On Sunday I was entertaining the boys and flicking through channels for some background distraction (after all, babies are only so exciting for so long). I tuned in to the early going of the movie Thirteen Days about the Cuban Missile Crisis back in the sixties.
I had seen it before but it was worth watching again because its such a good movie. I don't know how accurate it is but from what I've heard a lot of the White House dialogue was taken from official government transcripts and is mostly historically accurate in major events.
As I was watching the movie (5 out of 5 stars on my review scale by the way, a "must see") I was struck by several thoughts:
1) Damn there was so many roads leading to escalation of hostilities and it feels like only one road that didn't and someone they found that road through luck, perseverance, and sheer will.
2) The American military command was chomping at the bit for a shooting confrontation. I mean even if the movie exaggerated their enthusiasm for conflict 100%, they were still practically begging for the chance to blow stuff up. And the events suggests that they tried to paint the President into a corner to force him to order a shooting war.
3) While the parallels to recent years and the Iraq war against Saddam Hussein's government are weak at best, I couldn't help but think that if Dubba & co (or reasonable facsimiles) were in charge in the sixties I wouldn't be typing this right now. Instead civilization as we know it would be the remnant survivors from World War III.
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