There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Sun, titled, simply, “Iran is Cuba“:
What’s wrong with a revolutionary, terror-sponsoring state, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, acquiring nuclear weapons?
The Washington case is that nuclear warheads in the hands of a messianic cult led by the race-supremacist Council of Experts at Qom and the Holocaust-denying Ahmadinejad at Teheran means that the world is again on the brink. Can this be verified? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards cannot prove the negative — that they won’t use atomic weapons and Washington can’t prove the positive — that Teheran will distribute weapons to proxies to use pre-emptively.
Recent history is a good guide to what it means for a revolutionary rogue state to possess a first strike nuclear arsenal while it is protected from United Nations Security Council sanctions by veto-bearing facilitators (i.e. Russia and China), and the record is both dire and prescient. We remember the episode as the Cuban missile crisis, though it is better recalled as a time when America and Russia came so close to mutually assured destruction that principals in Washington and Moscow separately assumed that the last sunset was at hand
Of course, here’ my personal favorite money quote:
The executive decision was to surrender by offering Khrushchev a secret withdrawal of the Turkey missiles in exchange for the Soviets’ announcing publicly a withdrawal of the Cuban missiles. Khrushchev went along with the ploy, boasting about the U-2 kill, ” … we received a pledge not to invade Cuba. Not bad!” The general staffs in Washington and Moscow were disgusted with their posturing leaders, and the Air Force tyro Curtis LeMay told Mr. Kennedy in person, it was “the greatest defeat in our history.”
I might add that it’s also been the longest greatest defeat in our history. Thanks, Mr. Kennedy.
Great article. It’s about time that the American people realize that JFK was one of the worst presidents (Jimmy Carter still holds first place) this country ever had.
The Democrats always talk about the “Cuban Misile Crisis” as a great victory for the Kennedy administration. We Cubans knew different. I’m glad the truth is finally coming out.
“Forty-four years later, it is easy to see that the clear winners of the Cuban missile crisis were the criminal Castro brothers.”
It might have taken the U.S. 44 years to “realize” who the real winners were, but Cubans realized it on October 27, 1962.
Looks like the US will get need to get involved in Cuba after all. Iran is sure to place missiles in Cuba at their first opportunity. Lets hope castro is dead before they get them because he will use them this time.
Most Americans do not understand the threat posed by a castro-controlled Cuba. I do.
Many Americans also idolize JFK. I do not. He was a phony war hero, who got two of his men killed because of his incompetence. He mistook a Japanese destroyer for a PT boat, then froze like a deer in the headlights as the enemy vessel ran over his boat. Kennedy never fired a shot. After six days on an island with his 10 surviving crewmen, he took a ride back to base on native canoe, leaving his crew in danger. For this action he was awarded the Navy Cross.
I went to Culver Military Academy in 1957 and 1958 with Jos̩ and Mario Silva who we in the 2506 Brigade. Like most of the Latinos, they were in the Black Horse Troop. I was in the Artillery РBattery B and Battery C. When Kennedy left the 2506th on the beach to be slaughtered to preserve plausible deniability, my father was at the Naval War College at Newport, RI. We knew pilots on the USS Essex. Rage is too mild a word.
I was at the US Naval Academy in October 1962 when President Kennedy backed down and agreed to give up missiles in Turkey and not invade Cuba – ever. Kennedy made sure the Soviets kept this bargain a secret.
In 1970-1971, I sat air defense alert at Homestead AFB and intercepted Soviet Bear bombers bound to and from Cuba. Most American did not know that.
I was in Vietnam in 1971-1972. I bombed the Ho Chi Minh trail. Cuban engineering battalions repaired the damage and kept the supplies flowing south. Most Americans do not know that.
Friends of mine who were POWs in North Vietnam were beaten by Cuban interrogators, some of whom they believe may still be living openly in Cuba. We found about the “Cuban Project” when the POWs came home. The chief torturer was called “Fidel”, his assistant “Pancho”.
I watched the pictures of Saigon on May Day 1975, as Soviet built T-62 tanks crashed through the gates at the Presidential palace. Most Americans do not know that those tanks were driven by Cuban troops.
During the post-Vietnam era, castro exported soldiers to “wars of national liberation” throughout the world – Africa and Central America. Most Americans do not know.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, castro’s benefactor disappeared. Who is helping him today? What is he selling? Drugs? Weapons? Soldiers for hire? To whom? hugo chavez? mahmud ahmadinejad?
My fear is that Cuba will again become a host for nuclear weapons, but this time they may be Iranian. castro is not just a colorful figure. He is as anti-American as any rabid islamic-fascist on the planet.
Americans need to know.