It's not nice to hit people when they're down, but in the case
of mortgage-scandal implicated Richard Holbrooke, maybe we should
make an exception. Holbrooke, who's been angling to become
secretary of state in a new Democratic administration, once again
reveals that by temperament he is less diplomat and more partisan
hack. In Sunday's New York Times Book Review, toward the
end of what to that point was a most readable
review of Michael Dobbs new book on the Cuban missile crisis,
he tacks on this, totally, utterly gratuitously:
It is hard to read this book without thinking about
what would have happened if the current administration had faced
such a situation -- real weapons of mass destruction only 90 miles
from Florida; the Pentagon urging "surgical" air attacks followed
by an invasion; threatening letters from the leader of a real
superpower and senators calling the president "weak" just weeks
before a midterm Congressional election.
Life does not offer us a chance to play out alternative history,
but it is not unreasonable to assume that the team that invaded
Iraq would have attacked Cuba. And if Dobbs is right, Cuba and the
Soviet Union would have fought back, perhaps launching some of the
missiles already in place. One can only conclude that our nation
was extremely fortunate to have had John F. Kennedy as president in
October 1962.
Not only are the two situations utterly not comparable, but
Holbrooke isn't even curious enough to wonder why, if say they were
comparable, it took JFK no more than two weeks to resolve the
crisis whereas Bush spent a year and a half just getting ready to
move against Saddam Hussein.
topics:
Books, Iraq, NATO
