" Nearly 40 years ago, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger mapped out secret contingency plans to launch airstrikes against Havana and “smash Cuba,” newly disclosed government documents show.
Mr. Kissinger was so irked by Cuba’s military incursion into Angola that in 1976 he convened a top-secret group of senior officials to work out possible retaliatory measures in case Cuba deployed forces to other African nations…"
Luckily Ford was President then, shortly followed by Carter.
Imagine if Bush, Jr. had been President then. Bush, Jr. would have jumped at the idea…
Henry the K was hardly a military strategist. It is idiotic crap like this that has long since convinced me that his reputation as knowing what he was doing and talking about is a load of bullshit.
I’m no fan of McNamara’s either. Efficient fire bombing of Tokyo or the reduction of Vietnam were stupid. But at least McNamara had the insight to figure out later in life that so many of his actions were downright evil and feel remorse. Kissinger says it all when he says (not exactly) “at least I’m not going to boo-hoo about it like McNamara.” Having the example of McNamara and Johnson in front of him, Kissinger just did more damage, he didn’t learn from it at all.
I’m not paying these guys a gazillion dollars a year so they can be unprepared when we need them to do something. As long as the decision to do something isn’t Kissinger’s to make, let him draw up whatever war plan he wants.
I read on the internet that 90% of the population of Canada lives within 50 miles of the US boarder. If it’s on the internet, it just has to be true, right?
More seriously, hell, it’s part of the military’s job to write up war plans and contingency plans. And of course they’re “secret plans”.
Sure, tens of thousands of tourists do it every summer, and boy are they sorry.
I think that McNamara committed a lot of evil. And then demonstrated remorse. Kissinger, no remorse. Proud of it even. If I had to spend all of eternity in hell with only one of them, it would be McNamara. Shit, I’d choose Nixon over Kissinger. But Kissinger over Cheney.
Now, I’m going to have to work ‘military plans to invade’ into my conversations just so that I can steal your line! (Do we have a ‘hard glare’ smilie?)
I don’t think that McNamara was sincere in his statements. He just realized it was a colossal fuck up, thanks to him, and he wanted to get some kind of credibility back to pimp his book. He’s probably still secretly fuming at the military for ruining his great enterprise.
Give him another 10 years, and he’ll probably put a book out saying that he was against staying in Vietnam all along, but, Lyndon forced him into staying with it.
IIRC, didn’t Cecil do a column about our plans to invade Canada? If that was the case, then, as **Frank **points out, the military were criminally negligent.
It still amazes me that posts like this still crop up! :rolleyes:
Governments have to plan for everything. And when it comes to military action that ‘planning’ may go so far as to include memos, detailed instructions/orders, hardware contracts, troop movements, actual rehearsals/training exercises etc. It’s just what you do in the modern world. People always like to point to Churchill’s Operation: Unthinkable as proof that he was a war mongering lunatic. In terms of history’s big picture, it’s utterly meaningless (other than showing that he was a pragmatist & a realist).
And that last line about G.W. Bush was jingoistic nonsense…