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In the narrow sense, U.S. troops were there merely to protect some 2,400 terrified U.S. citizens and other foreign nationals after U.S. Ambassador William Tapley Bennett Jr. had informed Washington that Dominican authorities wanted U.S. help, that they could no longer guarantee the safety of American lives. In a much larger sense, the troops were there quite simply to prevent another Cuba in the Caribbean. What had happened, in its baldest terms, was an attempt by highly trained Castro-Communist agitators and their followers to turn an abortive comeback by a deposed Dominican President into a "war of national liberation."
The fighting started as a revolt by a group of junior officers in favor of ousted President Juan Bosch, currently in exile in Puerto Rico. Within three days, that military revolt fizzled. But not before vast stocks of arms had been passed out to pro-Bosch civilians and their Castroite allies, who succeeded in transforming the attempted coup into a full-scale civil war.
Flank Speed Ahead. The Dominican most responsible for the U.S. military presence was Elías Wessin y Wessin, a tough little brigadier general who commands the country's most powerful military base and at the time the marines landed was the key force for law and order. Twice before, General Wessin y Wessin, 40, had relied on his planes and tank-equipped supporting troops to settle political disputes in the Dominican Republic. He was the man who deposed Juan Bosch in 1963, after a series of angry confrontations over Communist infiltration in the government. Now he was fighting again, as he saw it, to prevent a political struggle from becoming a Communist takeover. And for help this time, he called on the U.S. Said Wessin y Wessin: "We saved the country by only a hair. The conspiracy was very big. The majority of people did not even know what was going on."
The U.S. decision to go in involved well-known risks. Memories of previous U.S. interventions are still very much alive in Latin America; the words "Yankee imperialism" are a rallying cry for leftists everywhere.
President Johnson weighed the possible damage to U.S. prestige and to the Alliance for Progress, huddling with Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, CIA Boss William Raborn. As the situation grew more alarming by the hour, he snapped: "I will not have another Cuba in the Caribbean." At last orders went out to Task Force 124, centered on the aircraft carrier Boxer and with 1,800 combat-ready marines, to make flank speed for Santo Domingo. Another set of orders started the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, N.C., toward its C124 and C-130 transports.
On TV, Johnson explained his decision to the nation. "The United States Government has been informed by military authorities in the Dominican Republic that American lives are in danger," said the President. "I have ordered the Secretary of Defense to put the necessary American troops ashore in order to give protection to hundreds of Americans who are still in the Dominican Republic and to escort them safely back to this country. This same assistance will be available to the nationals of other countries, some of whom have already asked for our help."