BY ED FELIEN
I was working for the University Theater Department Box Office delivering flyers for an upcoming show. I was climbing the long marble steps to the big auditorium on campus, and I noticed a small group of demonstrators holding picket signs saying, “Hands Off Cuba.” I knew some of the picketers, so I asked them what was happening. They told me the U.S. had just invaded Cuba. I was shocked. John F. Kennedy invaded Cuba? It seemed unbelievable. I went inside to deliver my posters and when I came out my friends in the Fair Play For Cuba Committee were being pelted by snowballs by a group of right-wingers from Young Americans For Freedom. Like an idiot, I stepped in between the two groups and said, “I may not agree with what these people are saying, but I defend their right to say it.” For a while that actually calmed things down as people from the two sides began debating the question. It finally came down to whether the U.S. had the right to invade another country just because they were communist. I didn’t think we had that right. The YAF kids were disappointed in my conclusion, but they didn’t resume throwing snowballs.
Later, after Nov.22, 1963, when it became known that Lee Harvey Oswald had tried to organize a chapter of the Fair Play For Cuba Committee in New Orleans, the group disappeared. Oswald thought he could hasten the revolution by assassinating Kennedy. In fact, his actions fueled anti-Castro Cubans and strengthened support for an embargo that has seriously harmed the Cuban economy and the Cuban people for more than 50 years. Oswald committed what Mao called the military error. Revolutionaries and anarchists sometimes think they can bring about instant change by a bomb or a bullet, when what is needed is long-term political education.
Kevin Phillips in “Bush Dynasty” gives convincing evidence that the operations director for the CIA of the Bay of Pigs fiasco was probably George H.W. Bush. The boats launched from an island Bush had rented, and the two boats were named Houston and Barbara.
