JFK tried to kill me!
Published:Sunday | December 1, 2013 | 12:00 AM
Daniel Thwaites, Contributor
John F. Kennedy tried to kill me. OK. Not really. But he almost prevented me being born though, which is damned close. I'm not saying he tackled Ronnie with a meat cleaver or anything like that, so it wasn't aimed at me specifically. But actually, he almost wiped out my whole generation.
At a mere 90 miles from Cuba, Jamaica would have been front row to what de Gaulle called "annihilation without representation" had the Cuban missile crisis gone further out of control. And I'm saying that this was a 'crisis' largely of Kennedy's making that could've killed us all.
That's why on this 50th anniversary of his assassination, I'm a little irritated by the wall-to-wall coverage of glorious 'Camelot' without mention of his recklessness. He almost blew us all to smithereens. Mind you, it's one thing for me to contemplate my own non-existence, and it isn't so troubling after all. But to think of a universe without Yendi, Lisa, Kamina, Tami Chynn, or Carla Campbell! Intolerable. No way!
Like other pop-culture consumers, I enjoy the Camelot myth, but it's also disturbing that all the extensive historical research since the 1960s hasn't penetrated much.
So let's take a quick look at the enormous stupidity that brought the world close to Armageddon.
What should be obvious is that in the Cold War world of 1962, all reasonably sane people wanted the USA to prevail. On one side, there was relative freedom, a messy democracy, some semblance of voting rights, ample food, Nat Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, French wine and German beer, KFC, and, very important, the bikini.
On the other side, there were interminable speeches about world revolution, purges, the party line and doctrines, mass starvation, the political gulag, goulash and borscht, vodka, and women named Olga.
Naturally, there was a whole intellectual and political class in the West (including the Caribbean) who, seething with righteous indignation at the failings of the West, opted vigorously for Olga and the borscht. Perversity wears numerous guises, but that's for another few columns.
This story begins in the 1960 campaign when Kennedy attacked the Eisenhower/Nixon administration saying a "missile gap" had developed to Soviet advantage. He knew this was false, but it was good politics. At the time, the US enjoyed vast nuclear superiority, with roughly nine times the number of warheads, better delivery mechanisms, and stronger better-armed allies.
Having won, JFK reversed Eisenhower's military contraction, and began a phenomenal expansion of America's power. He deployed intermediate-range Jupiter nuclear missiles to Italy and Turkey, from which all of western Russia was vulnerable. These moves were highly destabilising, and everyone paying attention at the time understood this. In fact, Senator Albert Gore Sr, father to the vegan environmentalist from whom George W. Bush stole the 2002 presidential election, called them a "provocation" similar to if the USSR deployed nukes to Cuba. That was in 1961!
Consider the following exchange at the very beginning of the crisis in October 1962:
Kennedy (wondering about Khrushchev): "Why does he put these in there, though?
McGeorge Bundy (national security adviser): "Well, we did it, Mr
Ridiculous comedy
Had a film writer put that dialogue into a ridiculous comedy, everyone would understand it was a massive joke, right? Lucky for us, JFK was secretly recording the meetings of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm), his top advisers and strategists, and the recordings are now available. That's actual dialogue from the man with his finger on the BIG red button.
Actually, US strategists basically agreed with the Russian assessment of the strategic unimportance and negligible impact of the missiles in Cuba. They didn't change the nuclear balance of power. Again, the recordings:
McGeorge Bundy: "What is the strategic impact on the position of the United States of MRBMs in Cuba? How gravely does this change the strategic balance?"
Defence Secretary Robert McNamara: "Not at all."
So when Khrushchev ordered the weaponry to Cuba, he really had no reason to believe Kennedy would respond beyond usual rhetorical denouncement. Specifically, Khrushchev couldn't have thought it would precipitate nuclear fallout. Nevertheless, Kennedy issued an inflexible ultimatum, blockaded Cuba, and set up a head-on collision between the two powers.
But if Soviet and American analyses were essentially identical, why was the world brought to the brink of holocaust? Because Kennedy had promised a foreign policy of "vigour" and had an obsessive concern with "credibility". Again, Kennedy from the recordings:
"Last month, I said we weren't going to [permit Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba] and last month I should have said ... we don't care."
I can't tell you how grateful I am that on October 27, Khrushchev joined many experienced diplomats and proposed a missile swap - Cuban nukes for Turkish nukes - as the obvious way to avert collision.
Here's the administration's version of events and what Americans still largely believe: Kennedy resolutely refused to negotiate with the Soviets, rejected the proposal, and demanded and achieved unilateral withdrawal.
Actually, despite being urged into open warfare by lunatic advisers, among the most hawkish of whom was his brother, Robert, he decided to essentially back down and accept the deal on strict condition that it be kept secret. It was hidden from even most members of ExComm, including VP Lyndon Johnson. In the end, the biggest obstacle was Kennedy's desire to save face.
The brief history of the Soviet Union is so full of villains and mass murderers that it's odd to come across a Khrushchev, to whom, it turns out, I (partly) owe my existence. As one of Stalin's henchmen, he was no saint, but he did have the good sense to denounce Stalin at the 20th party conference. And in another part of the world, and again in the face of US aggression, he angered madman Mao Tse-tung by refusing him the bomb. He probably saved a lot of lives with that decision, too.
If I ever have time to complete my 'Unauthorized History of the WPJ', I'll explore (as a sideshow) how university education somehow encouraged solidly middle-class children to abandon everything their mama taught them and join in leagues to cherish the memory of Stalin. It's a thing of interest in itself, but also because of its impact on Jamaica. The lunatic-leftist fervour leeched into Daddy Manley's Party and overturned his pragmatic Fabianism.
Anyway, right about now, I feel grateful to Comrade Khrushchev that Jamaica isn't radioactive and physically destroyed. Don't get me wrong! I'm sorry Jack got shot ... but he shouldn't have tried to kill me. What did I ever do to him?
Daniel Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com