1,500 US.-backed anti- Castro Cuban exiles was a fiasco that looms large in recent American history. Within days, every invader was either killed or captured.
In an editorial, the New York Times set the tone of future interpreta- tions when it wrote that "basic and inexcusable miscalculations were made the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) [which] presumably
Coming only three months after his inauguration, the Bay of Pigs failure was partic- ularly embarrassing to President John F. Kennedy.
The...
doubting Thomases." Moreover, the President steadily "whittled away" at the CIA'S plan, fearful of unfavorable public reaction to a large-scale inva- sion, especially if its U.S. sponsorship were revealed.
To minimize publicity, Kennedy shifted the landing site from the coastal town of Trinidad to the more remote Bay of Pigs. What he did not seem to realize was that a quiet landing would cut the chances of sparking a popular uprising and that the Bay of Pigs, surrounded swamps, offered...
enemy fire; another 100 were temporarily knocked out of action.
The Syrian forces did most of the damage, effectively employing in- fantry and antitank missiles against the outmaneuvered Israelis. The IDF, Gabriel says, should have responded sending its foot soldiers ahead to clear the way for the tank forces. The PLO's guerrilla tactics seemed to stymie the IDF: The Israelis resorted to artillery barrages and air strikes to counter guerrilla harassment.
The outcome of the conflict was never much...
Sidney D. Drell, Philip J. Parley,
'Star Wars' and David Holloway, in International Se-
curity (Fall 1984), MIT Press (Journals),
28 Carleton St., Cambridge, Mass. 02142.
In 1972, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty sharply limiting their defenses against nuclear missiles. Both sides judged such defenses "to be futile, destabilizing, and costly," recall Stanford researchers Drell, Farley, and Holloway.
That logic still holds, they...
Peter F.
After Ma Bell Drucker, in ThePublic Interest (Fall 1984), 20th & Northampton Sts., Easton, Pa. 18042.
When Ma Bell passed away in January 1984, with the breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), hardly anybody grieved. Drucker, a noted management expert who teaches at the Clare- mont Graduate School, believes that Americans may yet sorely regret the demise of the giant telecommunications monopoly.
Its splintering was the result of a federal antitrust suit...
Peter L. Bernstein and
Theodore H. Silbert, in Harvard Business To Oracles? Review (Sept.-Oct. 1984), P.O. Box 3010,
Woburn, Mass. 01888-9975.
If you like having egg on your face, economic forecasting may be the profession for you.
Despite its many spectacular failures, write Bernstein and Silbert, New York financial consultant and banker, respectively, the art of read- ing tea leaves is indispensable to business. An executive who makes no effort to anticipate the future will find himself out...
Stephen McNees and John Ries, both economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, showed that the most accurate forecaster in any one year had little hope of repeating his success the next. But, based on a study of 44 "blue-chip" forecasters' performances from 1977 through 1983, Bern- stein and Silbert argue that an average of many auguries may be useful.
The group went wrong more than once. In 1978, for example, the "consensus" forecasts for both inflation and change in...
Big Labor view (Fall 1984, Heritage Foundation,
214 Massachusetts Ave. N.E., Washing-
ton, D.C. 20002.
Leftists have long criticized the American labor movement for its polit- ical conservatism. Now, says Green, a former labor union official, they have less room for complaint.
He contends that the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which includes 96 labor unions representing 13.7 million workers, is veering sharply to the left.
There was some truth...
"Public Attitudes about Health-CareControlling U.S. Costs: A Lesson in National Schizophre- nia" Robert J. Blendon and Drew E.Medical Costs Altman, in The New England Journal of Medicine (Aug. 30, 1984), 1440 Main St.,
P.O. Box 9140, Waltham, Mass. 02254.
Faced with a hefty and fast-growing national bill for medical care, Americans are telling public-opinion pollsters that they would wel- come an overhaul of the U.S. health-care system-as long as no one asks them to make any sacrifices.
In...
H. Roy Kaplan, in The
Annals of the American Academy of Politi-
cal and Social Science (July 1984), Sage
Publications, 275 South Beverly Dr., Bev-
erly Hills, Calif. 90212.
State governments are gambling that lotteries will provide a painless way to increase revenues. But to H. Roy Kaplan, a sociologist at the Florida Institute of Technology, lotteries are a poor substitute for "de- pendable, equitable, and responsible methods of revenue generation."
Using games of chance to finance...