[HN Gopher] The General and World War III (1995)
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       The General and World War III (1995)
        
       Author : benbreen
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2021-05-31 19:36 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
        
       | sgt101 wrote:
       | 100m dead...
        
       | nickdothutton wrote:
       | I highly recommend Errol Morris "Fog Of War" which also gives a
       | glimpse of CLM. https://youtu.be/tmJUDIVvua4
        
         | chasd00 wrote:
         | The opening part of the documentary going over the Cuban
         | Missile Crisis is amazing. I can watch it over and over.
         | 
         | Fog Of War is probably the best documentary i've ever seen.
        
       | annoyingnoob wrote:
       | I feel like WWIII already started, on the internet. Its only a
       | matter of time before it spills over into meat space.
        
       | mjparrott wrote:
       | Malcolm Gladwell published a pretty interesting history on LeMay
       | in his new book The Bomber Mafia
       | https://www.pushkin.fm/audiobook/bomber-mafia/
        
       | aphextron wrote:
       | I really wonder just how much of the perceived "danger" the world
       | was in during the cold war came down to the paranoid delusions of
       | these hot headed, rough and violent men who had just fought the
       | most destructive conflict in world history. It took Kennedy to
       | talk the joint chiefs off the ledge during the Cuban missile
       | crisis, and thankfully for America's hard seperation of military
       | power in the hands of civilians he was there to do so. I'm not
       | sure a more martially led nation would have done so. Looking back
       | and reading the facts, it seems utterly absurd to think that the
       | entire situation wasn't just one big bluff on the part of Fidel.
       | But you had guys like Lemay who missed the action of war, spent
       | all day fantasizing of it, and would take any opportunity given
       | to escalate things.
        
         | Animats wrote:
         | Kennedy had been in WWII, too. At a low level. Look up
         | "PT-109".
         | 
         | There was much misreading of enemy intention. The US people had
         | aerial photographs of the missile installations in Cuba, and
         | noticed that they were laid out just like other USSR
         | installations in colder climates. This was taken to mean that
         | the USSR wanted the US to recognize them. That was more of a
         | direct threat than putting them in secretly.
         | 
         | In the 1990s, some of the high-level participants from both
         | sides had a get-together.[1] This subject came up. The Russian
         | officer who'd been in charge of the base construction said "Oh,
         | no, we just did it that way because that was what it said to do
         | in the field manual".
         | 
         | Of course. They had a prefab missile base and assembly
         | instructions.
         | 
         | [1] https://robertmcnamara.org/wp-
         | content/uploads/2018/05/Rabe-1...
        
         | smogcutter wrote:
         | "War is too important to be left to the generals" - Clemenceau
        
       | marstall wrote:
       | interesting perspective on the "what are we going to do about
       | drone attacks" question - I guess LeMay would say they're
       | unstoppable and proffer the deterrence of having an even sharper
       | and/or more massive drone force, basically the same old air war
       | concepts ...
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-01 23:01 UTC)