"When Once we Had Leaders" -- Handling War in Ukraine

American Thinker ^ | March 13, 2022 | Jonathon Moseley

[Moseley]

We must mourn the death of leadership in America.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy cautiously but brilliantly managed the United States — nay, the world — through the Cuban Missile Crisis on the brink of a nuclear World War III. Watching Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, I felt compelled to watch again the movie Thirteen Days bringing these moments to life. I believe that every American and certainly every decision-maker should re-watch this excellent movie.

If your writer may offer my over-simplified distillation, it is this: JFK and his brain trust rejected the choice between Option A, surrender to a missile platform in Cuba that could strike most of the United States with nuclear warheads, and Option B, provoking a nuclear war. They relentlessly demanded and sought an Option C (or several other options). Pushing back against strident voices, they searched for a different path relentlessly.

If we watch videos rather than read books, documentaries about the Cuban Missile Crisis ought to remind us of the qualities of leadership — leadership sorely lacking in my beloved country's decaying society today. If we believe the self-serving accounts — and here I do — every move was stepping cautiously through mine fields. There was no false or stupid bluster, no reckless bull in a china shop roaring forward. Every moment was painstakingly debated, analyzed, thought through, and gamed out.

This author strongly leans toward the beliefs that this is not our war, we should not fight for Ukraine, Europe is pathetic, and it is time for Europe to stop expecting the USA to wipe its nose and clean up after it. I started in politics fighting Soviet imperialism, politically, expanding into Central America and at Gen. Graham's High Frontier and at the Center for Peace and Freedom of the Heritage Foundation.

[Moseley]

“The starving Ukrainian did not slap hinself on the forehead and say “ It’s not being done by the RussianS it’s being done by a Georgian following a Austro-German economic system!”

Well, it sure wasn’t “the Russians.”

It was the Marxists, a system literally installed from Germany and Austria in a revolution paid for by the German Kaiser to try to win World War I by getting Russia out of World War I.

“I was in Kiev soon after the fall of the USSR they blame Holodomor on the Russians!”

Yeah, me too.

AND THAT IRRATIONAL HATRED IS WHY WE HAVE A WAR RIGHT NOW.

That irrational bigotry is no different from the Irish Republican Army engaging in a guerilla war of terrorism in Northern Ireland.

The false, idiotic, and irrational hatred of blaming “Russians” for what the Soviet Marxists did

HAS LED US TO THIS POINT NOW.

[Moseley]

Ukrainians in Ukraine and in the U.S. State Department and Western capital blaming “THE RUSSIANS”

is NO different from Putin claiming that there are Nazis in Ukraine.

The Ukrainian war monger faction is no more living in the real world than Putin saying he is freeing Ukraine of Nazis.

[Reily]

Whatever

[libertylover]

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy cautiously but brilliantly managed the United States — nay, the world — through the Cuban Missile Crisis on the brink of a nuclear World War III.

Ah, he agreed to Khrushchev's offer to remove Russian missile from Cuba if we would agree to remove our missiles from Turkey. I'm not sure I'd call that brilliant.

[Gaffer]

If the ‘case’ for UKR’s existence, democracy and freedom is so pervasive and strong, why isn’t this a UN responsibility?

You’re right. This is just a way to draw the US into their mess directly instead of convincing the world to do it via the UN, and it means that the US (Biden) is the only one to convince. Biden’s critical need of a pre-election pandemic diversion is at the root of this and the consequences, of which he has no inkling or cares, will just commit the US to another pointless debacle.

[OVERTIME]

Respectfully, I’m surprised that people like yourself are so ignorant of history

Such as when you wrote “They (the Soviet Union) were bluffing and we knew they were bluffing. They were never going to push any buttons.”

It is true that they didnt push buttons, but they were about to, and would have, but for one mid-ranking officer.

Try Googling “Vasily Arkhipov”
He was the Soviet naval officer who alone stopped the firing of a nuclear torpedo at the USS Randolph during the Cuban Missle crisis. His submarine was then being depth charged by American ships, and the other officers on the sub believed that war had broken out. He probably prevented a Nuclear war. One that would have killed hundreds of millions of people.

Kennedy’s political war-mongering brinkmanship didnt end up in unspeakable disaster due good fortune, a point seldom mentioned by Kennedy’s hagiogaphers It was an example of the phenomenon that was once described by Otto von Bismark when he stated this:
“God watches over drunks, small children, and the United States of America”
Let us pray that it still applies

[BiglyCommentary]

“The captain of the submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, decided that a war might already have started and wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo.”

What one lone ROGUE captain was going to do on their own has absolutely nothing to do with what Moscow would or would not have done. Why would you be all confused and not separate the two?