April 17, 2011 commemorates the 50th anniversary of America’s disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.

During 1960, U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower watched with trepidation the establishment of an authoritarian regime in Cuba unfriendly to the United States, only 90 miles from American shores.

On assuming power in 1961, John Kennedy had to face the brewing crisis in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. He learned a small expeditionary force of Cuban-American exiles (2506 Brigade) had been trained in the U.S. and Central America to invade Cuba with the guidance of the previous administration.  After consultation with the CIA and the military, Kennedy approved implementation of the plan.

Unfortunately, at the eleventh hour Kennedy changed many of the critical aspects of the operation, so he could claim “plausible deniability!” The preemptive air raids designed to destroy Castro’s Air Force on the ground were cancelled, leaving half of his planes intact and operational; two T-33 jets, three Sea Furies, and two B-26s were more than enough to destroy the small flotilla of the 2506 Brigade, which like sitting ducks had been left helpless and without air support.

In the early morning hours of April 17, the 2506 Brigade entered the Bay of Pigs on the southern, swampy, mosquito-infested coast of Cuba. The first shots were fired. I will not recount the details of the military operation, except to say the Cuban exiles fought ferociously for three days until they ran out of ammunition. The 1400 combatants, outnumbered more than 100 to 1, fought valiantly, demolishing several motorized armored tank units with limited supplies, not to mention the lack of air cover they believed had been promised.

In anticipation of the invasion, over a hundred thousand Cubans were arrested by the security police and held in prisons, sports stadiums, and in all other available facilities to prevent the people from aiding the invasion force. The chance of an insurrection within the island became nil!

After the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro announced a new phase of the Socialist Revolution and consolidated his totalitarian regime. Savoring his victory at Playa Giron, Castro coined another revolutionary slogan, “The first defeat of Yankee Imperialism in America.” Three months after the American debacle, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, emboldened by Kennedy’s fiasco, ordered the construction of the Berlin Wall in defiance of the West. Then, eighteen months later, in October 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted, bringing the U.S. and the Soviet Union to the very brink of nuclear war.

Actions have consequences. Today, financial chaos, the turmoil in the Middle East, the war in Libya, the instability in Afghanistan and Iraq, a resurgent and militant Islam--- all of these dangers are taking place while Russia and China, competing for primacy, wait in the wings for the denouement and the possible imminent collapse of the West. Decisive U.S. leadership was then and is again needed to avert the shoals through which our rudderless ship of state is navigating in very troubled and perilous waters!

Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D. is the author of Cuba in Revolution — Escape from a Lost Paradise (2002) and a resident of Macon, GA.

This commentary was published in The Macon Telegraph on April 21, 2011. Copyright ©2011 Miguel A. Faria, Jr., M.D.