Cuba

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

This morning the news broadcasts announced, perhaps prematurely, the liquidation of the attempt to overthrow Castro. I have tapped out these rough notes in an attempt to make clear to myself what these events mean. If they help others in a similar attempt, they will have served their purpose.

I would urge that this is a serious and important debacle, possibly an irretrievable one, in American foreign and domestic politics It could turn out to be as much of a turning point as Munich.

In foreign affaire the event places the United States squarely in the position of an ancien regime trying to put down by force a revolutionary government seeking to raise the material position of a people who were in substantial measure victims of past American policies. The notion that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion is too fmay a camouflage to deserve serious consideration after have appeared in the New York Times and also where about the training and support given to Castro's opponents.

The notion that American policy aimed to replace a dictator by a democratic authority committed to maintain the social gains of the revolution requires somewhat more extended comment, best put in the form of questions: 1) Why did Castro take on the characteristics of a demagogic dictator? Certainly American policy under both Klsenhower and Kennedy bear partial responsibility. 2) what realistic prospect was there that a regime supported by the U.S.A. against substantial popular support for Castro would not be much worse and bloodier than the Castro regime has been? I believe that any such prospects were at beat slight 2) And what if the attempt failed? Did any one in Washington carefully consider this possibility? Now the United States has given Castro perfect justification for a reign of terror and removed any likelihood of detaching him from the Soviet orbit or encouraging developments away from a dictatorial regime.

Possible domestic consequences strike me as even more serious. The "New Frontler" stands exposed as a sham and a fraud, and what is worse, ineffectual against "atheistic Communism." Now the way is wide open to the hardware crowd. They can argue that the gamble falled not because of popular support for Castro, but because we falled to send in the Marines (with the supporting argument that Castro suppressed a domestic uprising by terror. Today's New York Times already hints at this argument. There may have been a touch of the hard hand. But this looks trivial to me. Castro's economic program seems to me what saved him). Harvard and other "liberals" who have originated or played along with the Cuban policy will be discredited by its failure to work. They are now, I suspect, even more the prisoners of the hardware crowd than before. Whether they join up explicitly or not scarcely matters. What we are likely to have from now (and to some extent have had already or the Castro affair would not have happened) is a militarist and reactionary government that covers its fundamental policies with liberal rhetoric and minor concessions to numerically important interest groups (Negroes, organized labor).

Are we not at the point where one should cease mincing words in the alas so frequently graceless minuendo of academic debate, and say simply and brutally, this stinks? Barrington Moore, Jr.,   Lecturer on Sociology

The notion that American policy aimed to replace a dictator by a democratic authority committed to maintain the social gains of the revolution requires somewhat more extended comment, best put in the form of questions: 1) Why did Castro take on the characteristics of a demagogic dictator? Certainly American policy under both Klsenhower and Kennedy bear partial responsibility. 2) what realistic prospect was there that a regime supported by the U.S.A. against substantial popular support for Castro would not be much worse and bloodier than the Castro regime has been? I believe that any such prospects were at beat slight 2) And what if the attempt failed? Did any one in Washington carefully consider this possibility? Now the United States has given Castro perfect justification for a reign of terror and removed any likelihood of detaching him from the Soviet orbit or encouraging developments away from a dictatorial regime.

Possible domestic consequences strike me as even more serious. The "New Frontler" stands exposed as a sham and a fraud, and what is worse, ineffectual against "atheistic Communism." Now the way is wide open to the hardware crowd. They can argue that the gamble falled not because of popular support for Castro, but because we falled to send in the Marines (with the supporting argument that Castro suppressed a domestic uprising by terror. Today's New York Times already hints at this argument. There may have been a touch of the hard hand. But this looks trivial to me. Castro's economic program seems to me what saved him). Harvard and other "liberals" who have originated or played along with the Cuban policy will be discredited by its failure to work. They are now, I suspect, even more the prisoners of the hardware crowd than before. Whether they join up explicitly or not scarcely matters. What we are likely to have from now (and to some extent have had already or the Castro affair would not have happened) is a militarist and reactionary government that covers its fundamental policies with liberal rhetoric and minor concessions to numerically important interest groups (Negroes, organized labor).

Are we not at the point where one should cease mincing words in the alas so frequently graceless minuendo of academic debate, and say simply and brutally, this stinks? Barrington Moore, Jr.,   Lecturer on Sociology