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'Thirteen Days'
It's odd to watch the Cuban missile crisis movie "Thirteen Days," a little disorienting. Three decades after the events it portrays, the Cold War is over, but the world has thousands more nuclear missiles armed and ready to launch than it did then. Thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its deteriorating military, the rise of terrorism, and the growing availability of bomb-making materials, they are even more likely to be used.
But not in the kind of nose-to-nose stand off that paralyzed the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1962, it seemed for a few days that the U.S. and Russia would actually go to war over the deployment of long-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Tough lines were drawn, and armies were fully mobilized. The world actually held its breath as the young Kennedy administration grappled with one of history's most intense political crises.
The stakes were breathtakingly high, especially against the backdrop of a ruthless, hard-line Soviet government, a bitter military stand-off in Berlin as well as Cuba, and an American military filled with hubris. Yet government, years before the full blown media explosion and the rise of sophisticated satellite tracking and the Net, operated in much more secrecy than it can today. So much of the political strategizing and maneuvering involved in the pre-digital world were unknown by the general public.
(I was a kid during the stand-off, and about all I remember was our entire block gathered around a black-and-white TV in Providence, R.I., to hear Kennedy's grainy, grim speech declaring a military blockade of Cuba. Everybody was stunned and totally silent. Parents rushed off after the speech to the market to stockpile food. I'd never seen adults scared witless like that. They believed nuclear war was imminent. The next morning, we practiced running to school bomb shelters all morning, as air raid drill sirens sounded for hours.)
"Thirteen Days," dramatizes some of that process, but like a slick history lesson, it still has the aura of an educational exercise. It's certainly interesting and it does, in fact, offer a compelling, behind-the-scenes feeling as John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), his brother Bobby (Steven Culp) and their trusted adviser Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) fend off the reliably warlike and conniving Pentagon brass. (When exactly did Hollywood come to hate generals so much? Can you remember a positive recent portrayal of one?) Costner, Greenwood and Culp are all workmanlike, but oddly flat and one-dimensional.
What's intriguing about the movie is our sense of witnessing the handling of a momentous crisis inside the White House. The menacingly interwoven shots of nuclear test explosions are gorgeous and horrifying, as they were in "Terminator 2" and other movies.
But several problems detract from our enjoyment. Some are fairly minor. The movie is too long by about a half-hour. You can see boom mikes at some theaters hovering at the top of the screen in many of the Oval Office sequences (perhaps a projectionist error at the small town New England theater where I saw the movie. Did anybody else see this?).
But then moviegoers should be aware that they aren't getting meticulous history. According to journalists who covered the crisis and historians who've studied it, the Kenneth O'Donnell character played by Costner (a Kennedy crony and special assistant to the president) wasn't nearly as pivotal in the real show-down as he was in this film.
This portrayal is especially generous to the Kennedy brothers, whose wit and sense of responsibility are credited with saving the world. The movie takes no notice of the series of subsequent revelations about both brothers that calls their nobility and even-handedness into question.
Despite that, it's interesting to see the relatively primitive spook technology that political leaders depended on -- high flying but vulnerable U2's and jet spy planes to gather data, slow-moving teletypes, and the low-tech, comparatively miniminalist mass media who weren't quite such a runaway, all encompassing hysteria-machine. They actually worried about national security concerns when they reported news.
And it's fascinating to be cinematically drawn into one of the great collisions between the horrific new technology of warfare -- weapons everybody in government seems to agree are too horrible to be used -- and to contrast that with an era when a terrorist cell or a Ukranian accident can trigger horrendous destruction -- a grim reality some scholars feel is inevitable, that negotiators and governments may be powerless to deal with, and that people seem to have grown almost comfortable with.
The Kennedys weren't. The film and history suggests that John Kennedy was determined to avoid a full-scale nuclear catastrophe, and mustered the confidence and courage to press for a political way out of a confrontation that was within hours of becoming a war. This is the kind of movie high school teachers will be showing history classes for years to come, even if it's hardly as dramatic as the near-Armageddon it seeks to portray.
Wise post, my ass.
Jon, when we will you and the deconstructionist leftists who have influenced your perspective ever begin to realize that the uninterrupted cynical attitude to all things American is just as dangerous as the My-God-is-my-country-flag-waving attitude taken by those on the far right?
I have not seem the film so I have no comment as to its accuracy. But, by and large, Western accounts of events over the past 50 years (and I suspect the Cuban missile crisis is included) are far, far more accurate than Russian accounts even to this day. It is only recently that the Russians are starting to sift through the historical record with a critical eye. To do so before was to be shot.
Have you met any Russians, Katz? Have you spoken with them about what their society, and how closed it was under communist rule? Have you read any books about life in Russia over the past 50 years?
To glibly imply that the accounts coming from Russia, a society until recently controlled by a small cadre of men, a society that had no free press, have been as valid as what has been published in the West is absurd. This attitude is as much an impediment to understanding the Cuban missile crisis as is believing one film from Hollywood has all the answers.
Oh, but I forgot. This really isn't about understanding history. This is about sitting in coffee shops, tossing out smug comments. This is about feeling superior to all those lemmings who believe what has been fed to them.
Seeing a boom mike in frame is not a "projectionist error." Think about it--if the man caught the boom mike in frame, it's going to be in the shot, and the film editors either catch it and fix it, or they don't. They're just like proofreaders.
If you spent 8 figures on making a movie, would you really leave the content of each scene to the projectionist? That's like saying that because I'm viewing slashdot in 600x800, I'm not going to see your typos, but if I load it in 640x480, I'll be able to see them at the edge of the screen...
By the way, the nukes are much less likely to be used today. I work at a place that keeps track of those things, and you're as safe as you ever were from missiles. The idea that a terrorist group would (or even could!) go to the lengths required to purchase, calibrate, aim, and fire a nuclear missile, and not be noticed, is absurd. It's a lot simpler to attack assymetrically with conventinal bombs (a la USS Cole). Just because it's not on the news doesn't mean we're not keeping tabs on it. Sleep well, JonKatz--I may abhor your writing, but I'll risk my life every day for your right to keep spewing it out.
Today's graduates of the military academies appear to have taken Sherman's doctrine of "War is hell" to heart. I know a lot of retired military officers (I'm from the South, traditionally one of the heaviest sources of military personnel) and their doctrine appears to be "don't go to war, and if the politicians force you to go to war, bomb the enemy back to the stone age then send in overwhelming force. " The pre-Vietnam hubris appears to be gone. Vietnam apparently traumatized the military establishment to the point where they had to rethink many of their basic assumptions (such as the assumption that the U.S. could easily defeat any little tin-pot dictator with the use of a couple of divisions and a few B-52 strikes), much as the end of the Cold War has led to some soul searching on the part of today's up-and-coming officers as to what the proper role and composition of the military should be.
All in all, I've gotten good vibes off of the retired military officers that I've met. Yes, they're conservative. But they're conservative in the old fashioned sense of the word -- i.e., people who don't believe in hasty actions and who believe in leading a personally upright life (as vs. the hypocrisy of many so-called "conservatives" which is mere mean-spiritedness and spite). Many of them are now teachers, for example. While I'm not going to try to glorify the military, I will state that the folks in the military are as decent and love their country as much as the average American. If only the civilian leadership above them had those qualities.
(BTW, the notion of a military junta absolutely appalled the retired military I asked -- while they complained bitterly about the civilian leadership, they also pointed out that a military junta would inevitably destroy their beloved military as it turned into yet another corrupt banana republic army, just as bad as the politicians that were forced out of office, not to mention that oath they swore to uphold the Constitution...).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I've known a lot of retired military. They think this way. They're not war mongers -- they know that friends and subordinants will die if the country goes to war. They are prepared to pay that price, but not lightly, and not on a whim, and they certainly aren't going to advise going to war when there's an alternative.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I would agree that it's almost certain that sooner or later terrorist groups are going to set off a few nuclear devices here and there. But what we used to be worried about was thousands of missiles being launched from the US and the USSR: A nuclear holocaust. A few scattered incidents won't even come close to that horror. Yes, it's possible millions might die. But I don't think many people are worried about *everyone* dying, as they used to be.
That's my take anyway. Someone want to scare me?
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
dinner: it's what's for beer
You do realize that Bill Clinton holds the record for the most troops deployed during his term as President - right?
GWB probably would rely a lot on his military advisors - that's what (in theory) experts are there for. His job is to distill that knowledge and make the final decisions based on what he is informed.
I'd much rather have someone who listens to advisors than someone who will start dropping bombs based on a hair-trigger reaction to an opinion poll somewhere or to divert attention from a sex scandal.
...and while he probably wouldn't have had the sex scandal problem, Gore lived and died (and lost an election) by the opinion polls. Just watch the three presidential debates for proof of that.
(not saying Bush will be any good - I don't know - but I don't see why anyone should sell him short before he proves himself a good or bad president)
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
"...and well financed terrorist groups are much more likely to try and get one"
Emphasis mine. Back when the USSR and the US shared all the weapons, each player had a large arsenal at their disposal.
Now that we have two-bit dictators with missles, it would seem quite likely that we'd have a lot more. Due to our greater finances, resources, and even land mass 'mutually assured destruction' is not so mutual. We might lose New York, but they'd lose most of their country.
Yeah, it's still something to worry about. But as another poster said, biological weapons are probably far more cost effective and harder to justify return strikes against.
I'm not sure I agree with your premise that things are necessarily riskier now - we may be more likely to be attacked, but the extent of the attack will likely be far less...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
...no man, you've got your stereotype all wrong!
The fashionable stereotype this year is that conservatives sell out to EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS, most definitely not EVIL CHILD MURDERING DEFENSE CONTRACTORS. It's best to stick with the former this year - as popularized by Ralph Nader and Al Gore - as the latter is so 80's it's not even funny.
Please do keep your stereotypes in sync with your colleagues, though. It's hard to further an agenda when your message is fragmented.
...
BTW: Rumor is that next year they'll be pawns of either BIG TOBACCO or THE LOGGING INDUSTRY. I can hardly wait!
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
Remember Gen. George C. Marshall in Saving Private Ryan? Spielberg stopped just short of CGI'ing a halo over his head.
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
George Kennan, I think, wrote a good account of the story from the Russian perspective..Khruschev was in trouble the whole day...The Cuban perspective is also totally absent, which is another good point.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The winners of course. "RFK"s book was roundly criticized for failing to deal with Russian and Cuban perspectives accurately..I think this movie is tepid enuf that it will get into civics classes.
I agree about the portrayal of generals, tho. When did Hollywood come to hate them so? And does anybody know if they are that bad..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
According to the Washington Post, there are more than 2,000 missiles aimed at the Soviet Union today, many times more than thirty years ago. And an equivalent amount aimed back. You may notice from the recent Russian sub acccident that things are not good for the Russian military now. So almost all military and political experts feel that that reality..plus of course terrorism, the Middle East, etc., make it more likely. More bombs, more people eager to use them, poorer maintenance.
Your message (and your faux amusement) is a great example of denial in action.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I sure wouldn't compare this move to Strangelove in anyway, apart from shot pretty nuke shots..This movie is without irony or bite at all...Yes, the shots were pretty great..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
The overrunning of the Berlin Wall was the end of the Us/Soviet pissing match, preceded by the detente engineered by Reagan, of all people, with Gorbachev. There were enormous tensions for years after Cuba, and raging surrogate wars, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to El Salvador..I don't th ink it was nearly the end. I think when those kids came thundering over the wall looking for m usic videos, that would be my nomination.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm not nearly the lst to review it..it's been reviewed all over the place..and everybody is welcome to post their own reviews here along with mine..er..that's sort of the point.if I were going to be the lst I'd have done it already..we wanted to wait until enuf people had seen it to talk about it..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'm not a journalist, and this is a movie review, not a nuclear armaments piece..i don't use sources in reviews..But if you are interested in the subject, to to pieces on this movie in the NYTimes, Washington Post, LA Times, New Republic, Time Mag and about 500 others..There are thousands more missiles deployed now than 30 years ago, and if you follow incidents like the recent sinking of the Russian nuclear sub, or the many warheads the U.S. is trying to get out of the Baltic states left behind by the collapse of the Soviet Union, you shouldn't need much convincing..but that's another piece..easy enuf to check it out for yourself. be your own journalist.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I'd think Providence is more snow-savvy than that..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
According to the Brookings Instituion, and stories in the Washington Post (series in the NYTimes after the Russian sub incident) and many books on military policy (I'm not home, and I don't have URL's..easy nuff to get tho), there are now more than 2,000 U.S missiles aimed at the Soviet Union, and as many aimed back. But the soviet military is deterioriating (as the Russian sub episode and others have revealed) and many of their nuclear warheads have remained behind in breakaway or disconnected Republics like the Ukraine..tons of stories about the money the U.S. is spending to try and disarm them and get them out.
Plus there were not well financed terrorist networks then..the fact that some of you have no idea that this is so is the most interesting thing to me about the movie. It doesn't seem to be an issue, though in fairness, it's the reason George W. Bush and Colin Powell are arguing for a new multi-gazillion dollar missile shield.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
There were portrayals and Interviews with Gromyko, who lied to Kennedy to his face, the Soviet Ambassador to the U.N., and Anatoly Dobrynin, the longtime soviet ambassador who eventually cut a deal with Bobby Kennedy.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
There are many more weapons, they are much more powerful, many more are out of the control of the Soviets and in their former Republics, and well financed terrorist groups are much more likely to try and get one..I disagree completely. This is a form of denial. People have just lost interest in the issue, and want it to go away. But this is why Powell and Bush say their lst priority is a missile shield..I don't have an opinion on whether that' s a good idea or not, but Rumsfield and Powell say a missile launch against the U.S. is currently out greatest threat..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
We decided to wait a week to review Antitrust so that the maximum no of people could see it and talk about it. Lots of people can join in that way. So next Sunday. Come on by.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Bush, Powell and Rumsfield (Cheney too) have all said they perceive the greatest military threats to the U.S. to be launches of nuclear missiles by runaway governments or individual terrorists who get hold of them. That's why they want to fund a new missile shield. I have no idea if these fears are justified or not, and would love to see some comments from people who might know.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
I've also gotten some e-mail from people in the South who remember parents brothers, cousins and uncles vanishing and heading for bases. Roads were clogged. In fact, a NWTimes reporter got onto the story partially because towns were emptying out in N carolina and Georgia.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Most of the interviews I 've read say O'Donnell's role in the actual crisis was much less pivotal than portrayed in the movie. And as another poster has pointed out, we have no real clues as to what Soviet or Cuban thinking or feeling was from this movie. Also some military people have said the portrayal of the generals was a bit heavy-handed..
jonkatz@slashdot.org
In RFK's book Missiles of October and other accounts I've read, Kennedy certainly did know that the Soviets had tactical nukes. That's why they did so many overflights. I'm curious as to why you think otherwise.
jonkatz@slashdot.org
Dr. Strangelove is probably the most famous example of this plot device, and almost certainly the best. While not a direct satirisation of the Cuban missile crisis, it was almost certainly inspired by it, and remains one of the most biting comments on the craziness of mutually assured destruction. If you haven't seen it, get it out on video *right now*.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Actually, building a nuclear device is NOT as simple as people think.
:-(
Getting the fissile material and explosive triggers are one thing, but ASSEMBLING a nuclear bomb is quite something else--it requires an extremely high level of precision machining that very few can afford.
That's why at most a terrorist nuclear device would have a yield of at most 4-5 kT. Mind you, a 4-5 kT device detonated in front of the New York Stock Exchange will still kill many thousands of people.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
All I want to know is: How can Katz even say this with a straight face? He is king of hysteria and hype...
EOF
Yes, you're right. Also (I just got back from seeing Traffic), think about the ease with which drugs are smuggled into the country. If somebody put a nuke in a truck, the way Timothy McVeigh did with fertilizer, think how big the explosion could be. Sure, it wouldn't have the altitude necessary for a really wide blast radius, but it would still be plenty potent. Bring in a couple of these, and you could blow up D.C. and New York, if you felt like it.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
What if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Ronald Reagan?
Would we be here today?
IMHO, rationalism only won out because you had a rational president. I doubt any other President of the last 50 years would have been as rational.
Reality has a liberal bias
I suffered through High School in Norfolk, MA, not too far north of the RI border. I grew up before that in Calgary, Alberta, where we're used to huge dumps of snow throughout the winter.
I was shocked my first winter in MA: 6" of snow overnight and the schools were closed. Don't know if you've ever been around that part of the country, Jon, but it's a LOT of small towns. Most just don't have the budget to react right away to snow storms to get the ploughs out..
I don't know about Providence, though. The stockpiling does seem a little bizarre.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Most of the plutonium dust would be wasted on the terrain, clothes, and skin. Not everyone breathing it would get cancer, some would expel it during normal lung clearing, and some dust would be encased in cysts. And any cancer deaths would be spread over 40 years, which makes it rather ineffective. (Right now the D.O.E. is trying to find former nuclear workers to figure out if they were injured -- apparently it wasn't obvious if they were.) Better to drop cigarettes in the streets.
Sad thing was...I saw garbage light below the screen, so I know that the projectionist could have moved the movie up and helped remove most of the boom mike sightings...
Oh well...it wasn't like the movie was really taking me away into it's magical land.
By the way... I got to see the "premiere" showing of Lord of the Rings trailer during this movie (of course, thank to the internet, we could see some of those over a year ago...) Pretty cool. Hope it's a hit. We need some success in the fantasy genre..and obviously the D&D movie isn't doing it for us :)
Rader
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, the generals were that bad. Kevin Costner's part is dramatized a bit (you need to have someone to tell the story, otherwise people will criticize the movie for jumping around and making no sense), but I don't think people realize that most of the dialogue in this movie is based on transcripts that the Whitehouse kept during this crisis. So most of the comments, attitudes, opinions were on the dot, with the exception of Costner as I pointed out earlier.
I agree with the person who said the movie was 30 minutes too long. I thought it was a really good movie, but, it is hard to hold the audience in suspense for over 2 hours.
I too think it would be interesting to hear about this story from the Soviet Union's perspective, but the chances of that happening anytime soon are nil. This movie was clearly one sided, and they didn't claim that it wasn't.
Dumb luck. Not necessarily my view, but certainly one way to look at it.
The movie acts like its the Kennedy brothers against a vast conspiracy of generals who want world destruction, when it wasn't that at all. Additionally, we never get to see or hear about some of the most important decisions of the crisis, such as Kruschev's two letters to Kennedy and the meetings of the OAS when they decide to back the US. Finally, the UN scenes are a circus, with everyone cheering on Stevenson as he yells at the Russian ambassador.
All in all, an interesting movie with some nice looks at the U2 pilots etc., but not worthwhile for serious history buffs.
Uhh, you do realize that distinction is held by FDR or Truman--right? I mean there is a slight difference between the brushfire wars Clinton has prosecuted and the largest armed conflict in human history.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
And another one --
GRU[*] Col. Oleg Penkovsky, an asset run by both the British and the Americans, passed along such valuable documents as the missile site construction plans early on, allowing them to figure out what exactly was being built on Cuba. In 1962, he was arrested by the KGB, and presumably interrogated and executed...
Source -- Andrew, Christopher. "The Sword and the Shield", Basic Books, 1999.
[*] Soviet military intelligence, which made him a VERY useful asset until he was caught.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The theater I saw the movie in last night had a funny sign up by the ticket counter, which read something like this:
"Due to the extremely high interest in the 'Lord of the Rings' trailer, we regret to inform you that individuals who purchase tickets to 'Thirteen Days' only to see the trailer will NOT receive a refund if they choose not to stay for the remainder of the movie."
And I didn't think it was that good of a trailer, anyway. I think hyping 3 movies 1, 2, and 3 years in advance (respectively) is a setup for disappointment.
nlh
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
Also, I'll point you to Corona with a bit that I think was a mistake to be left out. Though Anderson was mentioned, and it showed his plane being shot down (along with a bit at near the end about it), a dedication would have been appropriate:
"I am concerned because so little attention has been given to the 'only casualty' of the Cuban Missile Crisis....Maj. Rudolf Anderson, Jr....the U-2 pilot who was brought down by a Soviet SAM.
"The missile ripped through the cabin of the U-2....tearing into the spacesuit...and right arm of Maj. Anderson.
"At that altitude...there was an immediate decompression...do you know what happens to a balloon at high altitude...as his blood began to boil...I need not go on with the gory details...I believe that you get the 'picture' (no pun intended!)
"Maj.(Rudy) Anderson made the 2nd U-2 flight.... the 15th of Oct 1962...was responsible, according to his awards and citations per Gen LeMay for locating the SS-5 missile site, most advanced Soviet missiles.
"Rudy sacrificed his life for the 80,000,000 Americans as refered to in the film...as he was shot down on Sat morning, Oct 27, 1962.
"BOTTOM LINE: I would think that this film would be dedicated to our only casualty who gave his life that ALL of us would see 'another Saturday' according to Robert McNamara....Sect of Defence...
"I have been researching Rudy Anderson for over 10 years and file of research on this subject and his role in the CMC...if anyone is interested.
"Most importantly..I believe that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Maj. Anderson...perhaps this is our opportunity to repay this debt...Dedicate the film to Maj. Anderson.
"I am not interested in any monetary gain...only a means of acknowledgeing what this pilot did for all of us!
"I wonder how this story would have really ended if not for Rudy Anderson...would we all be speaking 'Russian' now?
"You wanted a 'scoop' I can only assume that you got more than you bargained for...."
--------
Oscarfish.com: tropical fish with attitude. Way t
see subject.
I was doing research for someone on where I work, and trying to find out exactly how old Castro is now (75). Anyway, I came across this in my epic trek through google.
Enjoy.
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
GWB : let's send clear submiluminal messages to the Russkies that God is on our side!
Al Gore : I think we have a 76% chance of convincing the Russians there is a 23% probability of destroying the world if we go to war over this. And that has about 62% chance of happening.
Ronald Reagan : We will vanquish the evil empire. The bombs will start dropping immediately.
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
>Ironic that nuclear bombs are much more likely to go off today than 30 years ago, but pols don't worry about it much
/. crowd seemed so gleeful when they bash them.
How do you quantify "much more likely"?
Such rhetoric is typical of a piece not well researched, but written by ear instead.
I am always amused by Katz's pieces : they resemble mega-trolls.
No wonder the
Mode (3) smart-aleck mode. Press * to return to main menu.
The Cuban Missile crisis came about as a direct result of the weakness and immaturity Krushchev perceived in JFK as a result of JFK's irresolution during the Bay of Pigs debacle and the Berlin Crisis of 1961, when what became the Berlin Wall was put up by the Communists (it was just strings of barbed-wire at the time; decisive action by JFK at the time could've prevented the USSR and the East Germans from violating the the Four-Powers Treaty and thereby consolidating their stranglehold on the freedoms of Berliners living in the Soviet Sector of the city).
Krushchev was in an odd position at the time; he'd been the one to expose the crimes of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress (it wasn't done out of a sense of humanity or decency, since Krushchev didn't do anything dramatic like, say, disbanding the KGB; it was more of a tactical maneuver designed to smash the last vestiges of 'Father Joe'-worship within the Party apparat, removing Stalin as the measuring-stick against which Krushchev would be compared by the nomenklatura), and, like Gorbachev, realized that something had to be done in order to provide for economic expansion of the USSR. Also like Gorbachev, he was still a committed socialist - he wanted to find some way of 'humanizing' socialism without allowing the populace the complete freedom of choice which is the growth-engine of free-market societies.
Indeed, we could've had glasnost and perestroika - with the inevitable crumbling of the apparatus of repression, since once people have tasted a little freedom, their hunger for it becomes insatiable - if not for the hollow blustering of the Kennedys. You must remember, JFK was a conservative Democrat who ran to the right of Richard Nixon on national-security issues and the illusory 'missile gap'. Someone with maturity and a nuanced view of the world (someone like Richard Nixon, perhaps, before the stealing of the 1960 election embittered him to the point of paranoia) might've understood this, and given Krushchev the breathing-room he needed to try and implement some kind of reform.
Instead, JFK's apocalyptic rhetoric, coupled with his inner callowness, which Krushshev had sensed, a) forced Krushchev to play the bully in order to maintain his precarious grip on power, and b) by doing so, made it impossible for Krushchev to do anything regarded as 'soft' by the Politburo and the Central Committee.
Being tough, and meaning it, is a legitimate tactic; Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan used it to great effect. Acting tough, but not meaning it, marks one as being unserious, an unworthy adversary who will crumble when push comes to shove. Thus was JFK.
Finally, you need to remember something else not hinted at in the movie - in exchange for removing the IRBMs from Cuba, the US secretly agreed to remove IRBMs pointed at the USSR from Turkey. When all was said and done, Krushchev had achieved a major geopolitical gain for the USSR by playing the game of nuclear brinksmanship during those 13 days in October.
Truman would probably have done the same thing as Kennedy.
Ronald Reagan might have triggered a war; not only was he pretty much unconnected from reality, he surrounded himself with advisors who ranged from relatively competent to dangerously unbalanced. Bush's advisors seem to be a little better, but it would still be a gamble.
Clinton probably could have negotiated quite effectively for their removal, though we might have lost more than in them than the missiles in Turkey, though probably not much more, he's pretty shrewd.
--
When I got home from the movie, I immediately phoned home to let my parents know that they should go see it... good stuff. I knew my dad had been drafted into the Army and station at Ft. Hood, Texas at the same time as the missile crisis, so I figured it would be interesting to him.
He proceeded to tell me his account of the entire thing from his perspective: from the day they loaded up his entire division and shipped them to Georgia (they got to listen to JFK and LBJ speak to them), to when they were sent to Florida and told to set up camp for 2 days at a Horseracing Track, to when they were all loaded up into large beach invasion type boats to set sail. He said they were floating out there for a day or 2 (out of sight from Florida, even) and being given maps and invasion plans of their sections of beaches when they got the word that they were dismantling the missles.
Well, that happened 5 years before my parents got married, and I wasn't born until '76...
So maybe Costner's character wasn't as powerful as the movie portrayed... I'm just glad cooler heads prevailed in that one.
What if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Ronald Reagan?
I don't know about GWB, but if Reagan had been President, they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, because he was perceived by the Soviets as a strong leader. We had the problem precisely because Kennedy was a weak leader.
Fortunately, he managed to stumble his way through it, but it was a clear case of getting lucky.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
...Better red than dead. (Its a joke) It'll be a sad day when films get shown in class instead of real history (ie something closer to the truth). ESPECIALLY when the subject of the film is an event that was as sensitive to Amreican political sensibilities as the Cuban missile crisis. Take it as gospel at your peril, and remember that the Russian account of events is no less and no more valid than your own. jb
If the sword of Damocles hangs over you long enough, you just go about life as usual.
Maybe the sword will fall, maybe it won't. In the meantime, there's life to be lived.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
I don't think we should pay much attention to this silliness. Hollywood movie writers just aren't creative/intelligent enough to come up with anymore more original. Now, I'm not a republicrat and I'm as anti-war as the next guy, but it's getting incredibly old. *shrug*
The Cuban missile crisis seems to me like the beginning of the end of the great U.S./U.S.S.R. pissing contest. There weren't any obvious changes reflected in our (U.S.) culture, but the aftermath of a trauma such as impending armaggedon definitely brews quietly in the subconscious mind.
We had The Day After when I was about ten years old. That movie educated an entire American generation in the folly of full-scale nuclear war. Does one's form of government (communism vs. pseudo-democratic) really matter so much that all of life must come to an end, either in a blinding flash or a slow poisoning? Had Thirteen Days been release while still timely, the spontaneous peace-and-love revolution of the late 60's probably would have come sooner and not been crushable by The Man.
I could be wrong, but I think we are still experiencing the slow changes from those thirteen days where our leaders were confronted for the first time with the ugly fruits of the anti-Communist zealots who had planted the seeds not a generation before.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Ewige Blumenkraft!
Just incase anyone was wondering, here's a link to the doomsday clock http://www.bullatomsci.org/clock.html . I heard about it in third grade. Check it out if you ever want to know when to duck and cover.
Alas, poor clippy, I loath him so.
Saw this movie the other night, and as a sometime history geek, I wanted to point out a few of the historiacal innacuracies in the film. 1. Use of the "Peace Symbol" in a sign. Although created in England in 1958, the "Peace Symbol" was not popularized in the United States until the Vietnam & Civil Rights Era, a few year later than 1962. 2. This is a big problem... in the movie, the Americans recieve confirmation that the Soviets had tactical nukes in Cuba (the Joint Chiefs then offer to take 'em all out). The truth of the matter is that the United States _did not know_ that the Soviets had tactical nukes until after the missle crisis was over. When Kennedy decided to not invade cuba, he didn't know that if he did, the marines on the beaches would have been vaporized by the thousands. He quite simply inadvertently saved the world that day. And if the russians had nuked the marines, it's a simple matter to escalate to city-busting nukes. This one fact alone disqualifies this film from being history class material. The problem with historical films is that invariably, most people will take the film at literal truth, without seeing that it's been dramatized in order to ENTERTAIN. Generally, films that attempt to tell it really like it is are called documentaries :)