The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [411]
There were two meetings that day, Tuesday October 16, of the newly created executive committee of the National Security Council (Ex Comm), the group that in the days that followed became the crucial policymaking organization. Kennedy had sought to surround himself with fiercely intelligent men who would parse an issue up and down, tearing it apart, before they arrived at a sound conclusion. These men had largely failed to alert him to the dangers that lay at the Bay of Pigs. The scale of what faced them was far higher now than a year and a half ago, and this time there was depth and fierce articulateness to many of their contributions. It was a mark of the vigor of their minds that all of the great issues of what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis were discussed on this first day.
Although Kennedy and his men often spoke in a kind of intellectual shorthand, these were not mere tactical meetings but discussions of political, philosophical, and moral complexity. “What is the strategic impact on the position of the United States of MRBMs [medium-range ballistic missiles] in Cuba?” McGeorge Bundy asked at the 6:30 P.M.. meeting in the Cabinet Room. “How gravely does this change the strategic balance?”
“Mac, I asked the Chiefs that this afternoon, in effect,” McNamara replied. “And they said, ‘Substantially.’ My personal view is, not at all.”
“You may say it doesn’t make any difference if you get blown up by an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] flying from the Soviet Union or one that was ninety miles away,” the president said a few minutes later. “Geography doesn’t mean that much.”
That perception was the darkest irony of the nuclear age. Russia and America were gigantic gladiators. America may have held a sharper sword, but the opponents were so well armed and so vicious that once they began fighting, not only were they both doomed, but in their death throes they would pull down the arena.
“Last month I said we weren’t going to [accept it]” Kennedy stated, referring to Russian missiles in Cuba. “Last month I should have said that we don’t care. But when we said we’re not going to [accept it], and they go ahead and do it, and then we do nothing, then I would think that our risks increase. I agree. What difference does it make? They’ve got enough to blow us up now anyway.”
This was in part a struggle over language. The president had not understood the extent to which his words were actions. Now he believed he could not back away. Beyond that, his language and the language of a thousand other politicians had created a climate in which judiciousness was considered a coward’s calling, and anti-Communist jingoism a patriot’s one true song. He and his administration had helped create this image of a monstrous Cuba that he was now compelled to slay or be considered less than a manly leader. The missiles may not have changed the strategic balance of power, but a failure to deal with them changed everything politically.
Some of these men expressed a moral dimension in their discourse that they had rarely sounded before. Around the table there were those for immediately raising swords, but of all people, it was one of the holders of those swords, the secretary of Defense, who first pondered the moral dimension. “I don’t know now quite what kind of a world we live in after we’ve struck Cuba, and we’ve started it,” McNamara said. “Now, after we’ve launched fifty to a hundred sorties, what kind of world do we live in?” That was an essential question, and it was not quickly brushed off the table.
“Why does he put these [missiles] in there, though?” Kennedy asked, wondering why the Soviets had