The Bay of Pigs occurred on JFKs watch and failed largely because he didn’t follow Ike’s plan. Eisenhower was going to employ airpower to protect the beachhead. Kennedy got cold feet and apparently didn’t want to risk linking the invasion back to the US, as if that were an issue. He canceled the air support and the invasion force was left vulnerable to Castro’s troops.
Hungary would have been very difficult to do anything about. Eisenhower knew supply lines and internal lines of support. The Soviets had them in spades in Hungary and we didn’t. We would have risked igniting a major war with the USSR on their field of advantage, at a time when we were trying to rebuild Germany, France, and Britain. Intervening in Hungary would have risked the loss of all of western Europe, hardly a good gamble on our part.
One of my father’s classmates at staff and command college had just returned from a year in Vietnam in 1956. We had military advisors there from the time the French left after Dien Bien Phu. But Eisenhower wasn’t one to be sending combat troops there. Korea still had most of their attention in Asia, they expected the North was capable of launching another war.
Iran and Guatemala removed leaders we thought were prone to communist subversion and installed regimes friendly to us. Lebanon had its first muslim rebellion and its Christian President asked Ike for help in putting it down. I don’t recall Ike in the Dominican Republic but I do recall LBJ intervening in one of their periodic crisis.
I agree with all your corrections. Bay of Pigs was a classic case of how liberals are incapable of fighting wars right.
For JFK, image trumped substance and he was willing to let the freedom fighters die on the beach rather than give the wrong impression of US might. Either call it all off or support it, but dont let them go based on a plan you wont execute.
we could also add a heap of Reagan interventions and point out that both of them, Ike and Reagan, were in the TR mold of “speak softly and carry a big stick”.
Which makes the Ron Paul attempt to claim these two interventionists as aligned with his isolationism more bizarre. Ron should have instead looking to warren Harding as the role model ... or maybe Jimmy Carter, LOL.