Even as the pathetic Cuban exiles were being marched into Castro’s jails on April 20, Kennedy gave a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors in which he expressed no regret for his audacious failure in Cuba. “The message of Cuba, of Laos, of the rising din of Communist voices in Asia and Latin America—these messages are all the same. The complacent, the self-indulgent, the soft societies are about to be swept away with the debris of history. Only the strong, only the industrious, only the determined . . . can possibly survive.” A week later, sending the message that he would not
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