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Radium Girls was harrowing. A 95-year-old relative borrowed it and was flabbergasted: “I never knew any if this stuff!” Neither did I.

So there's a book written on this subject that I haven't read but i know the summary of it. It's called 'Commandante Che' by Paul Dosal. It establishes that the answer is complicated(I would add yes but complicated). Che when it comes to military campaigns Che was a terrible strategist but a brilliant tactician and soldier. During the Cuban Revolution it was Castro's strategic planning that gave them the edge but Che's tactical genius won them the final decisive battle at Santa Clara despite being outnumbered 10 to 1. What happened though was internationally in places like Congo and Bolivia he could not win the campaigns because he would always be at a strategic disadvantage. This despite the fact that he would win the battles anyways. So he found himself in the position America found itself in Vietnam. Winning every battle but being at a massive disadvantage.

Furthermore it also concludes that Che was not w great commander in chief but he was a brilliant field commander. What I get when reading Ches military escapades is that he is the Hannibal of guerilla warfare. A brilliant tactician who's tactics as well as the strategic disadvantage he found himself in ended up being used against him by his enemies.

Oh come on! We JUST finished painting everything!

Is this true? That’s genius, I’d never heard that part before.

I could see it that way.

Another way of looking at it tho; Kennedy was pulled into a harebrained scheme, and pulled the plug at the last minute, to avoid a catastrophe.

With American support, the initially invasion would've probably been a success, and secured a beach head.

But beyond that it's entirely conjecture. If the Cuban government wasnt immediately overthrown, then the US would be starting another front less than 60 mi from the mainland; and the Soviets would've sent direct military aid in response.

So I'm a little strange in the sense of I'm a fan of both the Cuban Revolution and Kennedy. In terms of JFKs veneration a large part of course is his assassination. In this sense ironically he's like Che because Ches death also gave him veneration status.

I would say despite mistakes like the bay of pigs and sending advisors to Vietnam JFK does deserve legitimate praise for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the test ban treaty, his moves on civil rights(late as they were) and other areas. It also should remember that JFKs vietnam policy was actually just a continuation of the Eisenhower policy.

For anyone claiming it was just the CIA blundering or the troops being poorly trained I would recommend giving the Stuff You Should Know episode on The Bay Of Pigs a listen. It is a good episode and goes into a lot of stuff that wasn't revealed until long after.

While it was most likely a bad idea regardless, Kennedy made them change a lot of the plan and made an even bigger mess of it. When he started to get cold feet he should have scrapped it entirely, instead he forced them to make changes that pretty much guaranteed it would fail. It also was blatantly obvious the US was behind it still so he didn't even achieve his goal of trying to politically distance the US from it.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/the-bay-of-pigs-disaster-73576890/

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It was mostly Kennedy that prevented the full proper plan from being executed. He changed the landing location, time, and cut the resources and critical parts of the plan. The CIA catches a lot of the blame and they certainly own some of it but Kennedy really made a mess of it.

Stuff You Should Know did an episode on it that is really good.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/the-bay-of-pigs-disaster-73576890/

Maybe post in /r/askhistorians, you won't get a bunch of speculation.

That season in particular is phenomenal

Also you neglected to mention that air support was supposed to be offered to the invading force but JFK got cold feet at the last minute and withheld air cover. A lot of the invading force of Cuban expatriates never forgave Kennedy for this.

France in 44? South Pacific, same time? Never?

It was more complicated than that. Kennedy forced them to completely change their plan. Was it probably a bad idea either way? Sure, but the CIA getting all the blame isn't a fair assessment either.

He could have pulled the plug and instead he turned it into a complete mess after initially being onboard.

Stuff You Should Know did a pretty good episode on it.

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-stuff-you-should-know-26940277/episode/the-bay-of-pigs-disaster-73576890/

Thank you for confirming! I was pretty damn sure from memory, but thankfully there are less lazy people than myself to check.

(Pretty good article too!)

And before the invasion he visited the area and stated that if the US were to invade, they’d invade here.

He and Che both helped to provide this historically neglected area with doctors and engineers to build schools to win the people over.

There are books that kind of cover this stuff, but they're not very good. It's just not a great way to learn history. There's this kind of idea of history being a series of events that happened in a certain order, but that's not really the interesting or valuable thing about it. You're much more likely to be able to remember about the stuff during a period if you're reading about the context around and understanding why it's important.

I would maybe look at a specific event like the Great Depression to understand how the financial system was changed during the 20th century b/c that will tell you a lot more about the world than knowing the Suez Crisis happened before the War of Attrition, and it will also tell you more about the Suez Crisis than the military implications.

There's a book I love, but it's kind of an undertaking called Postwar by Tony Judt that does a good job of explaining the postwar system in Europe. It's a great book but might be a lot to handle if you don't usually read history.

I would maybe start with something like Galbraith's The Great Crash, 1929 to understand the 20th century.

I read a paper on the difference between NGO's and the military doing non military projects in foreign countries. Turns out locals tend to just grumble if an NGO does something unpopular. The military no matter what it is results in hard resistance.

Ya Che was a good commander. His guerilla tactics were taught at West Point.

Whoever pays for the work decides what work gets done. Science, as a set of disciplinary practices of people, happens to the extent that other people wish to direct resources toward it. Those other people’s desires and goals are determined by historical forces. Thus, science is driven by historical forces, even if its outcomes may unfold quite independent of historical forces (of course, and not wishing to muddy that main point, things like climate science show that historical forces are very much entangled with experimental data, too).

perfect resource thank you.

You might dig this thread on /r/badhistory. The post has a list of his sources that you could check out. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/r3g8aq/eight_thanksgiving_myths_from_grave_robbing/

Per an article from Air & Space you are correct. Link

The Marie Arana biography of Bolivar received good reviews when it came out and there's tons of used copies floating around at this point.