John Kennedy was a great speaker and wit. Unfortunately, in dealing with the USSR he was bumbling, inexperienced and perceived as weak by Khrushchev. Following Kennedy's lack of resolve during the Bay of Pigs invasion and his inept negotiations at the Vienna Summit, the Soviet Premier saw he could dominate international situations and get military control over his near and far spheres of influence. He did:“We ended up getting exactly what we’d wanted all along,” snickered Nikita Khrushchev in his diaries, “security for Fidel Castro’s regime and American missiles removed from Turkey and Italy…"
The Cuban Missile Crisis: Kennedy’s “Victory”? | FrontPage Magazine
By Humberto Fontova On October 24, 2013
That Khrushchev swept the floor with Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis was mainstream conservative conclusion throughout much of the Cold War. Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater, for instance, represented opposite poles of the Republican establishment of their time.
“We locked Castro’s communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal,” growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.”
“Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” complained Richard Nixon. “Then gave the Soviets squatters rights in our backyard.”
Generals Curtis Le May and Maxwell Taylor represented opposite poles of the military establishment.
“The biggest defeat in our nation’s history!” bellowed Air Force chief Curtis Lemay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal.
“We missed the big boat,” complained Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning of same.
“We’ve been had!” yelled then Navy chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK “solved” the missile crisis. Adm. Anderson was the man in charge of the very “blockade” against Cuba.
“It’s a public relations fable that Khrushchev quailed before Kennedy,” wrote Alexander Haig. “The legend of the eyeball to eyeball confrontation invented by Kennedy’s men paid a handsome political dividend. But the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal was a deplorable error resulting in political havoc and human suffering through the Americas.”
William Buckley’s National Review devoted several issues to exposing and denouncing Kennedy’s appeasement. The magazine’s popular “The Third World War” column by James Burnham roundly condemned Kennedy’s Missile Crisis solution as “America’s Defeat.”
Even Democratic luminary Dean Acheson despaired: “This nation lacks leadership,” he grumbled about the famous “Ex-Comm meetings” so glorified in the movie Thirteen Days. “The meetings were repetitive and without direction. Most members of Kennedy’s team had no military or diplomatic experience whatsoever. The sessions were a waste of time.”
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