Why We Failed

Abstract

Abstract Of the four strategic special operations examined in this study, Sontay came the closest to success. Brilliantly executed, in the end the raid was nonetheless a failure because it did not achieve its chief objective, the recovery of U.S. POWs. The Bay of Pigs and the Iran rescue mission were disasters that exacted a high price in human life and U.S. prestige. The Mayaguez operation was similarly a fiasco, although the fortuitous recovery of the ship’s crew obscured the fact that eighteen Americans died landing at the wrong location to rescue prisoners the Cambodians had already decided to free. Moreover, close examination of these episodes confirms that, as hypothesized at the outset of this study, recurrent problems have plagued U.S. strategic special operations. Faulty intelligence, poor interagency and interservice cooperation and coordination, provision of inadequate advice to decision makers, wishful thinking, and overcontrol of mission execution by officials far removed from the theater of operations have repeatedly jeopardized the ability of the United States to conduct such missions successfully.