The Rise and Rise of the Regime Renovators™️
Episode Three: A Whole Mess of 'Whoopass' (Down the Mountain)
‘Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of fundamental human rights...Though the tragedies, deaths, and pain caused by Castro cannot be erased, our administration will do all it can to ensure the Cuban people can finally begin their journey toward prosperity and liberty.’ — Donald Trump, on the death of Fidel Castro, November 2016.
‘The death of Fidel Castro is a moment to remember the untold suffering of the Cuban people under the weight of a brutal, oppressive regime...[He] seized power promising to bring freedom and prosperity to Cuba, but his regime turned it into an impoverished island prison….Sadly, [his] death does not mean freedom for the Cuban people or justice for the democratic activists, religious leaders, and political opponents he...jailed and persecuted.’ — Marco Rubio, on same.
‘For 57 years, Castro systematically slaughtered dissenters, destroyed the freedom of his own people, and enriched himself while making Cuba a client state of the Soviet Union... His reign of terror is over. He was a murderous dictator who’ll be remembered as a cruel tyrant responsible for the deaths of thousands of Cubans and the misery of millions more.’ — Ted Cruz, ditto.—
Introduction: Although the immensely resource rich Latin American nation of Venezuela is presently at pole position on the Regime Renovators dance card, it is another nation in the same ‘hood which is likely far moreso than others to forever hold a special place in whatever passes for their hearts and souls. We’re talking here the Republic of Cuba. Indeed, the diligent student of history will no doubt see more than a few parallels between what’s happening with Venezuela and the Cuban narrative, the latter a country in whose affairs America’s constant interference resulted in what one commentator described as a “whole mess o’ ‘whoopass’ down the mountain”. For some that might sound like colourful hyperbole, but not by much if at all. For others, it’ll be “so what else is new?”
If there were such a record in the famous Guiness Book thereof, Cuba is the only nation which thus far has resisted—against all odds and for the best part of seventy years—Uncle Sam’s earnest (and by some accounts, well-meaning), attempts at regime rehabilitation. Similarly, no other country’s leader of which I’m aware has been subject to more attempts to relieve its leader—Fidel Castro—of the burdens of power, all of which by definition failed. He therefore stands tall as one of the few of America’s countless ‘betes noire’ who died of natural causes and/or left office of his own accord in his own sweet time. (Muamar Ghaddafi’s ghost no doubt wishes he could’ve been so lucky.)
That said, Cuba is an ideal case study for reflecting not just on the profound if variable geopolitical impact (read: “blowback”) of America’s repeat offender penchant for mucking about in the affairs of other countries. It provides us some insight into the seemingly inherited, cross generational psychopathology of the “Beltway Bedlamites” (oka the Washington foreign policy establishment), and just how badly they get it all so demonstrably and disastrously wrong. Further it is an instructive measure by which we can judge to what extent our history is falsified and our political discourse is debased (though some might argue we don’t need any more lessons in this regard). Put another way, for more evidence of past and enduring ‘delirium in the imperium’, look no further than Cuba.
For its part, the present Cuban government under Miguel Díaz-Canel remains a steadfast supporter of the Nicolás Maduro government in Venezuela. Much to Washington’s chagrin no doubt, Cuba continues to provide political, intelligence, and diplomatic support amid escalating U.S. pressure being brought to bear on Venezuela. Amidst speculation of an imminent “Bay of Pigs” inspired invasion of Venezuela, Maduro himself presumably hopes that some of Castro’s mojo has rubbed off on him.
As we continue to enter unmapped terrain in U.S. and Western foreign policy in this increasingly multi-polar world of great power projection, Australian Greg Maybury takes an off piste look at the history of the US-Cuba relationship, what lessons might be learned from it, along with why all things Cuba have exercised the deranged minds U.S. political elites on both sides of the political divide.
This then represents the third instalment in a series exploring in whatever form it takes, the history and impact of America’s interference in the affairs of other nations. Along with reminding those who may have memory holed it or not fully appreciated the implications, this project aims to bring this narrative front of mind with folks who are just beginning to grapple with the reality that all is not right with the world. And in so doing, [then] expose the role of the Anglo-American-Zionist establishment (of which Australia as a member of the “Five Eyes” intelligence/security apparatus is a key part) in creating and fomenting that milieu of global uncertainty and instability. —
— That Whole ‘Bay of Pigs’ Thing
Considering the deluge of bitterness and pique that oozed from the poisonous pores of many in the U.S. political establishment in their response to the death of Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro in late 2016, even some folks with more than a passing knowledge of that country’s role in key world events and history in general, might’ve been left wondering what all the fuss was about.
These included everyone from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, to the then US president elect—and current Oval One—Donald Trump, to name just a few. Indeed it seemed every man and his dog had an opinion on Castro and were tripping over themselves to throw their yarey hats into the ring of uninvited and less that flattering eulogies being offered up for the occasion. So no “let bygones be bygones” in Washington then? No sirree Señor Bob! “Speak ill of the dead?” Si, no problemo amigo! As the epigraphs attest, when it came to trashing Castro the man and his legacy, it was an all-hands-on-deck affair.
Indeed, given his lengthy tenure and enduring legacy, even after the best part of six decades defying US hegemony and thumbing his nose at Uncle Sam and his all but self-declared ‘playground bully’ status, it’s a remarkable testament to the collective psychopathology of the Beltway Bedlamites that after all this time they were still able to muster up seemingly unlimited reserves of schadenfreude and animus in more or less equal parts at his passing.
Castro—a man then as reviled as he was revered in life and in death—led that country’s 1959 revolution, one of the most portentous tipping points in the Cold War, if not in modern history. It even featured as a key narrative element in one of the most famous films of all time, The Godfather Part II.
Quite apart from their natural disposition towards those countries who don’t abide by the bespoke Washington playbook, there are many reasons why Cuba is so hated by the US political, criminal, and corporate elites, a situation that has changed little to this day. (Doubtless this has much to do with Cuba’s lingering support of Venezuela and its current president Nicholas Maduro, who we might dub the New Castro.)
Fidel Castro, Cuba’s estimable commandante, stood up to the ‘yanquis imperialistos conquistadores’ however they might’ve been cleverly disguised and lived and thrived to tell the tale. “No client dictators here” might’ve been his positioning statement! America may be the “United States of Amnesia” (to use Gore Vidal’s favoured phrase); but they have long, deep memories for Castro and Cuba that crosses generations. Even for those who are perhaps largely ignorant of that history, and were born decades after Castro took over.
The following might serve at the outset to give such people an idea as to why his passing provoked such a bilious response from Washington. As former diplomat Wayne Smith once memorably opined in his aptly titled 1987 memoir The Closest of Enemies, ‘Cuba seems to have the same effect on U.S. administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.’ Smith, a one time ambassador to Cuba in the early years of Castro’s reign under president Dwight (Ike) Eisenhower, might’ve said this almost four decades ago; but nevertheless this reality persists almost ten years after Fidel Castro’s death.
In that time, some effort was made in improving relations during the Obama administration, but under Trump most of these gains were reversed. Though the Biden camp implemented limited, targeted rollbacks of the Trump policy, the administration retained the core of its framework. This flip-flopping of course is indicative amongst other things of Washington’s schizoid attitude toward Cuba, one which for the most part leans towards a ‘never forgive, never forget’ mindset. To be sure, there’s rarely been a shortage of countries that could lay claim to having this transformative effect for so long on the collective psyche of the U.S. political establishment, with Iran being a possible exception.
But it is Cuba that stands out as an exemplar, and so much of that has to do with Castro himself. Put simply, amongst the iconic revolutionary’s many talents was an unerring ability to get up Uncle Sam’s nose, and get away with it so often for so long. Suffice to say, since they seem to have inherited the same basic instincts as their forbears, this explains why the bulk of Washington’s “Werewolves” at the time of his death were ‘howling at the moon’ at the Comandante’s demise.
Castro was the only world leader who resisted U.S. hegemony and lived to tell the tale, surviving by some accounts more than 630 separate assassination attempts over decades. Such is the animus towards all things Cuba and Castro, president George W Bush (aka “Junior”) refused his offer to provide teams of doctors to assist the Hurricane Katrina relief effort 2005, one of modern America’s worst natural disasters.
Although Castro came to power at the fag end of the Eisenhower era, he was catapulted to world prominence shortly after the inauguration of President John F Kennedy (JFK) in 1961. It was on JFK’s watch that attempts to assassinate Castro began in earnest, all under cover of the infamous Operation Mongoose; this decidedly dodgy ‘black-op’ gambit involved the CIA working in cahoots with the Mafia no less, and assorted pissed-off Cuban expatriates, exiles, and Batista regime ‘refugees’, all seeking to take back the ‘farm’. All this was with the full knowledge and active support and encouragement of JFK’s little bro’ Attorney-General Robert (Bobby) Kennedy.
Although there is much conjecture as to whether JFK actually did know himself about Mongoose’s key objective, some find it difficult to accept he didn’t know given the brothers were ‘joined at the hip’. If indeed JFK did know, then he either ordered those involved—including Bobby—to stop and they were ignored, or JFK acquiesced. In the latter case, whilst he may or may not have been happy in doing so, such was the pressure on him over the Cuban ‘situation’, he may have gone along with it reluctantly. Like so much of the JFK mythology, we may never know the answer.
Nonetheless Castro reportedly was deeply disturbed by JFK’s 1963 assassination, and the Comandante would’ve had good reason. Apart from having his hopes dashed for a rapprochement with the U.S. (JFK had earlier opened a back channel communication link with the Cuban government, seeking to ease the tensions between them), Fidel knew full well that if the U.S. could plausibly blame him for JFK’s murder—which he instinctively felt they’d try to do, and which almost certainly was the intention of those who did actually engineer the hit—it would be ‘on for young and old’.
The following should further underscore the significant role played by Cuba during the Cold War. When asked in the acclaimed 2003 Errol Morris film Fog of War about the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis (CMC)—specifically, “how close?” did the U.S. and the USSR came to an all out nuclear exchange—then US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara chillingly revealed that the two powers came “that close” (picture a grim-faced McNamara placing the tips of his forefinger and thumb so close there was little daylight between them).
The CMC was itself precipitated by Castro—who eventually was enticed into the Soviet camp, thus attracting said “animus”—‘inviting’ Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier to ‘park’ some spare medium range ballistic missiles (locked n’ loaded, nuked up MRBMs) on the island country. As Cuba was located less than ninety miles from Florida, this triggered the scariest, most public, and potentially apocalyptic standoff between the two nuclear superpower archrivals. The stakes for humanity had never been greater!
— The Cuban Chickens (Coming Home to Roost)
At this point it’s instructive to look back at some of the pre-revolution history of Cuba and its relationship with its neighbor. For our purposes it is both sufficient and necessary to consider in some detail that other seminal historical tipping point of the Cold War involving Cuba and America, the Bay of Pigs invasion, one that both preceded and precipitated the CMC, and later, by numerous, credible accounts, the Kennedy assassination in 1963. (A story for another time.)
For those ‘buffs’ of America’s iniquitous regime change track record, along with its recidivistic propensity for interfering in the affairs—and ruthlessly exploiting both the resources and people—of other countries, the story of Cuba is one with which most of a certain age will be reasonably well acquainted. From the early-mid 1950s, Castro and his crew fomented a popular revolution, and in 1959 after years of vicious guerrilla warfare against the oppressive and corrupt rule of the U.S. client-dictator Fulgencio Batista, the rebels ousted him.
As noted, this is not an altogether unfamiliar motif in the U.S. foreign policy narrative whereby the world’s loudest exponent of liberty, human rights, democracy, freedom and the rule of law, consistently ‘relied’ on ‘klepto-brutocracies’ like Batista’s to deliver anything but the above to their own people, almost always with varying degrees of unerring, bloody, tragic failure for them.
Batista for his part has long since earned his rightful place in the Client Dictators’ Hall of Fame, and then some. For years his rule generated deep-seated discontent, all of which seemed to go blithely unnoticed by the Americans. He, his cronies and the Cuban elites of the era were enthusiastic supporters and beneficiaries of American business involvement in Cuba, and as indicated, in particular, that [of] the Mob. Batista was in the pocket of the notorious Jewish ‘Kosher Nostra’ capo di tutti capi Meyer Lansky, a man who like many of his mob confreres, Jewish and Italian, is frequently, and we can say, not coincidentally, linked to the Kennedy assassination.
In any event, all of these folks were minting squillions off gambling, prostitution, hospitality and tourism mainly and bleeding the country dry, whilst the general populace was so far below the poverty line they might as well have been living in the Neolithic Age. To say the Cuban people then were unhappy campers does not begin to describe the political, economic and social climate and conditions at the time. To be sure, the aforementioned Cuban elites and assorted regime cronies turfed out by Castro were not happy either. (Many of these folks continued to massage their own animus for Castro for decades to come, the celebrations in Little Havana in Miami, Florida at news of his death being testament to that.)
Eventually the chickens came home to roost for Batista as they do in one form or another for most of America’s client dictators, though usually too late for those who’ve suffered under their sclerotic, despotic rule. Much like the Shah of Iran twenty years later and Mobutu Sese Seko in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1997 to name just two examples, the U.S. left its hapless ‘client’ up that creek without so much as a toothpick for a paddle when it became obvious just how restless the natives were and how little they could do to resist the uprising.
In order to avoid having his corrupt and brutal ‘ass’ tarred and feathered by his ungrateful subjects and run out of town, Batista quit his day-time job and rode off into the sunset, consoling himself by filling his burros’ saddlebags with mucho ‘gringo-green’ and a large swag of looted booty. It’s uncertain if this ‘self-service’ severance package kept him and his brood more or less comfortable in his exiled retirement, but we might safely assume it did. Either way it seemed, it was better ‘fled’ and ‘fed’, than ‘dead’ and/or ‘red’. We’ve heard this story before, and we’d all hear it time and time again.
In summary then, Castro, along with his brother Raul (who in 2008 took over the presidency after Fidel stepped down due to ill-health), aided memorably by the already blooded Marxist revolutionary, budding counter-cultural poster-boy, and perennially photogenic Argentinian doctor Chè Guevara—a man who never saw a left-wing revolution he didn’t want to get down and ‘bolshie’ with—assumed control of the country. They kicked out the gringos, and nationalised many of the industries and businesses from which they were raking in said “squillions”.
As noted, for Lansky and the rest of the Mob their Golden Cuban Goose was cooked. Yet this was seen as an exceedingly bad development not just for them, but everyone in Washington across the defense, security, intelligence and political establishment and in the boardrooms of those U.S. corporations who’d enjoyed massive profits during the crime/corporate-friendly Batista regime.
Thus was created the circumstances that would eventually lead to the Bay of Pigs invasion, one of most ill-advised, ill-fated, ill-conceived, ill-managed “boys’ own adventure” in U.S. history. A defining event of the Cold War to be sure, but also one of the CIA’s biggest cock-ups. And along with his assassination in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963 and the aforementioned CMC, the BoP completed a trifecta of defining events of the short, but momentous JFK presidency.
It was to be sure, the most fateful, not just for him but his country; although it was not widely recognized at the time, this monumentally misconceived exercise in regime change and hegemonic overreach would set in train a sequence of events culminating in the CMC in 1962, and as noted, JFK’s murder the year after, one of course of the most significant events in modern history!
— ‘The Whole “Bay of Pigs” Thing’ —
Few foreign policy misadventures (in this case at least those that became public knowledge), resulted in a more immediate and vociferous response from the American public and international community, as did the BoP. Even fewer ended in such obvious and enduring ignominy. If JFK had been enjoying the ride in Air Force One up until that point then, the ‘flight’ became very turbulent with the Cuban ‘situation’. By giving the nod for the BoP, the POTUS, to borrow an apt turn of phrase, bought himself and his country a “whole mess o’ ‘whoopass’ down the mountain”.
In the wake of its highly publicised failure (another textbook case study, this time of ‘blowback in real time’), then CIA chief Allen Dulles and two of his senior CIA spook colleagues were eventually forced to hang up their trilbies and trench-coats. Although JFK reportedly had a measure of default respect for Dulles—part of the reason he was held over from the previous administration—the president fired him.
As history tells us, this was a decision the veteran spook-master neither forgot nor forgave, and one, which as hinted, would have fatal consequences for JFK, and as noted, fateful consequences for the country and the world. It was a decision that propelled him further down that “mountain”; all of which is to say, JFK himself would not live to regret it. That so many others would though—not least his brother—is an inescapable reality.
For his part, Number 35 was so rattled by the BoP experience, he famously threatened to ‘splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the four winds’. Whilst the reputation of the CIA was sullied in the wake of the BoP, it was however an American institution that was synonymous with fighting the dreaded, so-called ‘red menace’, itself personified by Castro. It remained intact and eventually recovered, whether for better or worse though is a matter of perspective.
As for the Company itself and the remaining key figures though after the purge, they never forgot Kennedy’s threat nor his perceived ‘betrayal’ of the BoP invaders when the mission went pear-shaped. In the end JFK backed off on ‘chopping up’ the agency. (To the extent Kennedy might’ve been able to achieve such a goal even if he was determined, either way it may again still have been another fateful decision by the president.)
If it wasn’t before, then in hindsight it became very clear to JFK that with respect to the BoP gamble, he’d had a lot of skin in this game. The presidential prints were all over the order to ‘nod’ the ‘regime renovators’. Even though he privately felt the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCOS, the Pentagon brass) had pulled a ‘bait and switch’ on him, JFK publicly took one for the team on what president Richard Nixon later referred to as the ‘whole Bay of Pigs thing’, instead opting publicly at least to abide by Harry S Truman‘s dictum, viz. ‘the buck stops here’.
So what exactly happened with the BoP? In order to better grasp how it all came together—a phrase not entirely appropriate because when it really counted it all came spectacularly unstuck—some background is needed. Whilst a detailed ‘blow by blow’ is not necessary herein, it’s still anything but a short story.
By most accounts the original plot was hatched during the previous Eisenhower administration under Dulles’s direction and in cahoots with his big brother John Foster Dulles, Ike’s Secretary of State and the archetypal, old school Cold Warrior, a man for whom leaders like Castro were anathema. It involved enlisting the support of Cuban exiles, all of whom were mightily miffed by the new Cuban leader’s militant communist moxie. If anything the Cuban exiles hated Castro more than the Americans did, and were eager to bed down with anyone who’d help restore them to their former glory.
The truly ironic thing is that the Americans at one point did have opportunities to bring Castro inside the tent before the Soviets did. Despite the fact he’d expropriated the property of some U.S. corporations (including that of the ubiquitous, notorious United Fruit Company, of Guatemalan coup fame, and the then ‘poster-child’ of rapacious, exploitative U.S. corporate fuelled neo-colonialism), he denied being a communist.
Nor were there any signs the as yet non-aligned Castro intended to bunk down with the Soviets. On his visit to America in April 1960, Ike though inexplicably refused to even meet with the new leader, despite the fact the U.S. had formally recognised his new government. The sub-text of the Americans’ response might as well have been: ‘If we can’t own, pillage, plunder and exploit your country and bleed it dry, we don’t wanna know about you. Adios amigo!’
— In Like Flynn (A “Perfect Failure”)
Now whether Fidel might’ve responded positively to any American overtures is somewhat academic. But the truth is that no one will ever know. One thing we do know was that when the Americans ‘passed’ on Cuba, the Soviets didn’t miss a beat and were ‘in like Flynn’! The rest as they say, is history, most of it as we’ll see, not so good! And so the stage was set for the BoP.
Aptly described by author Peter Kornbluh as the ‘perfect failure’, the BoP was a disastrous mix of own goals, ‘mission myopia’, cock-ups and unalloyed hubris. The plan was so ill conceived that even the normally gung-ho Chiefs knew it was bound to fail, or had serious doubts. There are varying accounts as to whether they properly conveyed this to JFK, or there was some genuine misunderstanding.
The reality was that the Chiefs had their own agenda—then as now, a not unfamiliar phenomenon in the annals of interagency rivalry within the US military, foreign policy and national security establishment. They wanted a full-scale invasion with all the ‘fruit’ and knew JFK was not up for that under any circumstances.
Yet in effectively ‘nodding’ a mission they knew had little or no chance of success, they calculated that Kennedy’s hand would be forced politically when that failure became obvious to America and the ROW; the JCOS brass would then get their Big Day Out after all. From there they could claim bragging rights as the guys who came in and cleaned up the CIA’s mess, and Kennedy would cop all the flak for approving this ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ operation.
It’s uncertain how the Chiefs were going to explain to Kennedy himself after the fact why they did not actively discourage the mission, or whether indeed they even gave this much consideration. It’s possible they short-changed JFK’s ability to ‘smell the rat’ (that effectively he was set up by the CIA and the Chiefs), or figured that he would be so grateful to them later on when they had in fact cleaned up said mess he’d forgive and forget their treachery.
As it turned out, the ‘newbie’ POTUS did in fact detect the ‘odour of rodent’ and the mission was finally aborted. In order to minimise the by now inevitable blowback, he refused to nod the necessary extra air cover that everyone was chomping at the bit for, and that they insisted would snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Kennedy didn’t buy this, and, once the penny dropped, seemingly preferred to cut his losses there and then.
But from there on, collectively the brass was persona non grata with JFK, as he simply deduced he could no longer trust them. Much to their chagrin, they didn’t get their ‘boots-on-the-ground’ gig as hoped. To underscore how unsettled the JCOS were about this, around eighteen months later at the height of the CMC, the then Chief Flyboy of the US Air Force Curtis (“Bombsaway”) Le May along with his JCOS colleagues began foaming at the mouth and literally wanted to nuke the Soviets and the Cubans back to the aforementioned Neolithic, where as noted most of the latter still lived, at least economically. That Kennedy prevailed then over this enormous pressure is a matter of history of course; the fact we’re all still here talking about it may be some testament to that reality.
— Lock ‘n Load Time
As for the invasion however, with some modification to the original plan, in early April 1961, JFK gave the CIA and the exiled ‘Cubanistas’—who by this time had foam coming out of their mouths—the go-ahead. Whilst this was Dulles’s baby though, JFK had to ‘give the green’. It was ‘lock ‘n load time’ then, what many might now say has long since become the default operating principle of U.S. foreign policy!
In preparation for the invasion, equipment, supplies and materiel were parachuted into the designated invasion location earlier with planes piloted by Cuban exiles accompanied by CIA mercenaries. However as luck would have it, much of this logistical support was lost in the swamp close by. Moreover, a pre-invasion air support strike was supposed to soften up the Cubans, break their morale, and destroy or render inactive most of the Cuban Air Force. As it turned out, they destroyed only a handful of planes, with a number of civilians ending up as collateral damage. There would be more ‘collateral damage’, but not on the Cuban side.
The decision not to follow-up with further air support—to coin a phrase we can imagine those captured would’ve appreciated—left them with their ‘paramilitary peckers’ swinging in the Bay of Pigs’ sea breeze. They quickly ran out of—or were unable to locate—the aforementioned supplies, a mission critical consideration that seems to have escaped much, well, consideration in the planning.
Over the next three days, there was intense fighting between the two forces; but before it even started really, it was all over Rover for the counter-revolutionary wannabes bar the shouting of ‘Viva la (Counter) Revolucion!’ Amazingly, the CIA became aware that both the Soviets and the Cubans knew of a possible attack and/or invasion. But it all went ahead anyway. Thus Castro expected that any such operation would be a full-scale military campaign, not the piddling bunch of deluded, gung-ho, right-wing, rag-tag, rabble-rousing soldiers of misfortune that eventually did do so.
The implications of this intelligence for the success or otherwise of the mission were to say the least, considerable. Even more incredibly, the CIA folk adopted a ‘need to know’ response to this critical piece of information and omitted to tell JFK when there was still ample opportunity, possibly explaining why the normally unflappable president went ballistic later.
It’s difficult to see how Kennedy would’ve green-lighted the operation had he been ‘in the know’ on this. In anticipation of such an invasion, the canny Castro mobilised all his forces and rallied for moral support any and all Cuban nationals who could hold a pitchfork or machete, [and] whose feet could reach the pedals and see over the steering wheels of their Chevy convertibles and Ford pickups.
The BoP invaders then were unable to achieve their mission critical objectives and eventually were outgunned, outnumbered, out-maneuvered and out-smarted every which way from Sunday (still three days away). Having nowhere else to go going forward, the counter-revolutionary minded ‘paramilitarias’ high-tailed it back to the beaches of the Bay of Pigs with a large Cuban cult following. On this occasion they were out of luck; said “cult” eventually caught up with them and presented them with very limited options, one of which was not going back to the U.S. in a hurry unless it was in a Pentagon-issue body bag. Those that weren’t killed, either surrendered or were captured, with some later executed.
There are some further observations about the BoP “fiasco” (as JFK aptly defined it) to note. Before the invasion the Cuban revolution was, by some accounts, running out of puff. After the botched invasion and the resulting worldwide publicity, it was unstoppable. The location of the Soviet missiles in Cuba in October the next year—the decision taken as a direct consequence of the fallout from the BoP to discourage the U.S. of further thoughts of regime change—was the most provocative, potentially consequential acts in history, a possible prelude to a “Showdown at the OK Corral”, avec ‘nukes.
As for JFK, he was devastated by the outcome, and humiliated by the fallout, of the mission. Given this was a man unaccustomed to failure, it must have been a heavy cross to bear. He’d however get an opportunity to redeem himself with the CMC, but his legacy was forever stained. As for the CIA, well if they didn’t come to fully appreciate the essence of ‘blowback’ with the BoP, it was likely they never would.
— Forever Howling at the Havana Moon
And here’s one of the ‘best’ bits about the Cuba-U.S. narrative. For years after, the CIA expended perhaps more time, money, ingenuity and energy in trying to ‘off’ Fidel than they have in trying to ‘off’ all of the other heads of state together that they’ve ever had their sights on for over 60 years. A big call to be sure, but there you go. They cooked up all manner of outrageous, cockamamie Spy v Spy schemes such as placing small exploding devices in his ‘fave’ stogies; administering exotic bacteria, viruses or toxic poisons by a multitude of means and methods; and giving him LSD so he’d flip out and lose face in public. They even considered using, wait for it, non-discernible microbionoculators (lethal darts, avec undetectable poison, fired from a purpose built high powered gun), to all manner of bizarre plots and schemes such as administering chemicals to make the Comandante’s facial furniture fall out, said “furniture” apparently considered to be ‘sacred’ in a Cuban kind of way.
That they tried so hard for so long is the main game here. The fact then that Castro still saw off 10 US presidents and hundreds of attempts to ‘cut his water off’ is a remarkable feat unto itself. And whilst all those who reviled him were grinning from ear to ear at news of his passing and jumping for joy in Miami’s Little Havana, it seems safe to say ‘Fiddy’ had the last laugh anyway.
Interestingly, one of the reasons why the BoP coup plot was unsuccessful was for much the same reason that the Iraq invasion in 2003 was an unmitigated disaster: like those involved in, and who supported, that monumental foreign policy miscalculation by the U.S., they believed the Cuban people would be grateful for being liberated from Fidel’s tyranny and rise up in arms against their oppressors. Of course history tells a different story. Assumption as they say, is the “sum’ bitch-mother’ of all cock-ups”, one that makes an all too recurring appearance in the U.S. foreign policy narrative.
And from the firmly established facts on the one hand, to the most outlandish, ‘loony-toon’ conspiracy theories on the other regarding the events and circumstances surrounding—and people involved in—Kennedy’s assassination, few if any foreign countries come remotely close to having any more connections to that momentous event in U.S. history than does Cuba. For this reason alone, the country—and by extension Fidel Castro himself—will feature large in any future historical narrative. The very fact that so many of the BoP ‘alumni’—Cubans, mafiosi and former CIA officers and/or private military contractors—reportedly went on to play significant roles in at least two other infamous, much written about events in U.S. history—the Kennedy assassination and the Watergate Scandal—underscores the myriad, byzantine links between all three of these key events, and Cuba’s role in the larger narrative.
👉 📖 SIDEBAR: In the 2006 sixth edition of his book Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy, the late Michael Collins Piper explores in depth many of these crucial episodes and identifies with great clarity and credibility the extraordinary links between them. The principal thesis of his book can be expressed simply, if for many, somewhat contentiously: it was Israel that was one of—if not the—prime instigators of the hit on JFK.
In one of over a dozen appendices, Piper also brings a whole new perspective to the Watergate Scandal, and the “inextricable”, rarely explored connections between these two seminal events. Irrespective of readers’ preconceived ideas about either and the dramatis personae populating the narrative of both, this is by any measure one of the most revealing and riveting tomes this writer has delved into during my long explorations into deep American history and politics. A must read in anyone’s lingo!
Love him or hate him, admire him or despise him then—the Cuban Comandante’s place in history is guaranteed, much more so I suspect than most of his critics and enemies, past and present, most of whom are likely to end up as mere footnotes by comparison. And as we have seen so many times throughout the Cold War narrative, every second fringe dwelling, insurgent Marxist/Leninist and/or AK-47 packing, left-wing leaning revolutionary wannabee in Latin America from the northern suburbs of Caracas to the southern tip of the South American continent—whether in power already or with aspirations in that respect—pulled out all stops to see if they might emulate the David and Goliath feat of their northern comrades and kick the ‘gringos’ where it really hurts.
That none of them fared as well as Castro is a matter of history. Indeed, to reiterate, we might say this was Castro’s most singular achievement. Even now, in the post-Castro era, Cuba and Castro in particular will always remain an historically ineradicable symbol of fervent resistance to—and overt defiance of—Uncle Sam’s unerring, recidivistic predisposition for pillage, plunder and immoral reward in other people’s backyards. We know that, and so do the “werewolves”. Put simply, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that that’s what really gets them howling at the Havana moon.
…Now, anyone still wanna know why all things Cuba and Castro occupy so much ‘real estate’ in the collective political consciousness of the Washington Werewolves?
Greg Maybury, 2016-2025.
