America’s Invasion of the Bay of Pigs

One of the main defining characteristics of groupthink behavior is the illusion that the group is always fully competent, invulnerable, and coherent. Teams affected by groupthink always try to rationalize collective decisions. They also like to invalidate opinions that are inconsistent with the group's opinions. Another characteristic is the presence of beliefs that cannot be questioned. One event that I read about and I may consider an example of groupthink is America's invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961. The invasion was an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the communist government of Cuban leader Fidel Castro to replace it with a non-communist one. The invasion was expected to be a counter-revolution to the 1959 Cuban revolution in which Fidel Castro’s forces overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator.