UVA is a 3rd-rate law school?!?
Shit man…where does my law school rate then?!?
And I would be remiss not to point out, “when in fact he was dealing with a man (Kruschev) who was quite capable of starting WWII.”
And they were working during the Cuban Missile Crisis. ExComm was made up of, among others, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Deputy Secretary George Ball, who, as an academic, had studied the Soviet Union, Deputy Secretary U. Alexis Johnson, who had been in the foreign service since 1935, UN ambassador Adlai Stephenson, Assistant Secretary Edwin Martin, who was a specialist in economic affairs and was shaping Kennedy’s Latin American policy, and Llewellyn Thompson, who had at that point been ambassador to the Soviet Union for five years.
In addition, on Excomm was former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and former Secretary of Defense Robert Lovett, both of whom had, under Truman, been instrumental in the formation of NATO and the Marshall plan, as well as other senior government official from the Department of Defense, the CIA, etc. It’s not like JFK just said, “Well, Bobby, I’m turning this over to you singlehandedly. Don’t screw up and blow up the world.”
I remember this as a young boy in Orlando, Florida. I recall my parents and Grandparents discussing this at the kitchen table. My Grandfather had a bomb shelter installed in the back yard of his home a few miles from ours and it was fully stocked. I remember standing on the playground of my elementary school and watching the jet-black B-52 bombers of SAC flying over in formation, headed south.
I remember talk of how the missiles they had would most likely reach the southeast only and Cape Canaveral and McCoy AFB, a SAC base (now Orlando International) would likely be early targets and were were in the 40 mile blast radius. I recall having explicit instructions to make our way to the shelter if the sirens (which we heard tested on occasion) were to sound.
My Grandfather had a shotgun near the entrance of the shelter, along with other weapons inside, and I asked what that was for.
Russians? No, he said, other people that tried to get into the shelter because there was only enough food for our family. That thought, of shooting our neighbors, drove home the desperation of the situation to me as much as watching the bombers.
In later years I learned of U.S. nuclear subs off the coast of Russia being FAR closer than the 60 miles from Cuba to Key West and others stationed in European countries with the same advantage. Given this, I can’t understand why the showdown for missiles that we can see and monitor as opposed to ones in subs.
Yeah, so? How would they have handled it? I mean, what would they have done differently than JFK did, if he listened to them instead of Bobby?
Still waiting for the OP to explain the curious wording of the thread title.
[QUOTE=tomndebb]
If you believe that Nixon was lacking in resolve, then you seriously misread the man while he was in the public eye.
Given Nixon’s past and rhetoric, I seriously doubt he would have had the resolve to go against the JCS recommendation as JFK did. His whole past and inclination would have been to invade. Which in turn would have had the Russian commander use his tactical nukes, which then would have the US use ours etc…
As you can see for yourself, there are more than enough people who think JFK was a pussy for not invading.
Shows what going to a first rate law school can do for you. It means never having to admit you were wrong or stupid, just pull out your sheepskin and wave it.
And its not like he went to a Podonk University for undergrad. Just a lil ole place called Harvard.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to invade Cuba. In fact they were so pressing that one of his aids may have even “prep” the recon pilots (at least one of them) to “lie” to Lemay that his plane was NOT shot at when in fact it was (It actually had holes in it).
If they (JCOS) knew that Kennedy - after all they did - made a backroom deal…
They wanted a military option plain and simple. Anything else to them would have been Cowardly.
Making the deal was an act of cowardness (from a military point of view).
Kennedy - by not acting militarily - did give up part of the defense system of the United Stated (the Jupiter Missiles System in Turkey)
Appeasement? Cowardly? Smart?
History did prove him right. The USSR did in fact collapse.
If you consider what would have happened if they got their way, we have to go with “Heroic Effort.”
Is it just an urban legend that they came close to launching a coup against Kennedy?
[shrug] I’ve never even heard or read an UL to that effect.
<snip>
And that should have been a good lesson for the chest-pounders. What may appear to be the “manly” thing to do is not what is the most practical or what is best for the country.
I was nineteen and a student in college. We white-knuckled it for those days in October of '62. It was very surreal. When it was over and we knew that we were going to have lives after all, you can believe that John Kennedy was a hero.
It was a long, long time before we found out about the backroom deal with the Turkish missles and I don’t know personally of anyone my age who has said that that was a big mistake in retrospect.
The two very bad things that you said happened didn’t exist. The war was avoided. The missles in Cuba never landed on America soil. And a detente-loving Kruschev was never in charge. We didn’t even hear that word back in those days. He was interested in “burying” us.
John and Bobby. Those were great times. Check out the Presidential ratings for that time period.
speakingmythoughts, welcome to SDMB! I would offer you a good Cuban cigar, but…
I worked for Western Electric back then; I was stationed at the main Toll Switching Office in Dallas–a lot of military communications were routed through that office. We were told to report to work but we were kept in a “bull pen” in the basement with strict orders not to touch any piece of equipment at all. We were there to keep communications flowing when the missiles flew; it was a very tense few days and Kennedy was counted as a hero when we could stand down. Most ironic that he later met his doom in Dallas.
:eek: :smack: It was?!
Actually, the heroic effort turned out to be the ability to compromise.
This was my main point. Was Kennedy’s deal making a heroic effort or an act of cowardness.
By every standard used both now and then it was the right thing to do.
It got the missles out of Cuba, (which was his objective to begin with).
Even now, with all the knowledge of the backroom deal, Kennedy is still viewed as a hero in this crisis.
Thus his deal making was a heroic effort.
He was a hero then, and he a hero now.
Since you seem to agree with everyone here that JFK was not “cowardly,” how can there be a debate here? Unless you’re planning to raise Curtis LeMay from the dead so he can make that arguement.
No, actually I was thinking about how one should handle Iran when I started this post.
Iran tested a least one missle system, and possibly wants to develope nukes.
There’s been talk about going to war with Iran over this.
Should the US make a deal, compromise or what?
I think if Kennedy were president today he would what?
Threaten big time then deal?
Judging by the answers in this thread, Bush should compromise.
That depends on what points the Iranians are willing to compromise. Apparently that doesn’t include development of uranium-enrichment technology. It might include development of long-range missile technology – have there been any negotiations on that as yet?
I’ve read a lot about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and have tremendous respect for how JFK handled it. He gathered together a great team of advisors (ExComm) and very adroitly moved down both military and diplomatic tracks, keeping his options open as long as possible. He asked a lot of questions and demanded answers from his civilian and military advisors. He judged Khruschev very astutely, was careful not to let his aides gloat afterwards, and did all he could to leave the Soviet leader a more-or-less face-saving way out (Nikita wasn’t ousted until 1964, and his handling of the Cuban situation was only one of several reasons why).
Many of those on ExComm wanted a much more aggressive approach than JFK pursued, and that advice, if taken, would surely have resulted in World War III. Even with U.S. nuclear forces so much stronger than the Soviet Union’s in 1962, it would’ve been ruinous for both countries, and the world.