BE -- "death wish for the planet"

Sat Mar 5 16:02:36 CST 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srstQVfVNEM

James Douglass

On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 3:11 PM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

>  I Didn’t notice the wikipedia reference and I see your point. I did not
> mean it as an absolute but that it would have been politically extremely
> unwise and Kennedy was working on a solution through backdoor talks .  I
> don’t think the kind of reasoning you propose would have worked to diffuse
> the situation, logical though it is. Years later the Reagan Star wars
> defense plan was being sold easily to the US public despite bieng a
> strategic absurdity. I don’t get it, hate it in fact but that’s the way it
> seems to work. Voters like missiles and tough talk.
> > On Mar 3, 2016, at 12:38 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > JT> And there was no way to let the missiles on Cuba stand
> >
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
> >
> > How about treating it as a teachable moment that geography no longer
> meant what it had until WWII? That "Russia is on the other side of the
> world" *no longer fkin mattered* when an ICBM from Kazakhstan could arrive
> more quickly -- and with less chance of interception -- than an aircraft or
> ship from Cuba? Maybe if Khrushchev and JFK had acknowledged the new
> strategic reality in 1962, we wouldn't have had another 25 years of idiotic
> missile-building.
> >
> > The relvance iof this to GR is left as an exercise for the reader. I'll
> just suggest that if one doesn't understand the difference between, say,
> the heartwarming heroism of the Battle of Britain in 1940 and Pirate
> Prentice's bleak calm that Chelsea morning in 1944 ("Far to the east, down
> in the pink sky, something has just sparked, very brightly") -- the same
> bleak calm pervading the last page of GR -- one doesn't understand the book.
> >
> > On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 11:41 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> > Not that simple . The generals were far more aggressive than Kennedy who
> relied on private communications with Kruschev to wind it down. I don’t
> know what the Politburo or soviet Military  wanted but US military
> advisers, already pissed at Kennedy for not invading Cuba, wanted a first
> strike. And there was no way to let the missiles on Cuba stand, especially
> with arguments about future soviet technology. Physical distance is
> psychological as much as scientific and Russia is the other side of the
> world.
> >
> >  I t is easy to see that Kennedy did the only sensible thing in defiance
> of his advisers, but I remember the time and the prevailing media attitudes
> and in light of it all, Kennedy’s handling of the situation still strikes
> me as quite a bit better than dick waving.
> >
> > > On Mar 3, 2016, at 10:53 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > Repeating past posts briefly: what is least often said about the Cuban
> missile crisis is that it was pointless, because the same "incremental"
> threat to the US was soon achieved by other means, and both sides knew that
> it would be.
> > >
> > > The USSR was several years behind the US in long-range ICBMs and
> missile submarines, so Khrushchev placed the intermediate-range missiles in
> Cuba as a quick and dirty stopgap -- as well as a  symbolic response
> ("don't mess with our client Cuba again") to the Bay of Pigs landing in
> 1961. Kennedy forced their removal, but within three years, equally (and
> more) threatening alternatives that the US knew were coming -- and could do
> nothing about -- were in place.
> > >
> > > I accept the consensus among Western historians that Khrushchev's
> initiative was rash adventurism; the Politburo deemed it that when they
> deposed him a year after the crisis. But I've never understood why it
> should be considered any less rash, or any more of an achievement in
> strategy or statecraft, for Kennedy to go to the brink of war to restore a
> US "edge" that was disappearing in any case. It was symbolic dick-waving on
> both sides.
> > >
> > > On Thu, Mar 3, 2016 at 9:50 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > A bit of history I have read hard about is THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS. I
> do suggest
> > > that all the details make fascinating, scary but with a happy ending
> reading about how
> > > the death wish for the planet was averted. Then
> > >
> > > Esp detail: The Kennedys deciding to ignore an aggressive,
> inflammatory wire from the
> > > Soviet Union, supposedly from Khrushchev but only responding to the
> previous one,
> > > more conciliatory and offering a way forward......
> > >
> > > They had decided to maintain, if challenged, that they never got the
> later one, presumably
> > > from the Politboro's Generals LeMay faction......
> > >
> > > Worked.
> > >
> > > On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 2:02 AM, Thomas Eckhardt <
> thomas.eckhardt at uni-bonn.de> wrote:
> > > Ernie on the internet in BE:
> > >
> > > "'As it kept growing, it never stopped carrying in his heart a
> bitter-cold death wish for the planet, and don't think anything has
> changed, kid.'"
> > >
> > > BE, 420
> > >
> > > John Kennedy on the search for peace:
> > >
> > > "We must, therefore, preserve in the search for peace in the hope that
> constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach
> solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a
> way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine
> peace. Above all, while defending our vital interest, nuclear powers must
> avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a
> humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the
> nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy -- or of
> a collective death-wish for the world."
> > >
> > > http://www1.american.edu/media/speeches/Kennedy.htm
> > >
> > >
> > > Kennedy also said:
> > >
> > > "In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union
> and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace
> and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests
> of the Soviet Union as well as ours -- and even the most hostile nations
> can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only
> those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.
> > >
> > > So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct
> attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences
> can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can
> help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our
> most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe
> the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal."
> > >
> > > Quite impressive.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > -
> > > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
> > >
> > >
> >
> > -
> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>

-- 
www.innergroovemusic.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160305/f0fb5c0a/attachment.html>