Another Bay of Pigs Invasion? Cuban Missile Crisis? Really?

What do we make of Vice Presidential candidate Joe Biden's weekend comparison of Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy? At a fundraiser in Seattle on Sunday, Biden said: (tip)

It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.

Whether we are talking about the Bay of Pigs (three months after Kennedy's inauguration) or the Cuban Missile Crisis (October the following year), the implied comparison with either event is troublesome on many levels. Even if it was a gaffe (which I think it was), it's still troublesome because of what the anecdote says about Biden.

One level is this: "They" didn't do it. We did it. Perhaps Biden is trusting to America's well-known aversion to history. Or maybe he believes we get our history from Hollywood. What you need to know is this: America was the aggressor in the Bay of Pigs, and America's aggression arguably pushed the Soviet Union to defend its ally, Cuba, and itself which led to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

That alone should be enough to give pause. Is Biden saying that Obama will take actions that cause an international incident or two? That he's just as much a hawk as President Bush? That he will continue secret plans developed by President Bush?

What Was The Bay of Pigs?
The U.S. wanted to overthrow Fidel Castro. To that end, the Eisenhower Administration trained Cuban exiles with the goal of helping them invade Cuba and overthrow Castro, with "anticipated ... support from the Cuban people." (Anything here sound familiar, circa 2002-2003?). From the John F. Kennedy library:

In Miami, Jose Miro Cardona, leader of the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in the United States, became head of the United Revolutionary Front, poised to take over the provisional presidency of Cuba upon the successful invasion. Despite efforts of the [U.S.] government to keep the invasion plans covert, it became common knowledge in Miami. The press reported widely on events as they unfolded, and Castro soon learned of the guerrilla training camps in Guatemala.

Shortly after his inauguration, in February of 1961, Kennedy authorized the Cuban invasion plans on the condition that US support be sufficiently disguised. As a result of this decision, the landing point for the invasion was moved to the Bay of Pigs, an obscure area on the southern coast of Cuba, more than 80 miles from possible refuge in Cuba's Escambray mountains.

So what about this crisis is imposed from an exterior agent ("they") and designed to test Kennedy's "mettle"? Nothing. Kennedy executes a plan put in place by his predecessor, a Republican. Nothing "they" did so far.

Was the Bay of Pigs a success? No.

Why not? For one thing, on 15 April 1961, "eight B-26 bombers left Nicaragua to bomb Cuban airfields" but they failed to succeed at their mission, "leaving most of Castro's air force intact." So the CIA screwed up. Once the world knew that the U.S. was behind the air strike, Kennedy canceled the second one. Again, no externally fabricated crisis, no "they" there.

Nevertheless, two days later the CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed. They faced 20,000 Cuban troops as well as the Cuban Air Force. Kennedy relented and released "six unmarked American fighter planes to help defend the Brigade's B-26 aircraft flying from Nicaragua." The B-26s arrived late and were gunned down. Thus the U.S.-sponsored invasion failed, with 100 exiles killed and another 1,200 surrendering. These men would not be released until two months after the Cuban Missile Crisis.

What Was The Cuban Missile Crisis?
This has to be what Biden was referencing, as it's easy to put the Soviet Union in the villain's seat ("they"). Let the record show that this occurred near the end of the second year of Kennedy's Administration, not the first six months. A quibble, perhaps, but I'm not the person who guaranteed a crisis within six months of Obama's inauguration.

The short story is that in October 1962 the U.S. discovered that the Soviet Union was building nuclear missile sites in Cuba. In response, Kennedy imposed a naval blockade around Cuba. The world held its breath, sitting on the brink of nuclear war. In the end, the Soviets said that they wouldn't build the missiles; the U.S. gave up its plans to invade Cuba and agreed to withdraw U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey. (More on the quid pro quo, which I'm pretty certain you're never heard of unless you are a Cold War geek!)

Did the Cubans (and their ally, the Soviets) have a valid concern about a U.S. invasion? Given the Bay of Pigs debacle, what do you think?

Let's add some fuel to that fire of paranoia: Kennedy had initiated "the largest expansion of peacetime U.S. military power despite the acknowledgment by Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric that U.S. strategic forces far surpassed Soviet capabilities... [And] one of the five approved strategic plans at the time... called for a nuclear first-strike against the Soviet Union."

Does the U.S. escalating the arms race justify the Soviet Union publicly saying that they would not put missiles in Cuba although secretly they were doing just that? I don't know. Maybe, if the Soviets thought our military buildup might lead to a first strike against them.

While the Soviet placement nuclear missiles ninety miles from the United States may have been an absurdly risky and dangerous way to discourage both U.S. aggression against Cuba and a U.S. first-strike against the Soviet Union, it is an understandable reaction to the circumstances. The lesson we should learn from the Cuban Missile Crisis is that foreign leaders will act in seemingly irrational ways when their national security is threatened. Therefore, the United States should be more prudent in trying to overthrow or threaten other governments.

One last quotation from another essay, "Declassified History," that explains the efforts required by the National Archives to get documents unsealed. It also describes what subsequently happened to the official narrative about these events: much of it has been canned.

The very definition of the missile crisis has changed. Rather than a sudden episode, the crisis now emerges as the culmination of deteriorating relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, and between the United States and Cuba....

New revelations about the missile crisis have also undermined its image as a paradigm of successful crisis management. For years Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s description of President Kennedy's decision-making as "so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated" reflected a mythology that the successful outcome of the missile crisis derived from Kennedy's masterful management of both the making and implementation of U.S. policy. In reality, as Robert McNamara notes, the decision-making process in Washington, as well as in Moscow and Havana, was characterized by "misinformation, miscalculation, and misjudgment." Despite management efforts, according to Theodore Sorensen, the crisis "came close to spinning out of control before it was ended."

Foot In Mouth Disease?
Let me ask my opening question again: is the Cuban Missile Crisis what Joe Biden meant by his cryptic "testing the mettle" comment? And was he doing a Biden and shooting off at the mouth or was this a campaign-crafted message?

I'm inclined to think the former, and not just because of this (telling?) comment from Biden's Seattle fundraising stop: "I've forgotten more about foreign policy than most of my colleagues know." Seems to me he's "forgotten" a lot about the first two years of the Kennedy Administration.

Here's another reason. The campaign is trying to downplay Biden's remarks: "With our nation facing two wars and 21st-century threats abroad, Senator Biden referenced the simple fact that history shows presidents face challenges from day one." Ummm ... no, that's not even close to what Biden was saying.

Blogosphere Response
The final troubling issue is this. As others have noted, Biden's comment is eerily similar to Joe Lieberman's assertion in June that “our enemies will test the new president early."

That comment was treated with derision by Obama supporters. For example, the Huffington Post called it fearmongering. What is it, now that it comes from the campaign? It's nothing to talk about, at least according to Memorandum tracking.

Of course, the red state blogosphere is rolling on the virtual floor, laughing. Laughing for the wrong reasons, I believe, but laughing none-the-less.

I, on the other hand, am saddened. I'm saddened by Biden's blatant appeal to the Kennedy legacy. I'm saddened that Biden picked such an horribly inaccurate (and inappropriate) event on which to hang that appeal. And I'm saddened that I seem to be alone in my concern that Biden's comparison is flawed.