Missiles of August: A sequel from Rice
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has dim if any memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
Just seven years old at the time, she may have learned of this brush with nuclear annihilation from history books instead.
As a politically involved high school senior at the time, those two weeks are burned into my memory as a fortnight of angst, wondering if I was going to have a life with the war games the so-called leaders of the U.S. and Russia were playing on us.
It seems our leaders decided that removing provocative missiles in Cuba, 90 miles from our shores, was worth the risk blowing up the whole world.
Military hawks led by Gen. Curtis LeMay advocated massive bombing of the emerging missile sites, a move that might well have precipitated all-out nuclear war.
Cooler heads prevailed and achieved a settlement, gained in part by a secret U.S. agreement to remove provocative U.S. missiles near Russia in Turkey.
Later. we learned Russia's foolish move was motivated, in part, to secure their client state Cuba's security from repeated criminal attempts to overthrow the Castro regime through both invasion and contract assassination.
Now, 46 years later, that former 7-year-old got to repeat the foolhardy act of putting provocative missiles on the doorstep of a large, powerful country that, no surprise, proclaims them an unacceptable threat.
The agreement that Secretary Rice signed with Poland to install 10 anti-ballistic missiles is pitched as a defense of Poland.
Rice dismisses Russia's fears that these missiles, which will be 150 miles from Russia, are provocative. "Missile defense is aimed at no one", she said. "It is not aimed in any way at Russia."
Easy for her to say. I'm tired of Rice's endless diplomatic double-talk when it comes to justifying our egregious behavior, whether using pre-emptive war to cause millions of casualties and refugees in the Middle East, encouraging new client state Georgia to level the capital of breakaway province South Ossetia or plunking down missiles just seconds away from Russia.
Walt Zlotow
Glen Ellyn