The Kennedys and Cuba

One version of the leadup to the war in Iraq paints the President as having been fixated on getting Saddam Hussein out of power from the first day in office. 9/11 simply served as a great excuse to go after Iraq, and only the strenuous objections of more reasonable people convinced the administration that they would at least have to start in Afghanistan. Now who knows how much of this story is true, but even if so it might not be without precedent. From Evan Thomas' biography of RFK:

In later years, veterans of the Kennedy administration would look back at the Kennedys' Cuba obsession, and their own role in abetting it, with wonder and some shame. "We were hysterical about Castro at the time of the Bay of Pigs and thereafter," said Robert McNamara, the defense secretary who was Robert Kennedy's close friend. The president's national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy (less enamored with RFK, whom he described as a "terrier of a man"), suspected that RFK was trying to avenge his brother's humiliation at the Bay of Pigs. "It was almost as simple as, goddammit, we lost the first round, let's win the second," said Bundy....

The "bureaucrats" tried to warn [Robert] Kennedy that the Cuban people were not likely to rise up against Castro... But in a memo on November 30, Lansdale urged Kennedy to ignore the intelligence experts: they were just playing bureaucratic warfare.

Kennedy just pressed on... As recorded by the CIA's new director of operations, Richard Helms, Kennedy announced that overthrowing Castro was "the top priority of the United States Government--all else is secondary-- no time, money, effort, or manpower is to be spared."

Of course we all know how it turned out in the end. Castro soon did present a tremendous threat to the United States, housing Soviet missiles within a hundred miles of our shore. And Bobby Kennedy saw that coming, demonstrating more foresight than the professional intelligence experts. Yet for each of his insights came numerous blunders, as Thomas goes on to document. Many even would argue that the Cuban Missile Crisis was essentially a paranoid Castro's response to the unrelenting Kennedy/CIA machinations against him, and thus the Kennedys provoked the stand-off rather than merely anticipating it.

Anyhow, I thought it provided an interesting parallel for those who think or suspect that this administration was unreasonably focused on Iraq at the expense of other domestic and foreign affairs.