Bobby Kennedy, the Ukraine and Cuba
(And I Have Been in Love with Night Ever Since You Died)
“And I Have Been in Love with Night Ever Since You Died”
Written and recited by David Gottfried
Recently, the specter of nuclear war has loomed large. Those forces allied with Ukraine have pressed the United States to enforce a no-fly zone over Ukraine even though this could force Russians and Americans to clash, engendering World War Three and quite possibly, or probably, nuclear Armageddon.
Accordingly, I am here to remind you of one of the best Statesman America ever had, Robert Kennedy. He saved this planet from thermonuclear annihilation. (I’ll explain how in a moment.) And I am giving you my recitation of a poem I wrote for him a long time ago. My poem for Bobby is entitled, “And I have ever been in Love with Night Ever Since You Died.”
Kennedy’s record, in the beginning, was not so hot. He seemed in many ways to be Joe Kennedy’s boy, and Joe Kennedy was in many ways a reactionary, an apologist for Hitler and a good friend of that ranting, raving anticommunist cretin, Joe Mc Carthy; indeed, one of Bobby Kennedy’s first jobs was a job working for Joe Mc Carthy. (Since the Mc Carthy era transpired almost 70 years old, you may doubt the validity of my condemnation of Mc Carthy, deeming it just standard, knee-jerk liberalism. Ergo, it’s worthwhile to recall some of what Mc Carthy did: One of his lieutenants was Roy Cohen. When Roy Cohen’s boy friend was drafted into the army, Cohen was mad at the army so Mc Carthy’ s committee conducted investigations designed to root-out communist infiltration into the upper echelons of the army. Incidentally, Roy Cohen and Bobby Kennedy hated each other; I think Roy Cohen hit on Bobby.)
After Bobby stopped working for Joe Mc Carthy, Bobby began his long trek to the Left. By the late 60’s, he was one of the most progressive politicians in America. In 1967, he indicated that he would be willing to give blood to the Viet Cong -- and the American military was fighting the Viet Cong. On either Face the Nation or Meet the Press, he said, in November 1967, that the American military was killing about 1000 innocent civilians in Vietnam per week. (The actual number was probably much greater, but it was unheard of for a man in the political establishment to admit to so much wrongful killing by Americans) Around the time he announced his candidacy for President, he celebrated campus upheavals against the war in Vietnam. When he ascended the cruciform altar in Los Angeles, he was practically radical.
But his bravest and most monumental deed was averting World War Three. It was October 1962. US spy planes received incontrovertible evidence that the Soviet Union had been installing nuclear missiles in Cuba.
At the outset, the whole of the US military, and many or most members of JFK’s cabinet who were not in the military, were in favor of launching an airstrike to destroy those missile installations. The U.S. military assumed that most of the missiles, or all of the missiles, were not yet operational. Bobby Kennedy is the man who had JFK’s ear. And Bobby said no to a first strike attack on Cuba. Because of Bobby, the US and the Soviet Union consummated a deal to avoid nuclear war.
Around the time that I wrote the poem that appears with this essay, the New York Times published amazing revelations about the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
An examination of Soviet archives, and statements from Nikita Khrushchev’s son, revealed that at the time Kennedy publicly announced that we had discovered nuclear missile sites in Cuba, many or most of the sites were fully operational and ready to pour radioactive death over the United States.
Therefore , if Bobby Kennedy’s advice had not been heeded and we had bombed Cuba, we would have suffered apocalyptical consequences if we had failed to destroy 100 percent of the operational sites in Cuba in a first strike. If just one of the operational missile sites had remained intact, it would have unloaded its nuclear enhanced missiles on the mainland United States.
If you love your life, thank G-d for giving us Bobby Kennedy.