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10. It's beginning to look a lot like World War III.

The echoes of misunderstanding...

JFK's lesson: Studying history will keep nation safer, freer

February 5, 2012|By Robert L. Moore | Guest columnist

The release this week of a long-lost audiotape from the day President. Kennedy was assassinated reminds me of some important anniversaries now looming on the horizon. One marks the president's decision, 50 years ago, to install a taping system in the White House.

The secrecy surrounding the tape recorders may make them seem rather ominous, but, in fact, Kennedy's motives were not merely self-serving or sinister. According to Robert Dallek's biography, An Unfinished Life, JFK wanted to record important White House conversations by virtue of having read The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman'sPulitzer Prize-winning account of the origins of World War I.

Dallek writes that Kennedy was particularly struck by a conversation in Tuchman's book between two German leaders speculating about Europe's plunge into war: "How did it all happen?" one asked. "Ah," the other replied, "if only one knew."

JFK was determined that if the world were to be destroyed in a nuclear war, he did not want the survivors to ask one another how it all happened, and be told, "Ah, if only one knew." Stumbling into a nuclear holocaust the way Europe had stumbled into the tragedy of World War I would be inexcusable, and the president was determined to record what was said in key areas of the White House not only for posterity, but to avoid misunderstandings among the living should a crisis arise.

SNIP...

All through the crisis, Kennedy remembered Tuchman's ominous warning about blundering into war. According to Thomas Reeves' biography, the president at one point told his closest advisers that he wished he could get a copy of the book "to every Navy officer on every Navy ship right now."

SOURCE: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-02-05/news/os-ed-kennedy-audiotape-020512-20120203_1_nuclear-missiles-cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-war

Readers are leaders, which is why I'm worried.