Posted on 10/19/2006 8:11:56 AM PDT by slickeroo
President Bush Is No JFK, Thank God
Humberto Fontova
Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2006
Kim Jong-il's atomic blast has some conservative pundits reminiscing fondly over JFK. His response to Khrushchev and Castro exactly 44 Octobers ago, we're now given to understand, was positively Pattonesque.
"Now that's deterrence," writes Charles Krauthammer in a syndicated column hailing JFK's handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The column calls for "Kennedy-esque clarity" from President Bush and has been variously titled "Follow Kennedy's Lead to Deter North Korea," "We could use Kennedy's Clarity" and "It's Time for Real Deterrence."
An article in National Review by Andrew McCarthy says "hear, hear" to Krauthammer. "It would be better for President Bush to emulate the Kennedy strategy," writes McCarthy, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The U.S. message to Kim, he stresses should be no-nonsense and "Kennedy-Clear"
"Kennedy reacted brilliantly and well and solved the problem," gushed Dick Morris to a nodding and receptive Sean Hannity on "Hannity & Colmes" last week.
Let's hand it to Fidel Castro. During his 47 years in the catbird seat, his cultivation and employment of "useful idiots" can only be described as an art. Lenin coined the term, but Castro became the virtuoso at sniffing them out, flattering them, then flummoxing them.
Not that Krauthammer, Hannity, Morris and McCarthy qualify as useful idiots. Far from it, and that's precisely the impressive part. Castro and his Western media and academic acolytes, by sheer repetition (as Joseph Goebbels famously prescribed), have planted and nurtured so many myths about the Cuban Revolution and its illustrious leader that these monopolize the discussions and literature on the subject.
The above pundits, I'd imagine, scoff at the usual humbug regarding Cuba: the exquisite health care and education, blah, blah. And they know full well of the Castro regime's disastrous rule and cruelty. But they've apparently swallowed the Missile Crisis portion of the legend, which isn't surprising. As Churchill said to his ministers, "History will be very good to us, because I intend to write most of it."
Ditto Camelot, staffed with its scribbling professors and feted by its fawning flock of footservants and supplicants from the Beltway media. Richard Nixon's rise to the White House transformed this Beltway press corps much as the rise of a full moon transformed Lon Chaney. Nowadays many of those same nattering nabobs complain that FOX toadies to the Bush administration. Pots and kettles come quickly to mind.
Perhaps a refresher on conservative reaction to JFK's Missile Crisis "resolution" is in order.
"We've been had!" yelled then Navy chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 26, 1962 how JFK "solved" the Missile Crisis. Admiral Anderson was the man in charge of the "blockade" against Cuba.
"The biggest defeat in our nation's history!" bellowed Air Force chief Curtis LeMay while whacking his fist on his desk.
"We missed the big boat," Said General Maxwell Taylor after learning the details of the deal with Khrushchev.
"Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory, " wrote Richard Nixon, "then gave the Soviets squatters' rights in our backyard."
"It's a public relations fable that Khrushchev quailed before Kennedy," wrote Alexander Haig. "The legend of the eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation invented by Kennedy's men paid a handsome political dividend. But so much that happened was obscured by stage-management designed to divert public attention from embarrassing facts. The Kennedy-Khrushchev deal was a deplorable error resulting in political havoc and human suffering through the Americas."
Even Democrats despaired. "This nation lacks leadership," said Dean Acheson, the Democratic elder statesman who Kennedy consulted on the matter. "The meetings were repetitive and without direction. Most members of Kennedy's team had no military or diplomatic experience whatsoever. The sessions were a waste of time."
But not for the Soviets. "We ended up getting exactly what we'd wanted all along," admitted Nikita Khrushchev, "security for Fidel Castro's regime and American missiles removed from Turkey. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro. After Kennedy's death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise not to invade Cuba."
And the Kennedy team brainstorming sessions were certainly no waste of time for the primary beneficiary. "Many concessions were made by the Americans about which not a word has been said," disclosed Fidel Castro. "Perhaps one day they'll be made public."
"We can't say anything public about this agreement.... It would be too much of a political embarrassment for us." That's Robert F Kennedy to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin when closing the deal that ended the so-called crisis.
(All above quotes are fully documented in "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.")
Castro's regime was granted new status. Let's call it MAP, or Mutually Assured Protection. Cuban freedom fighters working from south Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. neutrality laws." Some of these bewildered men were jailed, others "quarantined," prevented from leaving Dade County. The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro remained unmolested, that not a hair on his chinny chin chin was harmed by the hotheaded exiles.
When some moved the bases of the liberation fight to the Bahamas, Dominican Republic and Costa Rica, the adamantly "non-interventionist" Camelot liberals suggested (strongly) to these governments that the freedom fighters be booted out.
It's a tribute to the power of Castroite mythology that, even with all this information a matter of public record for over 40 years and the remaining declassified in the mid '90s, the academic/media mantra still has it that Castro "defied ten U.S. presidents."
Even crazier, we're now told by conservatives that Kennedy defied Khrushchev.
Let's be clear: These freedom fighters never asked for American blood to bail them out. They were perfectly willing to do the fighting and bleeding and dying themselves. They simply asked a close neighbor to lend some tools.
On December 17, 1940, FDR held a famous press conference explaining his lend-lease scheme. "Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire," he beamed to an overwhelmingly hostile Congress. "If I have a length of garden hose that I can connect with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire. Now, what do I do? … We don't have to have too much formality about it, but later I say to him, "I was glad to lend you that hose."
Row upon row upon row of American graves in European, North African and Asian cemeteries testify that we lent much more than a garden hose to (some pretty distant) neighbors. In 1961 a literal next-door neighbor had his house engulfed by flames. His wife and children screamed from the upstairs windows as the flames closed in. The desperate man's face, arms and clothes were scorched as he ran and banged on his neighbor's door. "Amigo! POR FAVOR! PLEASE! Amigo!"
The neighbor looked through the peephole, cringed and bolted the door. Then he scurried out the back door, rolled up his hose and locked it in his shed.
"We locked Castro's Communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal," growled Barry Goldwater ("Mr. Conservative") over JFK "deterrence," now hailed by conservative pundits. In their day Nixon and Goldwater represented opposite poles of the Republican Party, much as Kennedy and Lieberman represent for Democrats today. Yet both were adamant against the Missile Crisis outcome. From National Review and Human Events in the press to the full spectrum of Republicans, JFK's Missile Crisis "resolution" in October 1962 was universally denounced as a second Munich.
Yet in this era of swaggering "cowboy diplomacy" by Republicans, some of Nixon and Goldwater's standard-bearers hail the Kennedy swindle and sellout as a model of muscular deterrence. What we have here, it seems, is failure to communicate.
Humberto Fontova is author of Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant, a Conservative Book Club Main Selection.
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The Kennedy Myth will always be with us, I'm afraid.
JFK made some interesting concessions that are rarely reported by the Mystical Hysterical Cult of Kennedy. IIRC, the deal stated that the USSR turns their ships around and dismantle missiles for the USA dismantling their nuclear presence in Turkey among other things.
Oh yeah, who can forgot the wonderful blunder known as The Bay of Pigs that occurred a few months earlier that would have nullified The Crisis. Imagine a world with a capitalist Cuba helping the rest of Latin America become great as only Cubans know how to be great!
It wouldnt be enough to hit the nuke facilities, you'd have to take out all NK artillery first. And to do that, you'd have to take out command and control, NK air defense, airforce...
I think you'd have to go full scale or not at all.
It will be interesting to see which prevails in the long-run: the Kennedy myth or the Clinton myth.
Most likely right. But I fear we'll do noting and North Korea, Iran and the Terrorists will have nuclear weapons in a year.
-bflr-
They are two of the most overrated assholes of the 20th Century. I imagine they will both prevail, thanks to lib historians.
Now, failures cements the wall of shame in Berlin. Failures blot the sands of shame at the Bay of Pigs. Failures mark the slow death of freedom in Laos. Failures infest the jungles of Vietnam. And failures haunt the houses of our once great alliances and undermine the greatest bulwark ever erected by free nations -- the NATO community. Failures proclaim lost leadership, obscure purpose, weakening will, and the risk of inciting our sworn enemies to new aggressions and to new excesses.
And because of this administration we are tonight a world divided; we are a Nation becalmed. We have lost the brisk pace of diversity and the genius of individual creativity. We are plodding along at a pace set by centralized planning, red tape, rules without responsibility, and regimentation without recourse.
Rather than useful jobs in our country, our people have been offered bureaucratic "make work"; rather than moral leadership, they have been given bread and circuses. They have been given spectacles, and, yes, they've even been given scandals.
Tonight, there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness amongst our youth, anxiety among our elders, and there's a virtual despair among the many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives. And where examples of morality should be set, the opposite is seen. Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.
Barry Goldwater, July 16, 1964
Get rid of Lil'Kim or Japan, South Korea and Taiwan will get nuclear weapons to defend themselves.
Start off with saying just Japan will - if they don't respond after that, then say South Korea. If they don't respond to that, then mention Taiwan.
Regards, Ivan
Despite the efforts of liberal spinmeisters, the Clinton myth will likely be short-lived. Recent developments in Korea, the Middle East, and in Europe make the Clinton years seem like a latter-day Belshazzar's feast.
Oddly enough, a number of conservatives have helped to perpetuate the Kennedy myth. Rush Limbaugh, for example, once praised him for bombing Cuba, and both Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt like to quote him. They seem to like Kennedy's hardline rhetoric, which contrasts so sharply with that of the Soros/Dean/Kerry/Pelosi faction which dominates the Democratic Party.
I don't recall Kennedy bombing Cuba, nor do I recall Rush praising Kennedy for said bombing run.
I do recall Kennedy's tax cuts mentioned by the talk radio personalities such as Rush and Sean. Kennedy wasn't all bad and in this one area, he gave a needed boost to the economy. I think they (Rush Sean etc.) quoted Kennedy because they were chiding the Dems on losing their way fiscally by being guided by communist/fascist principles of Soros/Dean/Kerry/Teddy et al.
A military strike was called for a long time ago. I think we are beyond that now. This War president has bought into the hearts-and-minds ideology and the war is pretty much on hold as NK and Iran ramp up their capabilities and the invasion from the south continues in full flood.
Great post!
Wait until MM's diary shows up. ;)
I heard Rush make that remark several years ago. He was probably referring to the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba by US-backed Cuban exiles in April of 1961.
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