Posted on 04/08/2006 12:31:11 AM PDT by JohnHuang2
Ted Kennedy is offering up a history lesson in a new book, "America Back on Track," that defends the indefensible appeasement policies he and his party have made the cornerstone of their national security platform since 1972.
Now I admit I haven't read Kennedy's book. And I never will. There is nothing of value to be learned from reading a book ghostwritten by someone hired and guided by the drunken, brain-addled, womanizing, immoral swine from the state of Massachusetts. I know all I need to know about this book by reading about it in the Boston Globe.
For all Ted Kennedy knows about national security and history, he may as well have written a book about how to save drowning women.
Once again, he claims that Saddam Hussein could have been dealt with through "diplomacy" rather than war. That is the gist of his treatise against "preventive war." And he uses as an illustration the way his brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, defused the Cuban missile crisis and avoided World War III.
Here's the truth about the Cuban missile crisis that you won't read in Kennedy's book.
After President Kennedy took office in 1961, he began planning a limited invasion of Cuba for the purpose of overthrowing Fidel Castro, who had seized power two years earlier. Kennedy planned to rely mostly on anti-Castro Cubans based in Miami. He promised them air support for their campaign.
On April 17, 1961, Kennedy dispatched a Central Intelligence Agency-trained force of about 1,300 in what would become known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. When the would-be liberators met stiff opposition, Kennedy refused to send the promised air support – leaving his allies to be picked off on the beaches.
It was a foreign policy disaster that shook the Kennedy administration. Not only had it failed to achieve its objectives, it had demonstrated to Nikita Khrushchev in the Soviet Kremlin that Kennedy was weak, a vacillator, indecisive.
It was that weakness in failing to achieve a victory in the Bay of Pigs that prompted Khrushchev a year later to move Soviet nuclear missiles to Cuba – 90 miles from the United States.
"The Massachusetts Democrat writes that his brothers were right to resist advice urging them to launch a pre-emptive strike on Fidel Castro when missiles aimed at the United States were discovered in Cuba in 1962," explains the Boston Globe story. "They correctly argued that 'a first strike was inconsistent with American values,' and would be a 'Pearl Harbor in reverse,' he writes."
Well, just a year earlier Kennedy evidently hadn't seen it that way. He had launched an attack on Castro's Cuba before it had Soviet nuclear missiles pointed at the United States. No, that wasn't the reason Kennedy didn't attack. He didn't attack because he feared it would risk a nuclear war with the Soviet Union.
And Teddy's wrong about the way the crisis was resolved, too. It wasn't just through diplomacy – which would never have worked. President Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba and ordered our sailors to board or destroy any Soviet ship that tried to break it.
But the Cuban missile crisis was ended peacefully. In fact, more people were killed in Ted Kennedy's car seven years later than were killed in the Cuban missile crisis when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.
Teddy's brothers did end up making concessions to the Soviets – promising to pull missiles out of Turkey in exchange for the removal of missiles from Cuba.
But look more deeply at the moral relativism at the core of Kennedy's thesis – which is essentially the perception that guides the Democratic Party's foreign policy and national security views: "The premeditated nature of preventive attacks and preventive wars makes them anathema to well-established international principles against aggression."
That one sentence pretty well summarizes it. Call it "Chamberlainism," if you will. Kennedy and the Democrats never learned the greatest lesson of the 20th century – that you cannot appease or wish away evil.
Kennedy's book, by the way, comes out on the 45th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion – though the author and publisher don't note that coincidence.
Joseph Farah MEGA PING!
ROTFLOL!
Just a little too wordy for a tagline.
Here is Simon Heffer in the Daily Telegraph writing about the new Tory party leader trying to reposition his party:
"More in sorrow than in anger - I can't take Dave and Francis sufficiently seriously to get angry about them - I feel I must offer some advice. They are repositioning their party in much the same fashion as Senator Ted Kennedy used to reposition cars after a night's boozing. "
:)
But the Cuban missile crisis was ended peacefully. In fact, more people were killed in Ted Kennedy's car seven years later than were killed in the Cuban missile crisis when the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.
Actually there was one casualty during the Cuban Missile Crisis.U-2 pilot Major Rudolph Anderson was shot down on October 27, 1962 over Cuba.
I doubt Ted Kennedy knows that part of history. While his two brothers were busy screwing up the Cuban situation , he was probably sloshed to the gills somewhere engaged in getting his ashes hauled by a teen ager.
LOL! Me too, and thank you for the link.
I don't know if that's what Nikita said, but you're RIGHT about the circumstances. That summit meeting and Kennedy's lack luster, weak performance (drugged?)- WAS the reason the Ruskies went for putting missiles inCuber (sic). THAT is the fact.
And what really ticks me off is that Jack the jackass gets credit for 'solving' a freaking crisis HE created in the first place!
That's okay. I doubt he really wrote it anyway.
Its much worse than that.. I talked many times to ex-bay of pigs cubans that was going to be the 2nd wave or escaped Castro.. in Miami when I worked there..years ago..
After landing the 1st wave.. Kennedy refused to send in the ammo and other suppiles to support the effort.. The ships holding those supplies up and drove off.. with the CIA trained Cubans incrediously watching on the beach.. Screw the air attack.. what are you going to do with no BULLETS.. or other supplys to fight an virtual ARMY?.. Even becomeing gorillas was not possible with no bullets...
Yes Kennedy was a coward.. and a craven one at that.. and it remains to be seen that he was not virtually in league with the Russians.. For because of this it solidified Castro power base in ALL of Latin America.. Many other things those Cubans told me about that event.. The air assault was not even PLANNED.. because a successful insurgency would have gained support from the Cubans themselves.. many IN the army.. THAT was the plan not some American invasion by airplane.. Kennedy actively and cravenly DESTROYED the invasion, ON PURPOSE..
Holding back air support was the least of the insurgents problems.. Soon they could have and would have seized Cubas airplanes.. Which would not have stood a chance anyway IF the stinger missles would have been delivered.. but they didnt even have a second load of ammo, so they, some of them, surrendered, but not all .. ALL because of JFK.. SPIT............ On the Book that JFK "wrote" was ghost written anyway.. The man was an idiot or dupe or BOTH...
As a matter of fact: The fool Kennedy inherited an invasion plan from the Eisenhower Administration. He then proceded to amend and modify the invasion plan ... namely in moving the action from Oriente Province to the Bay of Pigs.
It pointed out to him that this swampy, lowlying area was isolated from the mainland, reachable only by a narrow road, and very close to large enemy concentrations. The Kennedy team insisted this was no problem, as they would have aerial superiority and be able to prevent reinforcements.
They also reduced the size of the invasion force.
Required reading this month:
Joe, a hardened Democrat, controlled his bias to write the definitive bio of this dangerous man, Ted Kennedy. What he does, more effectively than anyone else I have read, is lay out the plans for the Kennedy Myth Machine, and document how it works.
Let the revisionists start. The sooner it becomes known that JFK did this country more harm than LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton combined, the better. It also deepens the mystery of why the citizens of any state would select Ted as their Senator.
***Just a little too wordy for a tagline.***
How about The Shortest Book in the World: Lifesaving by Ted Kennedy.
Thanks for the ping. Kennedy's best and most powerful days are behind him. Thank God! He may be the sleaziest of all the Kennedys.
LOL!
Thanks for the ping!
Well said. And proven over and over again throughout history. I pray we never have to learn the hard way.
Gee, dokmad, you must be mistaken. My social studies teacher told me JFK was an author and a great war hero, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a great American Victory, all the Kennedy's are sort of our "Royal Family", and they were great fighters for Civil Rights.
Also, I learned at Kennedy High School that Vietnam was Nixon's War.
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