Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [79]
And what if we shoot up some ship that turns out to be carrying baby food? How’s that gonna look? We end up with a goddamn public-relations disaster on our hands.
Hmmm.
And what if, the Hawks further demanded, Khrushchev turns around and tells us to go screw ourselves? That he’s gonna keep his nukes in Cuba, blockade or no blockade. Excuse us, quarantine. What then?
Well, the Doves flustered, we suppose we’d have no choice but to go for the bombing and the air strikes and so forth.
Right, the Hawks glittered, so why wait? Why give them any warning? Let’s hit the mothers now, when they’re not expecting it.
Leading the Hawks were the military men, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and fiercest of them was the aforementioned nightmare and chief of the air force, General Curtis LeMay. During the final stages of World War II, LeMay had initiated the strategy of firebombing Japanese cities. Flying at night, his planes dropped thousands of tons of explosives, incendiaries, and napalm (that’s the stuff that glues itself to people when it’s burning) onto military and civilian targets alike. LeMay proudly boasted, “Our B-29s scorched, boiled, and baked to death three hundred thousand people.” He cheerfully admitted that if he’d been on the losing side, he’d have been executed as a war criminal. Postwar, LeMay was the architect of SAC, Strategic Air Command, a huge fleet of nuclear-capable aircraft and an arsenal of missiles that tipped the MAD balance in America’s favor. His attitude toward Russia, as toward any enemy of the U.S., was uncomplicated: “We should just bomb them back to the Stone Age.”
JFK was repelled by and frightened of LeMay. “I don’t like that man,” he told Bobby. “I don’t want him near me.”
When LeMay was promoted to head of the air force, he was replaced as head of SAC by General Thomas Power. Power, believe it or not, was worse than LeMay. His own deputy was profoundly worried that such a “mean and cruel” and “psychologically unstable” man had control over so many weapons and weapon systems and could, under certain conditions, “launch the force.” Even LeMay considered Power “mad.”
It still, after all these years, puts frost into my blood to remember that men like LeMay and Power had their fingers so close to the button.
On the morning of Friday, October 19, 1962, President Kennedy braced himself for a meeting in the Cabinet Room. Among the men waiting for him were LeMay, Maxwell Taylor, and the heads of the navy, the army, and the marines. The navy guy was Admiral George Anderson. He looked like a Hollywood actor cast in the role of Head of the Navy. His sermons on clean living had earned him the nickname Straight Arrow. The army guy was General Earle Wheeler, a clever man and politically connected to Kennedy’s opposition, the Republicans. The marines guy was Commandant David Shoup. Shoup was a warrior who’d been involved in lots of bloody business, fighting the Japanese during World War II. His way of speaking involved biting off bits of the English language and randomly spitting them out in lumps of profanity.
All in all, they were not JFK’s ideal audience.
The meeting did not go well.
When it became clear that JFK was leaning toward the Doves’ quarantine option, with military action kept on hold, LeMay could barely conceal his contempt.
“We made pretty strong statements about Cuba, that we would take action against offensive weapons. I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by our friends, and neutrals, as being a pretty weak response to this. And I’m sure a lot of your own citizens would feel that way, too.”
There it was again, that word: weak. Kennedy bridled.
“You’re in a pretty bad fix, Mr. President,” LeMay added.
“What did you say?”
“You’re in a pretty bad fix,” LeMay repeated flatly. The indifference in his tone was worse than a sneer.
Kennedy’s face wore an expression of restrained disgust, like a man watching his wife throw up into the toilet.
He said, “Well, you’re right in there with me. Personally.”
A flutter of nervous laughter from around the