The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Down Range Cafe => Topic started by: tombogan03884 on October 15, 2012, 09:19:28 AM
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http://blog.heritage.org/2012/10/15/morning-bell-nuclear-war-averted-50-years-ago-this-week/?roi=echo3-13444205798-9980039-4078bc369039a2cd212293fc8527f4a6&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell
Fifty years ago, the world came to the brink of nuclear war.
On October 14, 1962, U.S. policymakers learned that the Soviet Union was building missile bases in Cuba, which would have allowed Moscow to attack anywhere in the continental United States within minutes. An international crisis followed, and while the crisis did not end in a nuclear exchange, it is important that U.S. policymakers never forget lessons the crisis taught us.
The most important one is that it is very difficult to manage allies once they are nuclear-armed.
Nuclear-armed allies are one thing; nuclear-armed enemies are another. As Iran builds its nuclear capability, the lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis resonate in a fresh way.
Today, The Heritage Foundation looks back at that crisis of 50 years ago with a blog series on its lessons for missile defense, presidential leadership, crisis management, and avoiding escalation.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>MORE AT LINK<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
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on a happy note 60 years ago today charlottes web was released in print.
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Some President once said that "history is prologue". What did we learn from the Cuban missile crisis? That circling the wagons is easier 90 miles off our coast when the American people are solidly behind it. Contrast that with a nuclear armed North Korea and potentially Iran, both hostile to our interests, but neither very close and no consensus on how to handle the situation. Then contrast our leadership or lack of same with JFK and BHO! If I were Netanyahu and BHO wins re-election, I'd be planning Exodus II!
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Some President once said that "history is prologue". What did we learn from the Cuban missile crisis? That circling the wagons is easier 90 miles off our coast when the American people are solidly behind it. Contrast that with a nuclear armed North Korea and potentially Iran, both hostile to our interests, but neither very close and no consensus on how to handle the situation. Then contrast our leadership or lack of same with JFK and BHO! If I were Netanyahu and BHO wins re-election, I'd be planning Exodus II!
Based on Pakistan, Iran, and North Korea I would have to say we did not learn a damned thing.
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what did we learn from the Cuban missile crisis?
That if you're President and you don't let the military industrial complex have their war 90 miles off the coast, they'll "cap yo' ass" and then pursue an even bigger more drawn out war on the other side of the world.
(I'm saying that kinda sarcastically.)
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though much has been said about the "I faced the other guy eyeball to eyeball, and he blinked" outcome we like to think of as a strategic victory for US policy in the hemisphere .... incomplete intelligence could have been a disaster to the US...we did not know until some 30 years later that the Soviet command authority in Cuba actually had tactical nuclear weapons (though it was considered a possibility), and that they could be used at the discretion of the local ground force commander in case of a US invasion.... Kruschev did, and though it cost him his job, backed down, preventing a probable global thermonuclear war...
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though much has been said about the "I faced the other guy eyeball to eyeball, and he blinked" outcome it's BS.
Kennedy made a deal with K that if he pulled the weapons out of Cuba we would not invade Cuba and we would pull our missiles out of Pakistan and Turkey.
No politician will ever admit it but the timing gives it away.