HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
July 10, 2008 The Bush era is reaching its end, all around are acrimonious recriminations. Bush lied people died; can this man form a simple sentence? He displays the height of dumbness etc.Gettig away from the media generated hate hysteria and weighting matters in an historical context we can ascertain the merits and de merits of both. Kennedy was noted for his Bay of Pigs fiasco and his subsequent rehabilitation in forcing the soviets to withdraw their IRBM's from Cuba. Bush is noted for the fact that he invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq on shaky evidence. Kennedy blamed the CIA for not giving him good intelligence and then went on to form the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) during his attempt to force Castro from the Presidency of Cuba. Bush too seemed to have blamed the CIA for not giving him good intelligence regarding the weapons of mass destruction said to have been in the possession of Saddam Hussein. Kennedy went on to force the soviets to remove their IRBM from Cuba by way of embargo. Bush tackled the toughest country in the Middle East and won hands down only to blow it by not being prepared for the insurgency as he at the same time forced the Taliban protectors of Al Qaeda to flee to Pakistan's North West Frontier. At this period in history Kennedy intercepted cargo ships carrying supplies to Cuba. There was talk of brinkman ship and not blinking while taking the world to the edge of nuclear Armageddon. The empirical facts point out that Kennedy far from having an iron nerve was in fact well aware he would win a nuclear exchange, and that Khrushchev far from being on the edge madness suggested by his famous shoe banging incident while wearing both shoes, was in fact quite sane. On the other hand Bush was in a quandary regarding the weapons of mass destruction and the state of Saddams mental health as he also contended with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iraq has turned out OK, the toughest most brutal dictatorship in the Middle East now about to assume the trappings of democracy and a return to respect for international law. Cuba is still communist Kennedy knew that the nuclear battle field would have involved areas in the high arctic as the range of the B52 and the Tu 95 aircraft were both 6000 miles at that time, their radius of operations allowing only for the bombing of a single similar enemy type of base (unless they wanted to make war on polar bears and penguins). In the Urals the soviets had battalions of IRBM(Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles) capable of being used in the Arctic only while the US had a force of ICBM's(Inter Continental Ballistic Missiles) deployed at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and at Cape Canaveral in Florida. Both could rain nuclear war deep into the soviet industrial area. By contrast Bush was forced by the attacks on the US to take almost immediate action, the planning stage but three months and working on very shaky intelligence. Bush seems to garner nothing but contempt from the media while Kennedy has nothing but praise. In the long run whose actions were the most significant? Kennedy temporally halted the soviet expansion and the overseas basing of nuclear weapons. The balance of power between the US and the USSR was soon to dramatically change in the favor of the USSR and so the confrontation in the overall war had but meagre result. The result of Bush's actions have not yet become readily apparent but already the nations hosting for the last forty years some of the most violent terror groups in the world must be seriously reevaluating their position regarding these groups. True the war in Afghanistan is not going to well, especially in areas not under US control, but with the greater use of US counter insurgency drill manual 3-24 in other areas we can expect to see a significant improvement in the situation, especially as more troops become avail with the wind down of the war in Iraq. The overall result of a win in both Iraq and Afghanistan will signal the beginning of the end of world wide anarchy where dictators could get away with almost any thing. Why then this hatred of Bush. I could be that the world is tired of wars and blames any one close to the seat of power. The same thing happened to another President, this one being Abraham Lincoln who was vilified by the press as the cause of the horrendous casualties of the day.
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
