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Originally Posted by Daradon
Ok, fair enough. I had never heard that story, and as mentioned in the articles, it wasn't officially released till many many years later. So people living through it and judging it based on what they were going through at the time, doesn't really add to the argument. As was mentioned by another poster, I'm not sure it really means anything to have someone NOT push the button though. As the articles mention, they did not have orders from Moscow.
The ones I had read mentioned that the DEFCON level had never been raised above 3 (except for one unit at 2 I believe?) and that many people in the military were not expecting nuclear war. From Wikipedia...
David A. Burchinal recalled that, by contrast,[63] 'the Russians were so thoroughly stood down, and we knew it. They didn't make any move. They did not increase their alert; they did not increase any flights, or their air defense posture. They didn't do a thing, they froze in place. We were never further from nuclear war than at the time of Cuba, never further'
Probably just arguing semantics here. What constitutes 'brink of'. You gotta remember, in times of crisis things do seem a lot headier than they do in retrospect, of course. And in times of crisis, governments are very good at getting the population on their side. Look at America after September 11th. Everyone was freaking out that something more might happen for quite some time after that. Not to say that that was a wrong feeling, it's natural to be scared. Just that, there wasn't any evidence that more attacks were on the way.
So personally I still feel a bit grey on the use of the word 'brink'. But I do thank you for the story and I do see why people would say that. |
You need to take into consideration what was going on at the time. We were in the Cold War where daily headlines were about each side threatening each other to the point that it looked like insanity. Anyone with an ounce of sense knew the danger that was happening. It was even called
brinkmanship and a dangerous game it was which also kept the population on edge. 911 was a disaster but it was a one off in comparison.
One of the often ignored aspects is that Kennedy removed missiles from Turkey so the USSR would take out their missiles in Cuba and it was probably a forerunner of future nuclear agreements between the two.