Posted on 10/24/2020 3:59:11 AM PDT by Kaslin
President Kennedy “employed a combination of toughness, nerve and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated that it dazzled the world!” (Democrat court historian and Kennedy presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger, in his media-acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize winning, A Thousand Days.)
"Follow Kennedy's Lead to Deter North Korea. It's Time For Real Deterrence," wrote the late Charles Krauthammer in 2006, contrasting President Bush’s wimpy response to North Korea’s missiles to Kennedy’s testicular cowing of the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
National Review’s Andrew McCarthy said "hear-hear" to Krauthammer. "It would be better for President Bush to emulate the Kennedy strategy" wrote McCarthy. The U.S. message to Jong, he stressed, should be no-nonsense and "Kennedy-Clear."
Point is, over time and given ceaseless repetition, the Media/Hollywood/Democrat spin on the Missile Crisis “crossed the aisle” (so to speak) and became mainstream.
Perhaps a refresher on conservative reaction to JFK's Missile Crisis "resolution" is in order. Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, for instance, represented different poles of the Republican party. Yet both agreed:
"We locked Castro's communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal," growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.”
"Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” wrote Richard Nixon. "Then gave the Soviet squatters rights in our backyard."
Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor represented opposite poles of the military establishment.
"The biggest defeat in our nation's history!" bellowed Air Force chief Curtis LeMay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal.
"We missed the big boat," complained Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning of the same.
"We've been had!" yelled then Navy chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK "solved" the missile crisis. Adm. Anderson was the man in charge of the very "blockade" against Cuba.
"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 the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal was a deplorable error resulting in political havoc and human suffering through the America's."
Even Democratic luminary Dean Acheson despaired: "This nation lacks leadership," he grumbled about the famous “Ex-Comm meetings” so glorified in Thirteen Days. "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," snickered Nikita Khrushchev in his diaries, “security for Fidel Castro’s regime and American missiles removed from Turkey and Italy. 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."
In fact Khrushchev prepared to yank the missiles before any “bullying” by Kennedy. “What!” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28th 1962, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba?”
“Apparently.”
“Yesterday the Cubans shot down a plane (U-2 with) without (Soviet) permission. Today they’re preparing a nuclear attack.”
“But that is insane!..Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” commanded the Soviet premier.
So much for the gallant Knights of Camelot forcing the Russians’ retreat during the Cuban missile crisis. In fact, the Castro brothers and Che Guevara’s genocidal lust is what prompted the Butcher of Budapest to yank the missiles from their reach.
In his diaries Khrushchev snickers further: "it would have been ridiculous for us to go to war over Cuba–for a country 8,000 miles away. For us, war was unthinkable." So much for the threat that so rattled the Knights of Camelot and inspired such cinematic and literary epics of drama and derring-do by their court scribes and court cinematographers.
Considering the U.S. nuclear superiority over the Soviets at the time of the (so-called) Missile Crisis (5,000 nuclear warheads for us, 300 for them) it's hard to imagine a President Nixon — much less Reagan — quaking in front of Khrushchev's transparent ruse a la Kennedy.
The genuine threat came —not from Moscow—but from the Castros and Che. “If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” (Che Guevara to Sam Russell of The London Daily Worker, November 1962.)
“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely why I urged Khrushchev to launch them. And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.”
"Many concessions were made by the Americans about which not a word has been said," snickered Fidel Castro as late as 1968. "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.
Castro's regime was granted new status. Let's call it MAP, or Mutually-Assured-Protection. Here’s the exact wording from Khrushchev when gleefully agreeing to Kennedy’s terms:
“You (JFK) in your turn gave (to Khrushchev) the assurances that the so-called “quarantine” would be promptly removed and that no invasion of Cuba would be made, not only by the U.S. but by other countries of the Western hemisphere either.”
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.
JFK's Missile crisis “solution” also pledged that he immediately pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.
Kennedy's deal with Khrushchev cut this lifeline. Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country!
This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from Kennedy’s court scribes, who scribbled Kennedy’s “victory.” To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed Cuban rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."
It's a tribute to the power of Castroite mythology that, even with all this information a matter of public record for almost half a century the academic/media mantra (gloat, actually) still has Castro, "defying ten U.S. Presidents!" Instead he’s been protected by them.
It was a scarey time.
Prime time address...Mom and Dad somber. I knew just enough to be scared.
We almost died. Everyone.
It was always a mystery to me why we had to put up with a puny commie country 90 miles off Florida. My history teacher 4 years after the missile crisis said that we didn’t get a deal with Khrushchev. We had to give up Jupiter C missile bases in Turkey as well.
Not to mention the Bay of Pigs invasion, when Cuban Patriots were betrayed by the Kennedy administration who allowed a gleeful (and grateful ) Castro to round them up and have many of them promptly shot.
If Kennedy had given them the proper backup, Castro could have been history there and then.
“American missiles removed from Turkey and Italy.”
I was born November 1962 (yes my birthday is coming up) so my mom was pregnant with me when this missile crisis was going on and we lived in the worlds #1 target New York city, so before I was even born Democrats were trying to end me lol lol. Actually it was more the NY Times that alerted Castro to the Bay of pigs invasion.
bmp
I was an 11-year-old Canadian living in Connecticut at the time.
Quite the scary time with the threat of nuclear weapons being used.
“Although officials 25 years ago denied there was any such arrangement, it has long been known that such a secret deal was struck as part of the solution to the crisis.”
And there's a fun fact that I learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis just recently.When this was occurring "Che" was a top adviser to Castro...and he was urging Castro to fire the missiles at the US. The very same guy whose image adorns the t-shirts of so many college kids from Scarsdale,Palo Alto,Madison,Cambridge,the Philadelphia Main Line....
Despite the false “Camelot” myth spun up about him after his death, John F. Kennedy was a mediocre president in some ways and a terrible president in other ways. By today’s standards, he might be considered a fiscal conservative, but JFK was no conservative. Whatever the male version of whore is, JFK was it.
It’s funny, 9 years later I was a radar tech in Northern Ontario watching for missiles coming over the pole.
Bump
The missiles did not have a range to hit detroit from Cuba.
I recall those times, yes they had the nation scared. Remind anyone of anything? Kind of like if you don’t ware your mask you will die??
And of all the Rat Presidents who've served during my lifetime Truman and JFK were,by far,the least repugnant.Truman made the right decision regarding Hiroshima and JFK once proclaimed "let them come to Berlin".
Neither Truman nor JFK would be allowed membership in today's Rat Party!
I remember Elinor Roosevelt and her liberal cronies raising money to send tractors to Cuba as a good will gesture and peace offering to Castro and his henchmen. Liberals were always commie pawns.
To say that she DESPISED him was an understatement.
I have been told that one of Dad's brothers used to row boats from MV into Mass. Ended up in a VA hospital until he died, the result of ... mafia fights?
Let's just say that when we visited them in ‘68, no one was allowed to even mention the Kennedys in her presence, lest she start spewing Indian cuss words.
A very fitting assessment of JFK. Unfortunately, some conservatives today--a few of whom are on this board--see him as a hero and role model.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.