October 22, 2012 marked the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's decision to blockade Cuba militarily until the then-Soviet Union government in Moscow agreed to remove the surface-to-surface missiles it had secretly placed in Cuba from Cuba.
Although Cuba was not a part of U.S. territory in 1962, the macho corporate male U.S. Establishment apparently felt it had a moral right to go to nuclear war, if necessary, to make sure these missiles weren't on Cuban soil. To avert a purposless nuclear war, however, the less macho Soviet Russian leader Khruschev agreed to remove his missles from Cuba before the 1962 U.S. congressional elections, in exchange for a pledge from President Kennedy that Cuba would never be invaded again.
As a result of JFK's 1962 "October Surprise" military move, President Kennedy's popularity and the popularity of Democratic Party congressional candidates increased among U.S. voters in the November 1962 elections. But among the right-wing types within the U.S. government who wished to invade Cuba, President Kennedy's popularity continued to drop as a result of his 1962 October Surprise. As President Kennedy's speechwriter, Theodore Sorenson, said in the 1980s:
"There's...a...group of critics on the right--and this includes some members of the government at that time--who were very critical of the resolution of the crisis in October, 1962, because they did not want a peaceful resolution. They regarded the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba as an opportunity and as justification for an American invasion that would go in and eliminate the Castro regime and its control of the island of Cuba. And they were disappointed, frustrated--indeed, angry that Kennedy had agreed not to launch an invasion of Cuba as a part of the resolution."
Coincidentally, less than 14 months after JFK announced his 1962 October Surprise Missile Crisis resolution agreement, he was mysteriously eliminated in Dallas, Texas.
(Downtown 10/21/92)
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