Why Was Kennedy Justified To Castro's Assassination

Was Oswald a lone assassin, part of a larger conspiracy or was he innocent? The evidence in fact will support that he was in fact he may have been innocent.

On November 8th 1960 former president John F Kennedy defeated vice president Richard Nixon in a narrow, cut throat election. (History.com) In the mist of the cold war and the tension steadily rising between the US and Soviet Union, President Kennedy was destined to become a major influence on the end result of the tension between communist Russia and the United States. Shortly before Kennedy’s Victory over Nixon, Cuba fell under new leadership and with that leadership communism sat right under the tail of the United States. American’s did not like the idea of communism just 100 feet from our borders so in 1961, the CIA was given a green light to conduct a covert mission in Cuba to overthrow the communist dictatorship and remove Fidel Castro

Castro turned to Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, for assistance in warding off the United States (Trueman, 2015). Khrushchev started sending missiles and military aid to Cuba. The United States was at a severe disadvantage because their radar was unable to detect if Cuba launched any missiles in their direction until they were over US airspace (The Bay of Pigs Invasion and its Aftermath, 2016). Using geostrategic positioning, Kennedy surrounded Cuba with a Naval blockade and searched ships entering Cuba to intercept any weapons entering the country. The US demanded the removal of missiles from Cuba and Khrushchev agreed as long as the United States promised not to retaliate against Cuba and removed any missiles from Turkey aimed at the USSR (Boston University Student Researchers, n.d.). By creating the naval blockade, Kennedy was able to assert power over Cuba and use geostrategic positioning and the power of negotiation to end the Cuban Missile

On January of 1959, a young guerilla leader named Fidel Castro initiated a coup to overthrow the American-backed head of Cuba and start his own military dictatorship. From that day forward for the next two years, U.S. officials tried to oust Castro out of power. Eventually, in April of 1961, the United States launched a full-scale invasion of Cuba that ultimately failed. The Cuban government was absolutely certain that the U.S. would launch another attack towards them. Plus, the United States had caches of Jupiter missiles in both Italy and Turkey. As a result, Castro obtained a meeting with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. The two forces agreed, and by 1962, the USSR secretly delivered three MRBM and two IRBM regiments to Cuba – a total of about 80 missiles in all. The U.S. soon found out the presence of the missiles in August from aerial pictures taken from a U-2 Spy Plane. The missiles posed a huge threat to the country, as they could easily wipe out a large portion of North America and easily kill tens of millions of people. John F. Kennedy, the U.S. president at the time, had to act swiftly, for

Joseph Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union Socialist Republics known as the USSR from 1929 to 1953. Under Stalin ruling , the Soviet Union was transformed as a peasant society into an industrial and military superpower but he ruled by terror.Million of his own citizens died during his brutal reign.During World War 2 , Khrushchev mobilized troops to fight Nazi Germany in the Ukraine and Stalingrad (history.com). Stalin died in March 1953,Khrushchev has position himself as a possible successor . Six month later , he had became to the head of the Communist Party and one of the most powerful people in the USSR.After seizing power in the Caribbean island nation of Cuba in 1959. A leftist revolutionary leader Fidel Castro aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro ruling , Cuba grew more dependent on the Soviet for the military and the economic aid. Khrushchev and Castro became friend . They would send letter to each other and smoke cigarette , also drink wine . Nikita Khrushchev had builded missiles on Cuba which was just 90 miles away from the U.S shores. A pilot of an American U-2 spy plane making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14,1962; they had photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation. This was quickly noted to the President Kennedy. President Kennedy had notified Americans about the presence of the missile. He had explained his decision to enact a naval blockade around Cuba and make it clear that the U.S was prepare to use military force to deal with the problem.Soviet Leader Khrushchev had gambled on sending the missile to Cuba with the specific goal of increasing his nation’s

In 1959, Fidel Castro was the head of a now communist Cuba, a country roughly 100 miles off the coast of Florida. An alignment between Fidel Castro and the USSR was occurring during the Cold War and because of the closeness of Cuba to American soil, tensions between the countries understandably worsened. The immediate response of the United States during the Kennedy administration was to attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro using Cuban exiles, however the mission was not planned thoroughly and in 1961, the entire plan failed.

President Eisenhower and the American government cautiously trusted the change of hands in the Cuban government, but soon after Castro assumed power, relations between the neighboring countries deteriorated. In 1961, President Eisenhower formally enacted a trade embargo with Cuba as Castro threw Western businesses out and showed favor with Soviet Russia. When President Kennedy entered office, he set his sight on the island only 90 miles south of Florida, initiating the failed Bay of Pigs operation. Tension mounted when the Soviet Union sent missiles to Cuba—a development that ramped up the Cold War and almost resulted in nuclear confrontation. Three U.S. presidents—Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—tried to assassinate Castro. He claims he was able to foil over 600 assassination attempts by the

Deliveries included MIG jet fighters, helicopters, tanks, rocket launchers, and various assault and heavy machine guns. Soviet and Czech advisers also arrived. Castro declared himself a Marxist-Leninist in December 1961. The Soviets saw this announcement as an example of metamorphosis from a national bourgeois leader to a revolutionary democrat. Castro’s rationale may have been more pragmatic. The US was directly affected economically since at this time Americans owned 50% of Cuba’s public railway system, over 90% of the telephone and power industries, the majority of key manufacturing plants, the largest chain of supermarkets, several large retail stores, and most major tourist facilities. About 25% of all Cuban bank deposits were held by branches of American banks (Wolfe). The reasoning behind providing Cuba with $50 million worth of weapons was to level the playing field with the US, who had nuclear weapons in Turkey and other parts of Western Europe aimed towards the Soviet Union. Additionally the Kennedy administration had already launched one attack on the island–the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961–and Castro and Khrushchev saw the missiles as a means of deterring further U.S.

On one of the following days, Kennedy asked if the Air Force could take out all of the missiles in Cuba. The Air Force then told the President that with that process there would be 10-20,000 civilian casualties. Kennedy then decided to set up a blockade around Cuba. US ships prepared for a quarantine. The press then learned about the nuclear missles and questioned them about it, the President asked the reporters not to reveal the news so he could announce it to the American people on TV. The Soviets had instrustion to launch the missiles within minutes of Kennedy’s speech. After Castro listened to the President’s speech he moblized all of Cuba’s military forces.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen day crisis that occurred between the United States and the Soviet Union. This crisis occurred on October 14, 1962 and ended on October 28, 1962. The crisis involved the placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba by the Soviet Union and the caused concern for the United States due to the closeness of Cuba. This placement of nuclear missiles in Cuba was due to the failed Bay of Pigs fiasco and Cuba’s need for protection against the United States invading in the future. The Bay of Pigs was a failed mission of the United States that happened in April of 1961. The United States wanted to overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro, but was ultimately defeated within just three days. Due to this failure, Cuba contacted the Soviet Union to get them to place nuclear missiles so that Cuba could defend their country from the United States. With this failure under John F. Kennedy’s presidency, he had to figure out a different way of forcing the dictatorship of Fidel Castro without strengthening him even more. Before they could plan another invasion into Cuba, a U-2 plane had flown close range to the Cuban border and had captured photographic evidence of nuclear missile facilities being built. According to Marfleet (2000), “Kennedy was privately belligerent—a condition sparked largely by anger at what he perceived to be Soviet attempts to deceive him” (p 547). While it was a small part of a bigger problem, it was the key defining event of the Cold War

In 1961 the White House’s high-level advisory group determined that “the US could not live with Castro”. The group concluded that the only solution, other than a full invasion of Cuba, was economic and diplomatic measures. There were numerous plots to overthrow Castro and some of them were extremely unusual. The CIA attempted to spray lysergic acid diethylamide (LDS) in Castro’s radios station, hoping he would babble incoherently and thus lose credibility. They tried to lace a box of his favourite cigars with a mind-altering drug, hoping he would smoke one before going on air. They hired a hitman from the Florida mob. They even dusted his shoes with depilatory salts, hoping that his hair and beard fell out so he would lose his domestic appeal. As you can see, none of these worked.

Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Castro felt a second attack was inevitable. Consequently, he approved of Khrushchev's plan to place missiles on the island. In the summer of 1962 the Soviet Union worked quickly and secretly to build its missile installations in Cuba.

missiles in Turkey and wanted to expand their own missile range.As the Library of Congress reveals, in May of 1962, Nitita Khrushchev has the idea of placing missiles in cuba to move one step ahead of America. He offers the missile to the cubans as a type of protection from the United states, so they wouldn't try to invade like in the Bay of Pigs again. The Cubans took in the missiles greedily. The U.S. found out about the project and when they asked about the project to the Soviet diplomats, they denied such projects. Kennedy makes his television announcement and threat. Khrushchev sent Kennedy letters about the peaceful intent of the missiles. After more letters, according to the Library of congress, Khrushchev sent two letters on the 26 and 27 telling Kennedy his conditions. The response of the Soviet Union was a key component on how the cold war turned out.

When President John F. Kennedy failed with the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the United States started placing fifteen Jupiter intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBM) near Izmir, Turkey. Even though President Kennedy said that these missiles might have "questionable strategic value" the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, made America aware of his anger and distain regarding Kennedy’s decision. Khrushchev believed that these missiles were not only an offense to him, but to his country as well. However, the United States also possessed nuclear submarines which posed an even greater threat than the IRBM’s. The Soviet Union came to realize that they were extremely outmatched in the area of nuclear weapons and the decision by

In the fall of 1962, the world sat on edge for thirteen days as the prospect of a nuclear war between the United States and The Soviet Union became more and more legitimate. In October of 1962, an American spy plane discovered nuclear missile launch sites being built by the Soviet Union in Cuba, which rests only ninety miles south of Florida. The US went on to impose a naval blockade of Cuba, making sure that no more nuclear weapons were imported into Havana (Lebow 2000). President John F. Kennedy was tasked with the duty to remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba while preventing a catastrophic and deadly nuclear war. Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union, longed to be seen as the powerful and authoritative figure that would be able bring the Soviet Union to equal levels of political, military, and social prominence as the United States. Ultimately, Khrushchev sought to maintain his political and military power and influence, and not backing down from the all-powerful United States and John F. Kennedy demonstrated to his colleagues that he meant business.