The recent news about Judith Campbell of Las Vegas and Joan Hitchock of San Francisco may indicate that President John Kennedy disregarded his marriage vows. The recent news about Cuban soldiers conquering Angola, being active in seven other African countries, and threatening Puerto Rico and the U.S. Canal in Panama, demon strates that we continue to suffer bad effects from John Kennedy’s disregard of his presidential vows “to preserve, protect, and defend” the United States.
President Kennedy had two great opportunities to protect and defend our country from Castro aggressions. The first came in the spring of 1961 with the invasion of Cuba by the Cuban Freedom Fighters under a plan approved by President Eisenhower. Sloppy security allowed the location of the attack, the Bay of Pigs, to be leaked to Castro. At the last minute, President Kennedy cancelled the American naval and air support that had been planned and promised. The gallant Cuban Freedom Fighters were shot or captured.
News stories have recently revived accounts of President Ken nedy’s 1961 Bermuda trip in order to tell the unimportant gossip that he was accompanied-by Fiddle and Faddle. The big news of the Bermuda meeting was that Kennedy told Prime Minister Macmillan that Defense Secretary McNamara was cancelling the Skybolt missile. This caused the fall of the Macmillan government in England which was depending on Skybolt as the key weapon in its defense posture.
Skybolt was a cruise-type weapon which would have enabled American and British bombers to hit Soviet (and Cuban) targets with out ever flying over their territory.
President Kennedy’s second opportunity came in the fall of 1962 when Castro permitted Khrushchev to install offensive nuclear missiles, capable of hitting all but the northwest corner of the United States.
Under his constitutional duties as Commander-in-Chief, and under the Monroe Doctrirefollowed by Presidents ever since 1823, Kennedy had the legal and moral right to remove the Castro military threat to American security. General Thomas Power, Commander of our Strategic Air Force, and Admiral George Anderson, Chief of Naval Operations, were ready and eager to destroy Castro’s missiles and his then-small military power. Cuban Freedom Fighters were begging for another opportunity to free thcir country from Communism.
Instead of doing his constitutional duty, President Kennedy made an agreement with dictator Khrushchev that the United States would protect dictator Castro from invasion in return for his promise to remove the missiles. President Kennedy did not insist on having observers present to verify removal of the Soviet missiles. For all we know, these missiles are still in Cuba, stored in some of the numerous Cuban caves
Our Navy and our Coast Guard, however, have often seized and confiscated ships intended to be used by the Freedom Fighters to land men and supplies in Cuba.
The United States has, and will continue, to pay a big price for President Kennedy’s disregard of his solemn presidential vows.
