06 September 2016
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Nothing the U.S. national-security branch of the federal government — i.e.,
the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — does surprises me anymore, but I must
admit that I was bit taken aback when I read an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times
entitled, ''Let's Get Our Nuclear Weapons Out of Turkey'' by Steve Andreasen.
The article pointed how the political instability that is roiling Turkey
places the U.S. nuclear missiles in that country in danger of falling into the
wrong hands.
U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey? That's not possible, I thought. President
Kennedy ordered the removal of U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey more than 50
years, as part of the deal he struck with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to
resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis.
How did U.S. nuclear weapons get back into Turkey? More important, what are
they doing there? What is their purpose?
At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy himself was
surprised to discover that the U.S. had nuclear missiles in Turkey aimed at
the Soviet Union. As Benjamin Schwarz pointed out in a fascinating and
insightful article on the Missile Crisis in the Atlantic magazine, Kennedy was
trying to figure out why Khrushchev would initiate the crisis in the first
place. Hypothesizing, Kennedy said, ''It's just as if we suddenly began to put
a major number of MRBMs [medium-range ballistic missiles] in Turkey. Now
that's be goddammned dangerous, I would think.'' Kennedy's national security
adviser McGeorge Bundy responded, ''Well, we did it, Mr. President.''
By ''we,'' Bundy was referring to the U.S. national-security establishment,
the totalitarian-like apparatus that had been grafted onto America's federal
governmental system to wage a Cold War against America's World War II partner
and ally, the Soviet Union. As part of its Cold War activities, the Pentagon
had installed Jupiter nuclear missiles in Turkey, something that the Soviets
didn't like, especially given the close proximity of Turkey to Russia.
Of course, the U.S. national-security state's standard story is that all of
its anti-Russian activities, both during the Cold War and today, are entirely
defensive.
Yet, that's not exactly true. As Schwarz points out in his article, the
Jupiter missiles in Turkey would take an inordinately long time to activate.
Thus, in a real war it would have been easy for the Soviets to knock them out
before they could be fired.
That meant, then, that in the eyes of the Soviets, those Jupiter missiles had
another purpose — to serve as a first strike in a surprise nuclear attack
against Russia.
Paranoia? Maybe, but really no different from the U.S. government's response
to a similar situation, one in which, say, Russia was installing nuclear
weapons in, say, Cuba, which is located quite near the United States.
Countries generally don't like to have nuclear missiles pointed at them,
especially when the nuclear missiles are nearby.
Let's not forget another principle regarding paranoia: Paranoid people are
sometimes followed too. In fact, what Americans didn't realize at the time —
and many still don't realize — is that the U.S. national-security
establishment was exhorting Kennedy to do precisely what the Soviets feared —
initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, much like the Japanese
did at Pearl Harbor.
Their rationale? They believed that the fight against communism was ultimately
a fight to the death, much like they view today their war on terrorism and
their war on Islam. Since the United States had a lot more nuclear bombs than
the Soviet Union in 1962 (which the national-security state concealed and said
was the opposite), the Pentagon and the CIA figured that it would be best to
go ahead and have a nuclear war then rather than later.
When Kennedy asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff about projected casualty figures,
their response was that America would suffer only 30-40 million people but
that the entire Soviet Union would be wiped out, which meant, therefore, that
the United States would have won the war.
Kennedy walked out of that particular meeting, indignantly remarking to an
aide, ''And we call ourselves the human race.'' It was only the beginning of
the war that would ultimately be waged between JFK and the national-security
establishment, a war that is detailed in FFF's ebook JFK's War with the
National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas
Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in
the 1990s.
The Soviets were well aware of the wish within the U.S. national-security
establishment for a first-strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union. That's
why they were concerned about those Jupiter missiles in Turkey. They knew that
they were worthless for defensive purposes. Their only value was in a
first-strike offensive nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
The official U.S. version of the Cuban Missile Crisis — the one that is
inculcated into every American schoolchild — is that the Soviets placed
offensive nuclear weapons in Cuba for the purpose of initiating a nuclear war
against the United States.
It's been a lie since the very beginning. The truth is that the Soviet
missiles were intended to be entirely defensive in nature. That is, they were
intended to deter another invasion of Cuba by the U.S. national-security
state.
There is something important to note here about the Cold War, Cuba, and the
national-security establishment: Cuba never attacked the United States, never
initiated terrorist attacks or acts of sabotage in the United States, never
imposed an economic embargo against the United States, never invaded the
United States, and never tried to assassinate any U.S. president.
Instead, it was the U.S. national-security state that did all those things to
Cuba. Even though many American still hew to the view that Cuba was an
aggressor against the United States, the fact is that it it is the U.S.
national security state that has always been the aggressor against Cuba. Its
agents invaded the island at the Bay of Pigs, initiated terrorist attacks and
acts of sabotage inside Cuba, imposed a brutal economic embargo that still
exists to this day, and, in partnership with the Mafia, repeatedly tried to
assassinate Cuba's president Fidel Castro.
That wasn't the end of it. Prior to the installation of nuclear missiles in
Cuba by the Soviets, the national-security establishment was demanding that
Kennedy order a full-scale military invasion of the island for the purpose of
regime change, something that both the Cubans and the Soviets were aware of.
That's what the Pentagon's infamous Operation Northwoods was all about.
Castro knew that he could never prevail in the event of a full-scale U.S.
military invasion of Cuba. He had only one way to prevent such an invasion
from occurring — enlisting the help of the Soviet Union and its nuclear
arsenal with the aim of deterring an invasion or defending against an
invasion.
That's what the purpose of the Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were for — not
to initiate nuclear war against the United States but instead to deter or
defend against another one of the many regime-change operations that have
characterized the national-security establishment practically since its
inception.
When Kennedy found out about that the U.S. national-security state still had
those Jupiter missiles in Turkey, he was angry, but he figured out a way to
use them to resolve the crisis. First, he promised the Soviets that the United
States would no longer invade Cuba. Second, knowing precisely how the Soviets
were feelings about the U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey that were pointed out
the Soviet Union, he secretly promised to remove them. As part of the bargain,
the Soviets removed their nuclear weapons from Cuba, and the crisis was
abated.
While Kennedy and the American people were, naturally, relieved that the world
had been spared a nuclear holocaust, the U.S. national-security establishment
was livid. They considered the deal the worst defeat in American history.
After all, since they were now prohibited from invading Cuba, that meant, in
their eyes, that America would be perpetually threatened by a communist
outpost only 90 miles away from American shores. As Horne points out in his
ebook, JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was
Assassinated, they considered Kennedy a traitor and a dupe who was leading
America to defeat at the hands of the communists. The war between Kennedy and
his national security establishment became even more grave when JFK delivered
his famous Peace Speech at American University, where he announced that he was
bringing the Cold War to an end, and then when he initiated secret
negotiations with Khrushchev and Castro to establish peaceful coexistence with
the communist world.
How did those nuclear weapons get back into Turkey? I'm not really sure how
that happened. But it must have happened sometime after President Kennedy was
assassinated, as part of the U.S. national-security state's forever war
against the Soviet Union and Russia.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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