Among the 10 points in Iran’s peace proposal that President Trump has now agreed to use as a basis for peace negotiations between the United States and Iran is a plank that prohibits any more attacks on Iran. That point reminds me of what John Kennedy agreed to in his peace agreement with the Soviet Union to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis, an agreement that ultimately led to his assassination at the hands of the U.S. national-security establishment.
As everyone knows, Cuba played a central role in the entire Cold War racket that U.S. officials foisted onto the American people after World War II. To justify the extra-constitutional conversion of the federal government from our founding system of a limited-government republic to a national-security state, U.S. officials convinced the American people that there was an international communist conspiracy to take over the world, especially the United States. The conspiracy, they said, was based in Moscow, Russia, but it also supposedly included Red China. The aim of the conspiracy, they said, was to take over the United States and turn it communist.
Thus, throughout the Cold War racket, U.S. officials continually exclaimed that the Reds were coming to get us. Moreover, they steadfastly maintained that the Reds were supposedly everywhere — in Latin America, the halls of Congress, the U.S. Army, the public (i.e., government) schools, Hollywood, and even the White House.
But it was all a racket. There was never any possibility that the Reds were going to invade, conquer, and take over the United States and turn it Red. In fact, the biggest socialist threat to America were the socialist programs that Republicans and Democrats ended up foisting onto Americans, such as Social Security, Medicare, welfare, Amtrak, public (i.e., government) schooling, the Interstate Highway system and other public-works boondoggles, and much more.
But there is something important to note about the Cold War racket: Many, if not most, of the personnel within the U.S. national-security establishment — that is, the Pentagon, the vast “defense” industry, the CIA, and the NSA — were absolutely convinced of the existence of this supposedly vast international communist conspiracy and the supposedly grave threat that it posed to the American people. In other words, for them it wasn’t a racket but instead a very real international conspiracy in which the Reds were coming to get us.
Thus, after the Cuban revolution in 1959 put the country under the control of Fidel Castro and what ultimately became a communist regime, the U.S. national-security establishment convinced itself that the United States could not survive with a communist outpost only 90 miles away from American shores. Therefore, U.S. national-security state officials concluded, it was absolutely necessary for the U.S. military and the CIA to do whatever was necessary to oust Cuba’s communist regime from power and replace it with another pro-U.S. dictator, just like the one who the Castro revolutionaries had ousted from power.
In other words, their mindset toward Cuba was exactly the same as the U.S. mindset toward Iran today — that America could not and would not survive without regime change.
Thus, when President Kennedy became president, among the first things that the CIA did was present him with the CIA’s covert plan to invade Cuba through the use of CIA-trained Cuban exiles.
At that point in time, Kennedy, like most everyone else, had bought into the Cold War racket. That is, he was pretty much a standard Cold Warrior. Thus, it didn’t take a lot of persuasion to convince Kennedy to approve the CIA’s plan. Like the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, Kennedy was convinced that communist Cuba posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security,” however that nebulous and meaningless term was defined.
Kennedy made it clear to the CIA that there would be no air support provided to the invaders should the invasion falter. The CIA, for its part, assured Kennedy that no such support would be needed because the invasion was sure to succeed without it.
There was one big problem, however, with the CIA’s assurance: It was a knowing, deliberate, and intentional lie. The CIA figured that once the invasion started to falter, Kennedy would have no choice but to send in the air support to avoid having the CIA’s invaders captured and killed by the Cuban communists.
But when the invasion began to falter, Kennedy stuck by his word and refused to provide the needed support. The invasion went down to defeat at the hands of the communists. Not surprisingly, the U.S national-security establishment was enraged. They considered Kennedy to be weak on communism, a coward, and an incompetent nincompoop.
For his part, Kennedy was also livid at the CIA. He knew that CIA officials had lied to him with the aim of manipulating him. He vowed to destroy the CIA.
It was the beginning of JFK’s war with the U.S. national-security state.
There is something important to note about all this: Cuba had never attacked the United States or engaged in any other initiation of force against the U.S. In fact, Cuba made it clear that it simply wanted to be left alone by the U.S.
But the U.S. national-security establishment could not leave Cuba alone (any more than today’s national-security establishment can leave Iran alone). It became obsessed with the communist regime. It convinced itself more than ever that a free America was not going to survive with a communist dagger pointed at America’s neck from only 90 miles away.
After the CIA’s disaster at the Bay of Pigs, the Pentagon began pressuring Kennedy to order a full-scale military attack on Cuba. Military officials even presented JFK with an incredible plan called Operation Northwoods, which entailed a false-flag operation that would provide Kennedy with the deceptive excuse to invade Cuba. To his everlasting credit, Kennedy rejected the pressure and the plan, which only enraged the Pentagon and the CIA even more.
When U.S. officials discovered the the Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, U.S. national-security officials were livid. If Kennedy had approved Operation Northwoods and had invaded Cuba, this wouldn’t have happened. But now they felt that Kennedy had no excuse for weakness. He had to attack Cuba in the defense of America.
Kennedy withstood the pressure being put on. He put himself in the shoes of his adversary and asked himself why the Soviets had done this. He came to the realization that they had done this to deter another Pentagon/CIA attack on Cuba or, in the event of such an attack, to defend the island from U.S. aggression.
Thus, to resolve the crisis, Kennedy struck a deal with the Soviets, one in which the U.S. would no longer invade or attack Cuba. In return, the Soviets agreed to withdraw their missiles.
Needless to say, the Pentagon and the CIA were shocked and more enraged than ever. The Joint Chiefs of Staff compared Kennedy to Neville Chamberlain and said that his resolution of the crisis was the greatest defeat in U.S. history. In one fell swoop, Kennedy had guaranteed the permanent existence of a communist outpost 90 miles away from American shores. There was no way, U.S. national-security state officials were convinced, that the United States was going to survive. In their eyes, a weak, cowardly, and incompetent president was effectively surrendering the United States to the Reds.
But it got worse. Because during the crisis, Kennedy achieved a “breakthrough” — one that enabled him to see that the entire Cold War was nothing more than a deadly and destructive racket, one that could even end mankind with an all-out nuclear war. At his Peace Speech at American University in June 1963, in what was clearly a surprise ambush in his war against the U.S. national-security establishment, he declared an end to the Cold War racket and vowed to move America away from the direction that the Pentagon and the CIA were determined to continue moving America.
Almost six months later, Kennedy, not surprisingly, was dead. In his war with the U.S national-security establishment, he had lost and they had won. Then came the continuation of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, coups, assassinations, wars of aggression, an empire of foreign and domestic military bases, foreign interventionism, sanctions, embargoes, blockades, the 9/11 retaliatory strikes, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq, the war on terrorism, NATO expansion, the war on Russia with Ukraine as proxy, the war on Venezuela, the military war on drugs, piracy, the war on Iran, the destruction of American liberty and privacy, and, of course the continued economic strangulation of the Cuban people.
Meanwhile, not surprisingly, no U.S. president since Kennedy, including Trump, has dared to buck the U.S. national-security establishment. Neither has the Congress nor the Supreme Court. Needless to say, the budget for the national-security establishment for this great big racket continues to grow.
