The Dismissal of Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker - A special report by Cong. Morris K. Udall

[MinM]

21. ...it is as yet not generally well accepted how alone Kennedy was.

I keep coming back to this line from Fred Kaplan on a segment from NPR's on the media:

FRED KAPLAN: I have to say, both among journalists and historians, this chapter of the Cuban missile crisis has not yet been fully incorporated into the dominant narrative, as academics might call it today, and to the degree that people do know there was a trade, it is as yet not generally well accepted how alone Kennedy was.

BOB GARFIELD: I'm curious about how much the truth of the Cuban missile crisis has found its way into the public consciousness. If it has, I suppose you can credit the film 13 Days from two years ago. Hollywood took another look at the history books and did substantially incorporate our current understanding in that film. Let's hear a little bit of that:

MAN: We've got time for one more round of diplomacy, and that's it. The first air strikes start in 28 hours. MAN: But we have to make them agree to it!

MAN: Right.

MAN: So how do we do that?

BRUCE GREENWOOD AS JOHN F. KENNEDY: Well we give them something. We tell them we're going to remove the missiles from Turkey — Hang on! But we do that six months from now, so it appears there's no linkage.

KEVIN COSTNER AS KENNY O'DONNELL: We also tell them if they go public about it, we'll deny it.

BRUCE GREENWOOD/JOHN F. KENNEDY: Right we deny, the deal's off.

KEVIN COSTNER/KENNY O'DONNELL: And we do it under the table so we can disavow any knowledge of it.

MAN: It's transparent, Kenny. The press'll be all over it.

KEVIN COSTNER/KENNY O'DONNELL: Six months from now we're not going to care, are we?



BOB GARFIELD: In your review of that film, 13 Days, you made another point about learning from history. It was about the supposition that a president, surrounded by a circle of trusted advisors, can be depended on to make the right decision. And you made a, a connection to the George W. Bush White House. Make it again.

FRED KAPLAN: The point was - I think [font color=darkred]George W. Bush had just been elected president, and a lot of people were wondering if he would be smart enough to deal with crises. And the common explanation at the time was well, don't worry, he has a lot of really smart people around him. And the point that you can take from the fourth draft of the history of the Cuban missile crisis is that the people around John Kennedy were really smart - I mean these were the people that David Halberstam later called, in a note of irony, "the best and the brightest," and yet John Kennedy realized that they really weren't very smart, after all. And the lesson of that is that you can have good advisors but the crucial thing is that you need a president. It's the president who makes the decisions[/font]...

http://www.onthemedia.org/2010/aug/27/missile-crisis-memories/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021414805#post12