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And yet the world came close to nuclear war. Each was directing his military to carry on provocative activities—on the Soviet side, making the missiles operational on a crash basis in Cuba and sending submarine patrols in the Caribbean; on the American side, pursuing all preparations for an invasion of Cuba and pressing aggressive low-level aerial reconnaissance over Cuba while harassing Soviet submarines. Each of them was prolonging the crisis day by day while they haggled over the resolution of the conflict, each hoping to achieve better terms than he was prepared, at bottom, to accept. If Khrushchev had not, surprisingly, initiated an abrupt, humiliating withdrawal of his missiles Sunday morning—without even waiting for an official American response to his proposal of Saturday morning, which Kennedy had argued to his advisors was “very reasonable”—there was every likelihood of the fuse to all-out war being lit by that afternoon.
The Doomsday Machine
Daniel Ellsberg
committed at an entirely new level. You see, a burst of sudden inspiration isn’t a goal or a strategy. Inspiration fades. Something major can happen in our lives and convince us that we really want to be X, Y, or Z, but if we don’t follow up on that intuitive hint with action, the feelings will evaporate and we’ll be right back where we were. Into action, then. I packed up my
Creative Calling
Chase Jarvis
Democratic leaders didn’t help matters any when they responded ambivalently to radical protest. This ambivalence had two causes. Many liberals who were themselves committed to electoral politics shared the demonstrators’ strong opposition to the Vietnam War and to lingering racism, and were to some degree morally intimidated by their passion. At the same time, some Democratic office holders and candidates feared that criticizing the radicals’ tactics would cost them votes from their base that they needed to win. The requirement to choose between the most radical, angry people who are on your side and the general population that fears and dislikes them wounded the Democrats for the next decade and after. Our historic consolation is that Republicans now confront the same dilemma in the form of the Tea Party.
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