Forty years ago, on the morning of April 26, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke with a top State Department official about fast-moving events in the Dominican Republic. A popular rebellion was on the verge of toppling a military junta and restoring the country’s democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, to power.
“This Bosch is no good,” Mr. Johnson said. “He’s no good at all,” replied Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann, who added: “If we don’t get a decent government in there, Mr. President, we get another Bosch. It’s just going to be another sinkhole.”
Two days after that phone conversation, thousands of U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of Santo Domingo. By then, the White House spin machinery was in high gear. When the president went on television to declare that the military action was necessary to rescue U.S. citizens, he didn’t mention that nearly all of them had already been evacuated before the Marines arrived…
Read the complete op-ed from the Baltimore Sun.