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David 
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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| Post subject: Revisiting the Cuban Missile Crisis |  |
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This is a really interesting article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/?utm_source=atlfb
| Quote: | The Real Cuban Missile Crisis
Benjamin Schwarz
On october 16, 1962, John F. Kennedy and his advisers were stunned to learn that the Soviet Union was, without provocation, installing nuclear-armed medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. With these offensive weapons, which represented a new and existential threat to America, Moscow significantly raised the ante in the nuclear rivalry between the superpowers—a gambit that forced the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. On October 22, the president, with no other recourse, proclaimed in a televised address that his administration knew of the illegal missiles, and delivered an ultimatum insisting on their removal, announcing an American “quarantine” of Cuba to force compliance with his demands. While carefully avoiding provocative action and coolly calibrating each Soviet countermeasure, Kennedy and his lieutenants brooked no compromise; they held firm, despite Moscow’s efforts to link a resolution to extrinsic issues and despite predictable Soviet blustering about American aggression and violation of international law. In the tense 13‑day crisis, the Americans and Soviets went eyeball-to-eyeball. Thanks to the Kennedy administration’s placid resolve and prudent crisis management—thanks to what Kennedy’s special assistant Arthur Schlesinger Jr. characterized as the president’s “combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve, and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated, that [it] dazzled the world”—the Soviet leadership blinked: Moscow dismantled the missiles, and a cataclysm was averted.
Every sentence in the above paragraph describing the Cuban missile crisis is misleading or erroneous. But this was the rendition of events that the Kennedy administration fed to a credulous press; this was the history that the participants in Washington promulgated in their memoirs; and this is the story that has insinuated itself into the national memory—as the pundits’ commentaries and media coverage marking the 50th anniversary of the crisis attested.
Scholars, however, have long known a very different story: since 1997, they have had access to recordings that Kennedy secretly made of meetings with his top advisers, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (the “ExComm”). Sheldon M. Stern—who was the historian at the John F. Kennedy Library for 23 years and the first scholar to evaluate the ExComm tapes—is among the numerous historians who have tried to set the record straight. His new book marshals irrefutable evidence to succinctly demolish the mythic version of the crisis. Although there’s little reason to believe his effort will be to any avail, it should nevertheless be applauded.
Reached through sober analysis, Stern’s conclusion that “John F. Kennedy and his administration, without question, bore a substantial share of the responsibility for the onset of the Cuban missile crisis” would have shocked the American people in 1962, for the simple reason that Kennedy’s administration had misled them about the military imbalance between the superpowers and had concealed its campaign of threats, assassination plots, and sabotage designed to overthrow the government in Cuba—an effort well known to Soviet and Cuban officials.
In the 1960 presidential election, Kennedy had cynically attacked Richard Nixon from the right, claiming that the Eisenhower-Nixon administration had allowed a dangerous “missile gap” to grow in the U.S.S.R.’s favor. But in fact, just as Eisenhower and Nixon had suggested—and just as the classified briefings that Kennedy received as a presidential candidate indicated—the missile gap, and the nuclear balance generally, was overwhelmingly to America’s advantage. |
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Wokko 
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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The 1960 election was stolen too, the cult that still seems to idolize JFK wont have a bar of it though.
The fact the moon landings are attributed to him and his administration even though it was done under Nixon is just one example. |
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David
I dare you to try
Joined: 27 Jul 2003
Location: Andromeda
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I don't have any particular attachment to JFK and broadly agree that his canonisation seems misplaced. But given how many years went into preparation for the moon landings (and the program that led up to it), can Nixon really be credited for an event that occurred mere months into his presidency?
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All watched over by machines of loving grace |
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Wokko
Come and take it.
Joined: 04 Oct 2005
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| Any other action that occurs during a president's tenure are credited to him, but even if we take what you said then it would be LBJ who should be getting credit and you don't hear that either. Nixon oversaw every moon landing and yet is barely mentioned in connection with the Apollo program. |
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Tannin 
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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| Wokko wrote: | | The 1960 election was stolen |
News to me. Did Kennedy lose the popular vote but win on Electoral College votes or something? If so, it''s very strange to year you say so when you are conspicuously silent about the daylight robbery that saw Bush installed instead of Gore. Well, it is you, so maybe not so strange.
| Wokko wrote: | | the cult that still seems to idolize JFK wont have a bar of it though. |
The Kennedy Cult is downright spooky. Yanks are just plain weird people.
| Wokko wrote: | | The fact the moon landings are attributed to him and his administration even though it was done under Nixon is just one example. |
The fact is that the moon landings were the result of a decade-long effort of mind-bendingly massive proportions. Kennedy started it. (Ike had a space program which would probably have got us to the moon ... in around 2125. Kennedy got serious. And LBJ got really serious about it.
Nixon just happened to be in office a few years later when the fruits of all that sustained effort through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo Programs ripened - and then oversaw the almost immediate gutting of the Apollo program as soon as possible after the first couple of landings and cancellation of the main part of the research and exploration.
But then I'm a bit surprised that you believe in the moon landings. I'd have figured you were one of the moon landing fake conspiracy theory people.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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Tannin
Can't remember
Joined: 06 Aug 2006
Location: Huon Valley Tasmania
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Come to think of it, maybe you just hadn't heard of it before. I should have kept schtum. Woops! I may have started something unintended.
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�Let's eat Grandma.� Commas save lives! |
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