Shit, Reagan didn’t even think about invading Cuba, he invaded Grenada, he was taking no chances! Belgium could have whupped Grenada. Operation Lunch Money
I stuffed Grenada in a locker one time. What a little dorkwad.
Well, Joseph P. Kennedy may or may not have been a gangster, but there is no doubt that as US ambassador to Britain, during a time of actual global war (unlike now), he was a defeatist turd . Whatever JFK’s faults were, at least he put his ass on the line fighting the good fight.
Oh, and Joe also thought the Jews in Germany “brought it on themselves”. :rolleyes:
I agree with those critical of Mamet. JFK was no saint, but comparing him to Dubya like that is both insulting and historically ignorant.
JFK relied on the best CIA and military advice available in approving the Bay of Pigs plan bequeathed to him by Eisenhower. He made it very clear that no American air support would be supplied; this was the Cubans’ fight. The Cuban expatriates’ CIA handlers quietly assured them that, once the fat was in the fire, JFK would have no choice but to approve air strikes. He was true to his word and didn’t, and for that is still reviled by Cubans of a certain age. Then he took the blame for the debacle, like a man, saying “Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.” He was the President and recognized that he bore ultimate responsibility, right or wrong, unlike some of his successors.
Read Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest or Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days. JFK learned a lot from the Bay of Pigs and was much more skeptical of CIA and military advice thereafter, a healthy outlook which probably averted WWIII during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and might have kept us from getting in so deep in Vietnam, had he lived.
The closest JFK came to getting in bed with the Mafia was sweating the sheets with a gal who was also sharing linen with some Mafioso. Guess we could always fall back on “guilt by association”.
What’s really funny is the notion that JFK got us into Vietnam. Seems the conventional wisdom these days is that he was trying to ease us out.
Firstly, what’s with your use of “controlled by the Jews?” “Controlled by some Jews,” or even “controlled by Jews” identifies the religion of the controlling gangsters. But anyone saying “the Jews” did whatever sounds like a crackpot conspiracy guy. There are Jews; sometimes people who are Jewish do bad things; I’m with you on both counts. But “the” Jews are not an organized force controlling anything.
Secondly, why are you bringing up Jewishness at all? You establish that a Jewish guy was in the bootlegging business and conclude: “I think it would be naive to believe that Jack didn’t know some gangsters.” It looks like you’re equating Jewish with gangster. If not, what does it matter whether said gangsters went to temple or to cathedral to seek shelter from their sins?
Sailboat
If by “conventional wisdom” you mean Oliver Stone, then sure.
I heard they invented AstroTurf.
I have no dog in this fight but I think what he meant was that distro was controlled by the Jewish mobstersas opposed to the predominantly Italian mobsters. He was not casting aspersions on Jews as a whole, merely distinguishing between the various players within organized crime. They did have quite a few big names as well. Again, not all Jews are mobsters just as not all Italians are mobsters (despite what The Sopranos and Martin Scorsese would have you believe;) ).
I don’t get the people who think that JFK was on the verge of pulling out out of Vietnam. If anything, Kennedy felt he had to prove that he was at least as hard nosed a Cold Warrior as the Republicans (prove he’s more Catholic than the Pope, you might say). About the only real evidence we have is that McNamarra says he was going to, and, to be honest, I don’t consider him to be the most unimpeachable source on matters involving Vietnam. He may have wanted to get out, but he would have found himself in a tough place trying to explain why we were abandoning the South Vietnamese when the war was still some years away from being seen as a lost cause.
I don’t see how anybody could give JFK a pass on the disgrace known as the Bay of Pigs “Invasion”. The plan reads like it was concocted by a couple of drunks, with no access to a map of Cuba.
First:the plan was stupid from the start-the area chosen is low marshland, with shallow water out to hald a mile from shore. This exposed the landing force to withering fire.
Second: air cover was provided by ancient ex-WWII bombers-sitting ducks for the Cubans MIG fighter jets. Kennedy forbade the US Navy (which had a carrier group nearby) from providing air cover
Third: there were no nearby ports-so the invaders had only ammunition and supplies for two day’s fighting.
Last: the area chosen was heavily defended by the Cuban’s best units.
Your average West Point plebe would have had brains enough to see that this plan hadn’t a prayer-yet Kennedy went ahead-and sent hundreds to hteir (certain) deaths. So, I don’t see how Kennedy escaped blame for this disaster-even if the morons of the CIA thought it was great!
Say what? I’ve never heard anyone suggest that Mamet’s characters talk “the way real people talk.” His characters speak in a highly stylized, instantly recognizable idiom that has nothing to do with the way real people talk, and I think everyone who’s seen one of his plays or movies is aware of that. If that makes him a hack, then so is Shakespeare; no one in history has ever talked like Hamlet.
Re Mamet’s piece in the Village Voice, I’m lazy and so I’m going to paste in an e-mail I wrote to the hardcore Republican friend of mine who pointed me to it:
Could happen, tho. 9/11 drove a lot of otherwise sane people round the bend. Dennis Miller, for instance. Who once famously said “Bush surrounds himself with intelligent people like a doughnut hole surrounds itself with doughnut.”
Yes, the point of Mamet’s article was not that he’s suddenly in agreement with me, but that he’s had to challenge some of hsi own beliefs about the world and realize that his views of certain people and events were a lot shallower than he once thought. Despite this, and despite the fact that he’s clearly not a conservative can oppose you and not be insane or strupid or evil is the first step to being a decent human being. Too bad so many on this board still don’t get that.