Do we assume "incompetence", or "deliberate action", in misidentifying the source of this sound?
I always assume good faith and that honest mistakes happen, but in the realm of politics, "mistakes", whether rightly or wrongly, lead to hundreds of deaths [1]
[1] Korea Air shootdown, USS Vincennes shootdown, US bombing of Chinese embassy Belgrade [2]
[2] "Sorry, intern put in the wrong bombing coordinates"
I think it’s a very fair question. Just look at the Bay of Pigs intelligence operation. You have US intelligence agencies organizing/training a bunch of Cuban dissidents/exiles in Miami, to launch a paramilitary operation to over throw Castro with the backing of the US military/intelligence agencies and then allowed this group to get slaughtered (with no heads up they were withdrawing support).
Is that just incompetence or deliberate action. To this day it’s a fair question, I personally conclude it’s both and I call the mixture of incompetence/deliberate action...politics.
Or the Iraq intelligence operation, which led to the Iraq war and a lot of the present-day instability in the region. There was wrong intelligence that was believed-in, and right intelligence (claiming there were no massive stockpiles of WMDs) that was dismissed [1][2].
> Or, just maybe, the USA feels that today is not a good day to start a war with Russia?
Is telling the middle east they should either build a full blown nuke (ala NK) or allow the Russians to build a base are ways to avoid invasion the message we want to send?
I agree as a practical matter the Russian base plays heavily into our decisions but maybe we shouldn't incentivize small countries to allow them to...
Couldn't this be explained by the US intelligence agencies just being bad at reading the general public in Cuba, the invasion could not have succeeded with such a small force without a general uprising and IIRC the invasion was supported by both Eisenhower and Kennedy so to claim it was some deliberate failure on the part of the USA needs extraordinary proof of conspiracy including both presidents - the US government has supported many other coups around the world. It seems more like the intelligence agency trusted their Cuban allies enthusiasm and reading of the situation too much.
What benefit might be expected from deliberately misidentifying the source of the sound, especially given the probability that it could be correctly identified at any time?
Florida is often seen as a state that can go either way in a Presidential election. Cuban exiles are a tiny percentage of the electorate there but wield huge influence since they vote so to curry favor with these exiles some politicians use being hard on Cuba (whatever way one wishes to interpret that) as politically unrisky - those who are on the other side of the issue or neutral or ignorant of this are not one issue voters compared to the Cuban immigrants, this is supposedly changing slowly with the next generation of Cubans in Florida.
I suppose it could provide diplomatic leverave and stir up public fervor against Cuba, which might allow the US to launch an operation against the government in Cuba that the US seems to not tolerate very much.
There's a lot of incompetence in reporting this story.
The Cubans claimed[1] the source of the sound was cicadas more than a year ago and it was dismissed. The Cuban claim is not even mentioned in the NYT story.
The US never accused Cuba of perpetrating the attack itself, but did formally accuse it of "fail[ing] to take appropriate steps to protect our diplomats in accordance with its obligations under the Vienna Convention" [1], and retaliated by kicking some Cuban diplomats out of the US. In remarks to the press, then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson elaborated:
> “What we’ve said to the Cubans is: small island,” Mr. Tillerson said, raising his hands. “You’ve got a sophisticated security apparatus. You probably know who is doing it. You can stop it. It’s as simple as that.” [2]
Do we assume "incompetence", or "deliberate action", in misidentifying the source of this sound?
I always assume good faith and that honest mistakes happen, but in the realm of politics, "mistakes", whether rightly or wrongly, lead to hundreds of deaths [1]
[1] Korea Air shootdown, USS Vincennes shootdown, US bombing of Chinese embassy Belgrade [2]
[2] "Sorry, intern put in the wrong bombing coordinates"