More Ghosts from October 1962
More from "Thirteen Days" by Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.:
During the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy was, in RFK's words, "distressed" that the Joint Chiefs, "with the notable exception of General (Maxwell) Taylor, seemed to give so little consideration to the implications of the steps they suggested (air strikes on Soviet missile sites and personnel, followed by invasion)..." or assumed "...that a (nuclear) war was in our national interest."
In essence, the President "was disturbed by this inability to look beyond the limited military field...this experience pointed out for us all the importance of civilian direction and control (of the military and intelligence apparatus) and the importance of raising probing questions to military recommendations."
And this:
"Barbara Tuchman's 'The Guns of August (1914)' had made a great impression on the President (JFK).
'I am not going to follow a course which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, The Missiles of October,' he said to me (RFK, Sr.) that Saturday night, October 26 (1962). 'If anybody is around to write after this, they are going to understand that we made every effort to find peace, and every effort to give our adversary room to move. I am not going to push the Russians an inch beyond what is necessary (to secure the removal of the Soviet IRBMs in Cuba)."
There is a note at the end of this memoir from Ted Sorensen, speechwriter and counsel to JFK and advisor to the 1968 Presidential campaign of RFK:
"It was Senator (Robert F.) Kennedy's intention to add a discussion of the basic ethical question involved: what, if any, circumstance or justification gives this government or any government the moral right to bring its people and possibly all people under the shadow of nuclear destruction? He wrote this book in the summer and fall of 1967 on the basis of his personal diaries and recollections, but never had an opportunity to rewrite or complete it."
There was no exemption taken for the case of Vladimir Putin. And Ukraine was politically and militarily united with Russia in the USSR.
Hey, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, Nancy Pelosi and all the geniuses in Langley, Pentagon City and Foggy Bottom, the so-called Helsinki Group and such dens of moronic tripe as The Atlantic Council, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, NYT, WaPo and Democracy Now - are you listening?
