Beware the Ides of October as Pentagon prepares for World War III

On this 53rd anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, it is critically-important for President Obama to second guess every whim and desire of his top military brass and neocon Cabinet members like Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

In October 1962, President John F. Kennedy was under pressure from his Joint Chiefs of Staff to order a bombing campaign of Cuba in response to the stationing in that country of intermediate-range Soviet ballistic missiles. What became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis lasted for thirteen days from October 16 to 28, 1962.

However, wiser heads prevailed as Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev began a series of secret exchanges of telegrams and radio messages designed to bypass their respective military-industrial complexes. The “K2″ team of Kennedy and Khrushchev stepped the world back from the brink of nuclear war and set about the groundwork for later detente between the two superpowers. However, the peace option of both leaders later cost Kennedy his life and Khrushchev his job as hardliners took over both governments in right-wing coups d’état.

Unlike Kennedy, who was in the middle of his presidential term, Obama will soon commence the last year of his presidency. However, Obama, like Kennedy, is under pressure from his top military brass to confront Russia militarily. In Obama’s case, the Joint Chiefs and regional commanders are girding for military confrontations with Russian air force planes now pounding Islamic State positions in Syria and, reportedly, in Iraq. At the same time, Carter and his generals and admirals are itching for a naval confrontation with China in the South China Sea. Russia and China, believing themselves to be the targets of planned U.S. military aggression, are coordinating their military actions in the Middle East and Far East.

Kennedy was faced with a number of rebellious generals and admirals in his showdown with the Soviet Union in Cuba. Most of the brass opposed Kennedy’s naval quarantine of Cuba. Led by Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay, the mutinous flag rank officers included General Lyman Lemnitzer, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral George Anderson, the Chief of Naval Operations. LeMay wanted to launch an all-out air attack on Cuba followed by the launch of 5,000 nuclear missiles on the USSR. LeMay had previously said that the complete destruction in a Soviet retaliatory nuclear attack of Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit was worth it in the long run. Kennedy rejected LeMay’s proposal of a first strike on the Soviet Union. When LeMay was told that the U.S. would initiate a naval blockade of Cuba, he responded that Kennedy’s decision was “almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”

The neocons inside and outside the Pentagon have likened Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran in similar terms, invoking the Munich reference. Today, Obama has his own LeMays and Lemnitzers in NATO Commander General Philip Breedlove, U.S. Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Scott Swift, and Army Chief of Staff General Mark Milley. Breedlove wants to confront Russia militarily in Ukraine; Swift wants a naval face down with China in the South China Sea; and Milley sees Russia and China as the number 1 and 2 threats to the United States, followed by North Korea and Iran. Breedlove, Swift, and Milley all represent the same American right-wing war faction that Kennedy faced with LeMay, Lemnitzer, and Anderson.

However, for Kennedy, there as an even more dangerous renegade in the upper echelons of the military ranks. Kennedy had his own “General Jack Ripper” on his hands. Ripper, played by actor and former OSS agent in World War II Sterling Hayden in Stanley Kubrick’s epic Cold War spoof “Dr. Strangelove,” was a renegade B-52 base commander who ordered his planes to drop their nuclear payloads on the Soviet Union against the orders of the president. In Kennedy’s case, General Thomas Power, the commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), which had control of America’s nuclear bomber force of B-52s and nuclear land-based ballistic missiles, ordered, without the president’s approval, Defense Condition 2 (DEFCON 2), one step short of all-out war. Furthermore, Power transmitted his order in the clear as a way to let the Soviets know the U.S. was preparing for war. Even LeMay said that Power, one of his close subordinates when LeMay was the head of SAC, was mentally “not stable.”^*

Power may have also been involved in a decision to test fire a missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California at the height of the Cuban missile crisis without Kennedy’s or Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s authorization. On October 17, a local Soviet missile unit commander took it upon himself to shoot down a U-2 spy plane over Cuba. The American U-2 pilot was killed. A few hours later, a U-2 on an air sampling mission over the Arctic, an operation that had been ordered aborted, accidentally strayed into Soviet air space. The Russians did not shoot the plane down. The action was taken without any authorization from Khrushchev or Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Rodion Malinovsky. In the Atlantic, the Soviet skipper of a Foxtrot class submarine, B-59, believed that U.S. Navy practice depth charges and grenades dropped near his submarine were an attempt by the Americans to force him to surface. Fortunately, the Soviet commander decided not to retaliate with one of his nuclear-armed torpedoes.

So far, some American and Russian military commanders are mutually discussing their air operations over Syria and Iraq. However, if renegade U.S. military brass intent on all-out war with Russia, China, and Iran have their way, there will be a military incident. There have already been some uneasy altercations between U.S. and Russian war planes over Syrian airspace.

In his last year in office, Obama should emulate Kennedy and not one of his admitted personal heroes, Ronald Reagan. Diplomacy and not brinkmanship should rule Obama’s last year in the White House. Kennedy, a veteran Navy lieutenant and “hero of PT 109,” was not bullied by his generals and admirals, many of whom unabashedly brandished their own intrepid military accomplishments in World War II and Korea. Obama has appeared too keen on following the advice, no matter how inane, from his military and national security advisers. As the Pentagon and neocon drums beat louder for war with Russia, China, and Iran, now is not the time for Obama to don his war paint.

Note

^*Wikipedia, which is heavily involved in altering the historical record to favor the CIA and the U.S. military, paints Power in an entirely positive light, without any mention of his obvious mental issues.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

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Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).