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Monday
Apr112011

On the 50th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs, lessons in presidential humility

Outstanding short piece from Jon Meacham.

PBS Video - Need to Know - April 8, 2011

This April marks the 50th anniversary of an episode at once humiliating and instructive: the failed American-backed operation against Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs. Humiliating because the attack was a disaster; instructive because President John F. Kennedy realized he had made a terrible mistake — and he pledged to learn from it.

He was candid about the scope of the mess. “How could I have been so stupid?” he asked himself and others in the aftermath. Fifteen hundred men had been sent to the beaches; later estimates suggested it would have taken a whole division — 15,000 men — to successfully conduct an amphibious operation of this scope. To a CIA officer he admitted, “In a parliamentary system I would resign.” Kennedy learned official-seeming presentations from officers wearing what he called their “fruit salad” of ribbons were not always reliable.

Yet he took responsibility in public, understanding that in politics, as in life, to whom much is given, much is expected. Kennedy said, “There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan…  I am the responsible officer of this government.”

Continue reading at Need to Know...

 

 

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Reader Comments (2)

Check out this reporter talking about Obama's Bay of Pigs in Libya and saying it's all part of the One World Government plans watch the others freak out lol when he says it!

Regular FOX Contributor Charles Payne "This Is About A One World Government"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fbd8WgfjAos&feature=player_embedded
Apr 11, 2011 at 4:59 PM | Unregistered CommenterLiberatedCitizen

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