Do you think JFK handled the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as he could have?

Question

Why or why not? How do you feel about the enormous risk we took regarding the possibility of a nuclear war?

Answer 1

The invasion of Cuba by Fidel Castro came before the missile crises. As a matterof fact, Castro hadn't announced his communist leanings prior to the invasion. Had he done so,. the outcome would have been much different.

What ever stopped JFK from supporting the Cuban army at the bay of pigs, is a question for the ages! The outcome would have certainly been different, and Cuba would have been a free nation for the last forty six fears !

Risk is necessary sometimes, if we expect to stay a free nation. I would want the president in office if it happens again, to respond in exactly the same manner. For this reason alone, I believe this country cannot afford to elect a democrat for president. There is not one democratic candidate with the stones to respond to this scenario !

Answer 2

Yes. He handled it very well. Considering the enormous pressure he was under from our military to invade Cuba, he managed to defuse the situation with an acceptable outcome.

Two little know facts about the CMC:

1. A few of those missiles were ready to be launched. If an airstrike or invasion did not take them all out, it's quite possible a few could have been launched.
2. Kennedy made a backdoor deal that did not become public knowledge until decades later. He had agreed to pull our missiles out of Turkey soon after, which he did.

So while I can't say it was the best possible outcome, it certainly was better than a lot of the possible outcomes. I'm glad I wasn't living in the southeastern USA during that time. Those people must have been very stressed out during those 2 weeks.

Answer 3

You know I sit here and know my answer but cannot seem to put it into words...Here is my first knowledge of the situation and the effect it had....I was around 10 years old and in school we were told to read the newspapers and I can still remember the picture on the front page of a warship in the Atlantic and my friend looking over and telling me how close we were to being nuclear war...it took years for me and many of my friends to get passed the trauma it caused and it wasn't until the 70s that we realized all the crap that was going on around us....now did he do right?...of course he did assuming he actually believed there were missiles in Cuba...OR, maybe he knew what we know now and he was grandstanding...maybe the CIA back then was actually an effective organization and they already knew there was nothing to fear and by standing up to the Soviets any other areas that had similar ideas as Cuba would think twice...

Answer 4

Well, there wasn't a nuclear war, so he could have done worse. And, there are no missle bases in Cuba.

Sounds pretty good. (Unlike the Bay of Pigs)

I'm fine with it. It turned out, by the way that, at the time, the Russians didn't have the nuclear capability to launch an effective retaliatory strike, the risk was actually much less than everyone thought.

Answer 5

i think of he dealt with it purely nice. Had he no longer dealt with it the way he did, i think of we'd have stood a very good probability of turning right into a territory of the Soviet Union...with nuclear able missiles an insignificant ninety miles away, the Soviets would have released an attack - a nuclear attack - on us and via the time we knew what became occurring, it could be too previous via respond. Kennedy did what needed to be achieved; he confirmed the Soviets that he had balls, firepower, and the midsection to apply the two. They subsidized down, no longer him, and we are secure immediately via fact of it. This became yet between the numerous stuff that made him a good President. one won't be able to help yet ask your self how substantially diverse the international could be immediately had he no longer been assassinated in Dallas in 1963.

Answer 6

The only other option was an attack that would have put us at war with Russia. He think he did a great job. He kept us out of a war yet showed we backbone at the same time. Very unusual for a democrat. Maybe Ted should have paid more attention to his older brother , he might not be as much of an embarrassment today.

Answer 7

In reality, the US took missiles out of Turkey in exchange for the Soviets not putting missiles in Cuba.

I do think JFK did what he had to do in order to avert a nuclear disaster. I still tip my cap to him.

BTW, when the Soviet Union fell the US should have obliterated Cuba for being jackasses in 1962.

Answer 8

Handled it very well, but don't forget about those evil folks at the CIA who flushed out the intelligence he needed to gain the confidence that the Russians would blink.

Answer 9

I believe he made the right choice. He made a stand against the Soviet Union who was obviously intimidating the US by putting missiles so close to America. We couldn't have let the Soviets get away with it.

Answer 10

Absolutely.
He got the Soviets to dismantle the missles WITHOUT provoking a military confrontation.