From my most recent NRO article, on the anniversary of JFK’s inauguration: “The myth-making about the Cuban Missile Crisis enabled the Kennedy entourage to believe that they had developed a new and infallible method of Harvard-based, critical-path crisis management. Of course it was nonsense, and led straight to the lunacy of fighting in the morass of Vietnam without cutting the Ho Chi Minh Trail, down which poured a practically unlimited number of reinforcements and quantity of munitions and supplies, and even tanks and artillery. I think that JFK’s intuition in not invading Cuba justifies a likelihood that he would not have plunged into Vietnam as insouciantly as Lyndon Johnson did, propelled by the scruff of the neck and the small of the back by the advisers he had inherited from Kennedy.”
Whether you agree or disagree, your comments are, as always, most welcome.