the fall of 1970, to underscore United States determination to maintain peace in the Mediterranean area, Nixon traveled to Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia, and visited the United States Sixth Fleet, stationed in the area. The tour included meetings with NATO commanders, an audience with Pope Paul VI, and visits to England and Ireland. The change in administrations had little initial effect on the Vietnam peace talks being conducted in Paris. However, in June 1969 President Nixon announced that he would begin a phased withdrawal of American forces. The first contingent of some 25,000 men returned to the United States in July. In April 1970 Nixon announced that United States troops had been sent into Cambodia to seek out and destroy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong supply bases. This extension of the war effort in Indochina aroused strong opposition. On June 29 the last United States ground troops were withdrawn from Cambodia. In 1971 and 1972 Nixon continued his efforts to “Vietnamize” the war. By autumn 1972, United States troop strength in Vietnam–which in April 1969 had reached a peak of 543,000 men–was 32,200 men.

Early in 1972 the North Vietnamese mounted an offensive against the South, which had uneven success in defending itself. In a move to cut off military supplies to Hanoi, Nixon ordered the mining of North Vietnamese ports and the bombing of overland supply routes from China. In October 1972 an accord for ending the war was reached with North Vietnam, but South Vietnam’s government opposed it.

Despite the continuing conflict in Vietnam, Nixon remained determined to inaugurate an era of negotiation with the Communist countries that were supporting North Vietnam. He attended summit meetings in the People’s Republic of China in February 1972 and in the Soviet Union in May. Tensions were lessened between mainland China and the United States.

With United States flags waving over the Kremlin, Nixon and his Soviet hosts signed accords that had long been in preparation. The most important agreement limited the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Plans were made also for pooling resources in space exploration and in medical and environmental research. A joint commission was established to effect trade agreements. From the Kremlin, Nixon made a televised speech to the Soviet people. He visited Iran and Poland before returning home.

In the summer of 1969 Nixon requested legislation to improve urban transportation, raise social security benefits, combat crime, and reorganize the postal service. He also urged the establishment of national minimum standards for welfare payments and the sharing of federal revenue with the states.

Nixon’s request fora multibillion-dollar antiballistic-missile defense system met with strong Congressional opposition. The 91st Congress, controlled by the Democrats, enacted a modified version of his recommendations by a narrow margin. In the fall 1970 elections the Democrats retained control of both houses of Congress.

In June 1970 Nixon signed into law a bill lowering the voting age in federal elections from 21 to 18. In mid-1971 the 26th Amendment to the Constitution, extending the franchise to citizens 18 years of age in all elections, was ratified. In his January 1971 State of the Union message to Congress, Nixon outlined six sweeping proposals. He again called for the sharing of federal revenues with state and local governments. Nixon also sought a deficit federal budget designed to spur the lagging economy; the reform of welfare programs; a federal guarantee of adequate health care for all citizens; new measures to preserve natural resources; and revision of the structure of the federal government.

In August 1971 Nixon imposed mandatory wage and price controls and a 10 percent import surcharge to strengthen the economy. The Nixon Administration applied pressure to encourage foreign governments to help resolve the international monetary crisis by realigning their currencies. Foreign governments, in turn, urged Nixon to devalue the dollar. This he did in December 1971, by ending the long-standing convertibility of the dollar into gold. Shortly afterward he rescinded the import surcharge.

Under a Supreme Court decision of 1969, communities had been required to start busing students from one school district to another to achieve racial balance as soon as so ordered by a federal district court. Congressional approval was given in June 1972 to legislation that would delay for up to 18 months the implementation of those court orders. The bill also contained Nixon’s program to contribute 2 billion dollars over a two-year period to communities in the process of desegregating their schools.

Nixon conducted his campaign for a second term by surrogate. While he seldom left his White House office, the vice-president and other associates campaigned for him. Supporters interpreted his landslide vote as a mandate for his programs. Soon after reelection, Nixon requested the resignations of some 2,000 presidential appointees in a reorganization designed to streamline the federal bureaucracy. Nevertheless, Nixon had broken all records for presidential Cabinet appointments by mid-1974.

Kleindienst resigned his Cabinet post in April 1973. He was replaced by Richardson, who was succeeded as secretary of defense by James R. Schlesinger, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency and of the Atomic Energy Commission. In August Rogers resigned as secretary of state and was replaced by Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s top national security adviser. By mid-1974 Nixon had made 30 Cabinet appointments, breaking Jall records for an American president.

On October 10, 1973, Vice-President Agnew resigned from office and was convicted in federal court on a felony charge of income tax evasion. Nixon chose Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan as Agnew’s successor, and Congress confirmed him.

On January 27, 1973, a Vietnam cease-fire agreement was signed by negotiators in Paris. In March Nixon welcomed home the last American ground troops and prisoners of war from Vietnam. American military involvement continued with bombing raids over Cambodia until mid-August.

In June 1973 Nixon hosted a visit from Leonid I. Brezhnev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist party. The two leaders signed a friendship agreement. They also instituted accords for the expansion of scientific, technical, educational, and cultural exchanges, and for accelerated negotiations to limit nuclear arsenals.

In February 1973 it was revealed that the United States and the People’s Republic of China would set up government liaison offices in Washington, D.C., and in Beijing. In May Nixon met French President Georges Pompidou in Iceland to discuss military, political, and economic relations between the United States and its Western European allies.

War erupted in the Middle East in October 1973 when Syria and Egypt attacked Israel simultaneously. United States mediation led to the disengagement of Egyptian and Israeli troops in January 1974 and of Syrian and Israeli troops in May. On a goodwill trip to the Middle East in June, Nixon visited Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Israel, and Jordan. To Egypt and Israel, Nixon offered aid in developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes. Later in June Nixon flew to the Soviet Union for summit talks.

In his budget message and in a series of State of the Union messages to Congress early in 1973, Nixon announced the reduction of federal spending for social welfare. He asked that cities and states be granted funds in a revenue-sharing plan to take over federal programs in urban development, education, manpower, and law enforcement.

In February 1973 Nixon announced his second devaluation of the dollar. Faced with rising inflation Nixon in June ordered a 60-day freeze on all retail and wholesale prices except for raw agricultural commodities. Price controls in some form were in effect until Congress let them expire on April 30, 1974. Inflation persisted.

In December 1973 Nixon had asked for Congressional review of some of his financial transactions. (Reports had been circulating about his low tax payments in proportion to his income.) In 1974 the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation and the Internal Revenue Service found that Nixon owed more than 400,000 dollars in back taxes.

A major issue at the beginning of Nixon’s second term became known as the Watergate scandal. In June 1972, agents hired by the Committee for the Reelection of the President had been arrested while breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate apartment-office complex in Washington, D.C. Early in 1973 they were convicted of burglary and political espionage. The Senate held hearings to probe allegations of attempts by high White House officials to cover up administration involvement in the case. Several of Nixon’s top aides resigned as they became implicated. Meanwhile, the House Judiciary Committee began an inquiry into whether he had committed impeachable offenses. On April 30, 1974, Nixon released edited transcripts of White House conversations that he felt would reassure the public of his innocence regarding the Watergate break-in and cover-up. Instead, he lost many of his supporters. The Supreme Court ordered Nixon to surrender additional White House tapes sought by the special Watergate prosecutor as evidence in criminal proceedings. Three of these recordings documented Nixon’s personal order to cover up the Watergate break-in. The House Judiciary Committee had already voted in late July to recommend Nixon’s impeachment. With Congressional support destroyed, Nixon chose to resign. Vice-President Ford succeeded him on Aug. 9, 1974. Within a month President Ford granted Nixon a full pardon for all crimes he may have committed during his administration. Nixon spent the next 20 years trying to rehabilitate his domestic reputation, though he never lost the admiration of foreign leaders. He became a respected elder statesman in foreign affairs. He revisited China in 1976 and 1989 and made several visits to Russia, the last early in 1994. The dedication of the Richard Nixon Library in Yorba Linda 1991 was attended by all five living presidents. The 21-million-dollar library and museum was built with private funds. Nixon’s wife, Pat, died in June 1993. Nixon died on April 22, 1994, in a New York City hospital, four days after suffering a severe stroke. He had just finished writing his 11th book, `Beyond Peace’.

——————

footnotes

(1) Ryan, James Richard Nixon (Chicago: Childrens, 1985) p. 115

(2) Aithea, Jonathan Nixon: A Life (New York: Regency, 1994) p. 267

(3) Kane, J. N. Facts About the Presidents (Norfolk: Wilson, 1984) p. 1006

(4) Kane, J. N. Facts About the Presidents (Norfolk: Wilson, 1984) p. 1043

(5) Hargrove, Jim Richard M. Nixon: The 37th President (Chicago: Childrens, 1985) p. 553

(6) Aithea, Jonathan Nixon: A Life (New York: Regency, 1994) p. 318

(7) Ryan, James Richard Nixon (Chicago: Childrens, 1985) p. 213

(8) Ibid., p. 214

Bibliography

Kane, J. N. Facts About The Presidents, Norfolk: Wilson, 1984

Aithea, Jonathan Nixon: A Life, New York: Regency, 1994

Hargrove, Jim Richard M. Nixon: The 37th President, Chicago: Childrens, 1985

Anthony, C. All The President’s Men, Boston: Easton, 1989

Nixon, R.M. The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990

Ryan, James Richard Nixon, Chicago: Childrens, 1985

Bernstein, Carl Compilation of Biographical and Historical Information, Norfolk: Wilson, 1983

The use of chemical warfare in the Gulf is a reality. First there was the Iraqi Arsenal, they possessed several weapons of the death. They were building nuclear weapons and already had chemical and biological weapons. Iraq owned 1500 gallons of anthrax which were in 50 bombs and 10 missiles, and 100 bombs and 15 missiles were loaded with the toxin agent Botulinum that destroys the nerves and eventually chokes the inflicted to a horrible death. Also Iraq possessed a nerve agent called Ricin that could kill with only a single drop (Hedges and Cary 41).

Classified reports from the Pentagon also support the veterans claim that they were exposed to chemical warfare. The documents reported that chemical agents were detected and that some chemical weapons were left on the battlefield. Also our allies, the Czech and French forces detected chemical agents with their detection devices in Northern Saudi Arabia during the beginning of the Gulf War, but US commanders ordered that any warning coming from the Czechs were to be ignored. When the Marines first landed in Kuwait, chemical detection devices sound (Hedges and Cray 43). Also a former CIA analyst, Patrick Eddington, revealed records from the 101st Airborne division that showed the division detected exposure to chemical agent. (AP 5)

Besides the alerts and chemical warfare arsenal there were also Saddam’s orders and threats. Iraqi papers that were intercepted by US intelligence reveals that Saddam ordered that chemical warfare was to be used on Allied targets, but his orders were not to be followed through. Saddam did this so he would not be responsible for the chemical attacks. Within other documents were instructions on how and when the chemical and biological weapons were to be released. The initial attack would come when troops invaded Iraq. Saddam had drawn defense lines across Kuwait and if that the final line were crossed the Iraqi were ready with a chemical or biological attack on the Allied Forces (Timmerman 14).

A chemical attack is not the only possibility on how the troops were exposed. The second possibility is that the troops could have been exposed when the Allied forces conducted installation bombings raids on Iraqi targets. "Considering the above factors [concentration of agent, the elevation of the agents plume, and environmental factors such as wind speed and inversion conditions and wind direction] many thousands of fatal casualties could be realized in neighboring countries such as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel, Iran and the Soviet Union," (Timmerman 14). A 100 kilograms of anthrax could drop entire communities of people. After the bombings, chemical and biological weapons were found. In one site near Baghdad, "75 tons of sarin, 60 to 70 gallons of tabun, 250 tons of mustard gas and stocks of throdiglycal, a precursor used in mustard gas." (Fisher 151).

"And then on the morning of January 17, 1991, the first day of the Gulf War, the official government newspaper in Baghdad announced that Iraq would unleash a secret weapon threat would ‘astonish our enemies and fascinate our friends and release an unusual force’" (Fischer 151). This "unusual force," was predicted to be chemical and biological weapons by US experts and officials.

What more proof does one need? You have the weapons, the motive, and the chemical detection alarms ringing. If this were a criminal case, a guilty verdict would have already been passed down. We were at war with Iraq, Saddam had the weapons, the one question how why didn’t he launch a full chemical attack? I believe the answer is he did not want the Allies to launch a nuclear attack.

If a full chemical assault were to happen on American Troops, less than half would survive according to Army chemical experts. This is due to their outdated and obsolete chemical gear. American troops have had to use the same model of gas masks since the 1960’s and even back then the masks were not safe. The main problem is leakage (Sherwood 11). In order for the mask to function proper an airtight seal is a must. The problem lies in the mask because the seal does not fit some face shapes and sizes. This problem would cause leakage, when subject to a chemical attack in up to 50 percent of the masks. When the General Accounting Office conducted exercises to test the effectiveness of the gear, seven of twenty-three soldiers neglected to get the proper airtight seal, without the air tight seal, the mask would leak and thus be ineffective. The main reason why the soldier could not put on the mask properly is that the soldiers never did receive the proper training, which is four hours in full chemical gear (Sherwood 12).

Some flaws were also associated with the chemical protected suits worn by the army. The gloves were thick which made pulling the trigger of their guns difficult. The boots could "protect long enough to escape after an attack, but not long enough to stand and fight" (Sherwood 11). Both boots and gloves were so chunky, they took 15 minutes just to get them on. Also with the extreme heat in the Gulf region added to that the thick, bulky chemical suit this caused heat stress among the troops (Sherwood 11).

Nick Roberts of Alabama is one of the 70,000 veterans that are afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome. After realizing that the War caused his ailments, became an advocate for the vets ailing from Gulf War Syndrome. Roberts had always wanted to serve his country. He enlisted in the Navy at the end of the Vietnam war, he did not have a chance to go over. The threat of war in the Gulf was growing and now was his chance to serve his country, but he was almost 40, almost too old to serve in combat. Roberts’ Lieutenant told him he could be excused because of some training he had missed but Roberts had to "set him[lieutenant] straight: ‘I’m going[to serve in the Persian Gulf] and that’s that.’"(Fischer 148)

Roberts was stationed 200 miles outside of Kuwait where he saw the effects of war. His unit’s well had been poisoned with arsenic and cyanide. "On other occasions, his comrades related to him that they saw hundreds of dead animals– sheep, goats, and dogs– lying along the highways. Curiously, some animals had blue bags over their heads" (Fischer 140) Blue bags are the NATO signal for biological and chemical warfare.

On January 20, 1991, Roberts was awakened by the sound of explosions. The message of "’Confirmed gas attack. Go to full Mopp-4.’ Panic set in as troops were ordered in full chemical gear," (Fischer 148). Roberts skin burned and lips were numb and his nose ran followed by the taste of a copper penny in his mouth. Later that night Roberts went to Harold Edwards, a decontamination officer, who told Roberts that he detected mustard gas and lewisite in the area. (Fischer 148). Roberts just received his first dose of chemical warfare. The next day Roberts commander told his troops the explosions were sonic booms and the claims were false. And Robert was now experiencing flu-like symptoms accompanied with a rash. "He reported to sick bay every few days. Each time, the medic made a second of his complaints gave him Motrin and told him what the military doctors would tell him over the next two years– he was just stressed out."(Fischer 150).

"When it came to compensation, the department adopted the same stance toward these vets as it had taken with Vietnam Veterans in the late Seventies: no proof, no compensation." (Fischer 151). The VA had denied because there was no numerical code in VA diagnostic book. Without a code for the symptoms, the VA would not help the vets.

Tired of not receiving treatment, Roberts decided to see a private doctor, paying the medical bills out of his pocket. His doctor treated him and discovered that Roberts had developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or cancer. "In another six to eight weeks, the doctor told him, the tumor would have shut down his kidneys and thrown him into a coma–or killed him. The close call made it clear to Roberts that ‘had I relied on the VA, I’d be dead now’ "(Fischer 152).

Besides chemical warfare, there are two more remote possibilities that explain Gulf War Syndrome. The first is the depleted uranium coating that is on artillery tips. The coating made the tips harder, which then could penetrate stronger targets. When the shell explodes it releases radioactive dust, this which in turn would cause the troops to become ill. (Fischer 150).

The second explanation comes from possibility of multiple chemical sensitivity syndrome. The oil fires, pollutants, petrochemicals were too much for the soldiers immune systems. The chemicals broke down their immune systems. Instead of not being unaffected by common chemicals, they are extremely sensitive to them. The symptoms of gulf war syndrome are present.(Fischer 150).

In my opinion Gulf War Syndrome is comparable to the Agent Orange Scandal in Vietnam. Both instances troops were afflicted with pain and suffering from chemicals, and the government was unwilling to pay the veterans the benefits they deserve. After a decade of the Vietnam veterans pleading their claims to the government, the government finally caved in and paid the benefits to the vets. The vets in Vietnam were sprayed by a chemical defoliant called Agent Orange which caused a wide variety of illnesses like the Gulf War vets are experiencing Gulf War Syndrome (Fischer 151).

Why does the government cover-up these kinds of topics? Is it so they will not have to pay millions of dollars in benefits? I think the answer is no. In my opinion the government wants to keep the topic of chemical warfare a secret. The American government wants to be seen as an invincible super power. Imagine if the threat of chemical warfare was a part of everyday life. We would be living in a nightmarish world. Chemical warfare is a threat to America’s status as an invincible superpower. One drop of chemical agent could kill or injure thousands. I believe the reason why America covers up this type of situation so that the citizens can believe that they are safe at all times. Also I believe that the politicians who sent the troops into war do not want to take responsibility for their actions. We helped Iraq injure some of our troops. In the Iraqgate scandal we aided Saddam in beating the Iranians by selling them strains of chemical agents. In turn with these strains the Iraqis could grow their own chemical agents (Fischer 203). With the ability of to make chemical agents, they could load the agent in weapons and use them against American troops, thus the problem of Gulf War Syndrome in the troops arise.

Works Cited
"Ex-CIA analyst accuses Pentagon of hiding data on Gulf War illness." Kansas State Collegian 31 Oct. 1996: 5.
Fischer, Mary. "Dying for Their Country." Gentleman’s Quarterly May 1994: 147-153, 203- 206.
Hedges, Stephen and Peter Cary. "Baghdad’s Dirty Secrets." U.S. News and World Reports 11 Sept. 1995: 41-43.
Sherwood, Ben. "Toxic Shock." The New Republic. 6 May 1991: 10-12.
Timmerman, Kenneth. "The Iraq Papers." The New Republic. 29 Jan. 1996: 12-15.

Hector, the greatest of the Trojan warriors, begins the poem as the model of a Homeric hero. His dedication and strict belief in the code of honor is illustrated many times throughout the course of The Iliad. An example of this is presented in book three of the poem, where Hector reprimands Paris for refusing to fight. He says to Paris, “Surely now the flowing-haired Achaeans laugh at us, thinking you are our bravest champion, only because your looks are handsome, but there is no strength
in your heart, or courage” (3:43). Hector believes that it is against the heroic code for a person to abstain from fighting when his fellow men are in the battlefield. Hector faces a moral dilemma when dealing with Paris. By being Paris’ brother, Hector is supposed to protect and honor his decisions, but he believes that Paris is wrong in his actions, and feels it necessary to make that known to him.

Another place where we see Hector’s strict belief in the code of honor is in the events that take place during his return home in the sixth book. Hector returns to Troy in order to have the queen and the other women make a sacrifice to Athena, hoping that she will help the Trojans in the war. After arranging that act he visits Paris, with the intention of convincing him to fight. Visibly upset, Hector scolds Paris, telling him that “The people are dying around the city and around the steep wall as they fight hard; it is for you that this war with its clamor has flared up about our city. You yourself would fight with another whom you saw anywhere hanging back from the hateful encounter,” (6:327). Paris agrees that he has been dishonoring himself, and tells Hector he will return with him to fight. Hector then goes to find Andromache, who is standing by the walls outlining the battlefield with Astanax, their son.

When Andromache pleads with Hector to stay home and cease fighting, Hector refuses, telling her that he would feel deep shame in front of the Trojans if he were to withdraw himself from the war. Hector then tells Andromache that the thought of her being dragged off by the Achaeans troubles him, but he is relieved by the knowledge that she will be looked at as “the wife of Hector, who was ever the bravest fighter of the Trojans, breakers of horses, in the days when they fought about Ilion,” (6:460). This causes Andromache to shed tears. On the one hand, she understands Hector’s beliefs and deep sense of morality, but on the other feels it is just as honorable to stay home and care for one’s family. This is a second place in which Hector feels torn between two conflicting responsibilities.

A character’s social status was mainly based upon his performance in the battlefield. Achilles is a tragic figure who believes strongly in social order, but questions the idea of fighting for glory. When Aias and Odysseus are sent by Agamemnon to plead with Achilles’ to fight for the Greeks, Achilles denies them, saying “There was no gratitude given For fighting incessantly forever against your enemies. Fate is the same for the man who holds back, the same if he fights hard” (9:316). This statement shows that Achilles is an individual, and does not conform to the ideas of the others. Achilles is portrayed as a fatalist, believing that there is no point in fighting, because the end is the same for everyone. In book nine, when Agamemnon admits he is wrong and offers Gifts, Achilles still refuses to join his army in battle. He does not see Agamemnon’s gifts as a reconciliation attempt, but rather as an insult. Achilles believes that Agamemnon’s offerings are selfish and boastful, and he denies them to in order to show Agamemnon that his loyalty cannot be bought.

Later in the poem, Achilles revenges Patroklos’ death by killing Hector. It is customary and proper to return a dead body to its home so it can be given a proper burial, and it is against the code of honor to perform acts of excessive cruelty. Achilles is so distraught by his friends’ death that he contradicts both of these conditions. First, he refuses to return Hector’s body to the Trojans, and then proceeds to drag it behind his carriage by the ankles. Achilles’ deliberate mutilation of Hector’s body shows the reader that he does not hold the code of honor in high regard.

Nestor is the character in the poem that best convinces the others to diligently follow the code of honor. There are many instances in which the social order of The Iliad is disrupted, and Nestor comes forth to help restore the order. Although they are thought by the reader to be somewhat pointless, Nestor’s stories always have a deeper meaning behind them. In book seven Hector challenges the Achaeans, asking which of them is willing to fight against him. When none volunteer, Nestor tells them the story of his victory against Ereuthalion, emphasizing that at the time he fought he was the youngest among the warriors. He says to the troops, ” If I were young now, as then, and the strength still steady within me; Hector of the glancing helm would soon find his battle. But you, now, who are the bravest of all the Achaeans, are not minded with a good will to go against Hector,” (7:157). This speech compels nine of the Achaean’s to volunteer, showing Nestor’s power to influence the warriors to stick to the heroic code. Later in the same book, Nestor again stresses the importance of the code of honor when he suggests that the Greeks retreat from fighting and bury their dead, because it was believed that the funeral shows the social status of a warrior. Nestor also wants the warriors to subside from fighting in order to build a wall to protect them. He convinces them by saying, “We must dig a deep ditch circling it, so as to keep off their people and horses, that we may not be crushed under the attack of these proud Trojans,” (7:341).

Nestor realizes that the Trojans have the upper hand, and does not want the Greeks to lose without a putting up a respectable fight. He feels that for the Greeks to turn around and leave would be a great dishonor, and does everything in his power to keep them in the battle. Nestor’s advice, finally, challenges the Achaeans to live up to the honorable precedent set by the book’s fallen heroes.

The characters in The Iliad base many of their actions on the code of honor. The warriors believe that the most dishonorable thing someone can do is refrain from fighting with his fellow soldiers, whereas Achilles disagrees. Although a “code of honor” is present in the Iliad, many of the characters interpret and maintain it in different ways.

Pearl Harbor was the operating base of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The Japanese pulled a surprise attack on the U.S. on December 7, 1941 at 7:50 A.M. during the beginning of World War II. On November 26 a powerful Japanese task force, under the command of vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, left the Kuril Islands; on December 2 it received a coded message issuing the attack order. The undetected Japanese force arrived off the Hawaiian Islands on the morning of December 7. In two successive waves more than 350 Japanese bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters struck. More than 75 U.S. warships(including battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and auxiliaries) were based at this “Gibraltar of the Pacific.” All U.S. aircraft carriers were elsewhere. Observing radio silence, it reached a launching point at 6 AM, December 7. At 7:50 AM, the first wave of Japanese planes struck Pearl Harbor, bombarding airfields and battleships moored at the concrete quays. The U.S. totally taken off guard had to defend themselves in pajamas. They used anti-aircraft guns in an attempt to stop the Japanese. A second wave followed. The surprise attack was over before 10 AM. The results were devastating; 18 U.S. ships were hit, and more than 200 aircraft destroyed or damaged. The battleship Arizona was a total wreck; the West Virginia and California were sunk; and the Nevada was heavily damaged. Approximately 2,400 Americans were killed, 1,300 wounded, and 1,000 missing. Japanese losses were fewer than 100 casualties, 29 planes, and 5 midget submarines. The Japanese totally destroyed the U.S. naval power in the Pacific. The attack was, however, a colossal political and psychological blunder, for it mobilized U.S. public opinion against the Japanese and served as the catalyst that brought the United States into the war. “December 7, 1941,” said President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is “a date which will live in infamy.” A monument has been built across the hull of the sunken U.S.S. Arizona; it was dedicated as a national memorial in 1962. The next day President Roosevelt told a joint session of Congress that December 7 was “a date which will live in infamy.” Congress voted to declare war on Japan. A small boat rescued seamen from USS West Virginia after the surprise Japanese air attack. There are different reasons why the Japanese were able to pull a surprise attack on the United States biggest military base. One is that when the U.S. received the message from the Japanese saying that they were going to declare war the guy who was receiving the message reported that it was a false alarm. The real reason is not known why but Pearl Harbor will always be remembered. They should have known not to mess with the U.S. because after that little stunt they pulled we really set off and got into World War II.

In this report I hope that you have learned a little more about that battle that we fought. Now the U.S. and Japan get along just fine and we trade with them. Lots of business deals go on and we get products from them like tv’s, camcorders, and computers. We’ve even promised to defend them if China or any other country tries to attack them. They better remember one thing and that is they better never double cross us again.