'Thirteen Days' 179
It's odd to watch the Cuban missile crisis movie "Thirteen Days," a little disorienting. Three decades after the events it portrays, the Cold War is over, but the world has thousands more nuclear missiles armed and ready to launch than it did then. Thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union and its deteriorating military, the rise of terrorism, and the growing availability of bomb-making materials, they are even more likely to be used.
But not in the kind of nose-to-nose stand off that paralyzed the world during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1962, it seemed for a few days that the U.S. and Russia would actually go to war over the deployment of long-range ballistic missiles in Cuba. Tough lines were drawn, and armies were fully mobilized. The world actually held its breath as the young Kennedy administration grappled with one of history's most intense political crises.
The stakes were breathtakingly high, especially against the backdrop of a ruthless, hard-line Soviet government, a bitter military stand-off in Berlin as well as Cuba, and an American military filled with hubris. Yet government, years before the full blown media explosion and the rise of sophisticated satellite tracking and the Net, operated in much more secrecy than it can today. So much of the political strategizing and maneuvering involved in the pre-digital world were unknown by the general public.
(I was a kid during the stand-off, and about all I remember was our entire block gathered around a black-and-white TV in Providence, R.I., to hear Kennedy's grainy, grim speech declaring a military blockade of Cuba. Everybody was stunned and totally silent. Parents rushed off after the speech to the market to stockpile food. I'd never seen adults scared witless like that. They believed nuclear war was imminent. The next morning, we practiced running to school bomb shelters all morning, as air raid drill sirens sounded for hours.)
"Thirteen Days," dramatizes some of that process, but like a slick history lesson, it still has the aura of an educational exercise. It's certainly interesting and it does, in fact, offer a compelling, behind-the-scenes feeling as John F. Kennedy (Bruce Greenwood), his brother Bobby (Steven Culp) and their trusted adviser Kenny O'Donnell (Kevin Costner) fend off the reliably warlike and conniving Pentagon brass. (When exactly did Hollywood come to hate generals so much? Can you remember a positive recent portrayal of one?) Costner, Greenwood and Culp are all workmanlike, but oddly flat and one-dimensional.
What's intriguing about the movie is our sense of witnessing the handling of a momentous crisis inside the White House. The menacingly interwoven shots of nuclear test explosions are gorgeous and horrifying, as they were in "Terminator 2" and other movies.
But several problems detract from our enjoyment. Some are fairly minor. The movie is too long by about a half-hour. You can see boom mikes at some theaters hovering at the top of the screen in many of the Oval Office sequences (perhaps a projectionist error at the small town New England theater where I saw the movie. Did anybody else see this?).
But then moviegoers should be aware that they aren't getting meticulous history. According to journalists who covered the crisis and historians who've studied it, the Kenneth O'Donnell character played by Costner (a Kennedy crony and special assistant to the president) wasn't nearly as pivotal in the real show-down as he was in this film.
This portrayal is especially generous to the Kennedy brothers, whose wit and sense of responsibility are credited with saving the world. The movie takes no notice of the series of subsequent revelations about both brothers that calls their nobility and even-handedness into question.
Despite that, it's interesting to see the relatively primitive spook technology that political leaders depended on -- high flying but vulnerable U2's and jet spy planes to gather data, slow-moving teletypes, and the low-tech, comparatively miniminalist mass media who weren't quite such a runaway, all encompassing hysteria-machine. They actually worried about national security concerns when they reported news.
And it's fascinating to be cinematically drawn into one of the great collisions between the horrific new technology of warfare -- weapons everybody in government seems to agree are too horrible to be used -- and to contrast that with an era when a terrorist cell or a Ukranian accident can trigger horrendous destruction -- a grim reality some scholars feel is inevitable, that negotiators and governments may be powerless to deal with, and that people seem to have grown almost comfortable with.
The Kennedys weren't. The film and history suggests that John Kennedy was determined to avoid a full-scale nuclear catastrophe, and mustered the confidence and courage to press for a political way out of a confrontation that was within hours of becoming a war. This is the kind of movie high school teachers will be showing history classes for years to come, even if it's hardly as dramatic as the near-Armageddon it seeks to portray.
Re:Why we aren't as worried about nuclear war (Score:1)
Re:What if... (yeah whatever) (Score:1)
Re:Easy enuf..and talk about Denial (Score:1)
Great piece of rhetoric, Jon.
It reminds me of Freud's response when his penis-envy theory was challenged by the psychologist Karen Horny: Horny did believe in penis-envy because she had penis-envy.
It was just further proof to Freud that his theory was correct.
(The sad thing about this, is that deep inside Katz probably has a warm glow about being compared--even if in a pejorative manner--to someone of Freud's stature.)
Re:Iconifying incompetence. (Score:1)
It may infuriate you to note, however, that the idea is played off as a stroke of brilliance on the Kennedys' part, while everyone else, including the Kenny character (i.e., John Q. Public), lacks the vision to see it as anything other than appeasement.
Re:Sorry to say it but... (Score:2)
Jon, when we will you and the deconstructionist leftists who have influenced your perspective ever begin to realize that the uninterrupted cynical attitude to all things American is just as dangerous as the My-God-is-my-country-flag-waving attitude taken by those on the far right?
I have not seem the film so I have no comment as to its accuracy. But, by and large, Western accounts of events over the past 50 years (and I suspect the Cuban missile crisis is included) are far, far more accurate than Russian accounts even to this day. It is only recently that the Russians are starting to sift through the historical record with a critical eye. To do so before was to be shot.
Have you met any Russians, Katz? Have you spoken with them about what their society, and how closed it was under communist rule? Have you read any books about life in Russia over the past 50 years?
To glibly imply that the accounts coming from Russia, a society until recently controlled by a small cadre of men, a society that had no free press, have been as valid as what has been published in the West is absurd. This attitude is as much an impediment to understanding the Cuban missile crisis as is believing one film from Hollywood has all the answers.
Oh, but I forgot. This really isn't about understanding history. This is about sitting in coffee shops, tossing out smug comments. This is about feeling superior to all those lemmings who believe what has been fed to them.
JonKatz knows his technology... (Score:3)
If you spent 8 figures on making a movie, would you really leave the content of each scene to the projectionist? That's like saying that because I'm viewing slashdot in 600x800, I'm not going to see your typos, but if I load it in 640x480, I'll be able to see them at the edge of the screen...
By the way, the nukes are much less likely to be used today. I work at a place [af.mil] that keeps track of those things, and you're as safe as you ever were from missiles. The idea that a terrorist group would (or even could!) go to the lengths required to purchase, calibrate, aim, and fire a nuclear missile, and not be noticed, is absurd. It's a lot simpler to attack assymetrically with conventinal bombs (a la USS Cole). Just because it's not on the news doesn't mean we're not keeping tabs on it. Sleep well, JonKatz--I may abhor your writing, but I'll risk my life every day for your right to keep spewing it out.
Today's generals (Score:3)
Today's graduates of the military academies appear to have taken Sherman's doctrine of "War is hell" to heart. I know a lot of retired military officers (I'm from the South, traditionally one of the heaviest sources of military personnel) and their doctrine appears to be "don't go to war, and if the politicians force you to go to war, bomb the enemy back to the stone age then send in overwhelming force. " The pre-Vietnam hubris appears to be gone. Vietnam apparently traumatized the military establishment to the point where they had to rethink many of their basic assumptions (such as the assumption that the U.S. could easily defeat any little tin-pot dictator with the use of a couple of divisions and a few B-52 strikes), much as the end of the Cold War has led to some soul searching on the part of today's up-and-coming officers as to what the proper role and composition of the military should be.
All in all, I've gotten good vibes off of the retired military officers that I've met. Yes, they're conservative. But they're conservative in the old fashioned sense of the word -- i.e., people who don't believe in hasty actions and who believe in leading a personally upright life (as vs. the hypocrisy of many so-called "conservatives" which is mere mean-spiritedness and spite). Many of them are now teachers, for example. While I'm not going to try to glorify the military, I will state that the folks in the military are as decent and love their country as much as the average American. If only the civilian leadership above them had those qualities.
(BTW, the notion of a military junta absolutely appalled the retired military I asked -- while they complained bitterly about the civilian leadership, they also pointed out that a military junta would inevitably destroy their beloved military as it turned into yet another corrupt banana republic army, just as bad as the politicians that were forced out of office, not to mention that oath they swore to uphold the Constitution...).
-E
Don't assume (Score:3)
I've known a lot of retired military. They think this way. They're not war mongers -- they know that friends and subordinants will die if the country goes to war. They are prepared to pay that price, but not lightly, and not on a whim, and they certainly aren't going to advise going to war when there's an alternative.
-E
I was there... (Score:1)
Things like whether the target was Moscow or Paris (kidding) and whether it was an air burst (destructive) or a ground burst (dirty).
Missile sites near Malstrom AFB Montana that were still being built by Boeing were comadeered by the air force and missiles and warheads were installed even though everything was not completed within the silo.
Few portable radios were available back in the early 60's and ALL were confiscated by superiors. The only things that we knew was what we were told by our superiors. So we knew little as to what was really happening.
Only that it was imperative we got as many silos into strategic alert (green) as possible in the shortest amount of time because eveyone of them counted.
Re:But who gets to teach history? And about genera (Score:1)
An old story about a general dying and going to heaven. As he was talking to St. Peter he exclaimed that there was Curt Lemay and how did he get to heaven. St. Peter replied... no, that's god... he just thinks he is Curt Lemay.
Lemay once walked out on a briefing by the military strategists after he ask them how did the Navy targets and the air Force targets interact. A few days later we were out at the missile silo's reprogramming the targets and re-aiming the missiles. It turned out that there was no interaction between these two departments and some targets were overly targeted by both and others were not targeted at all.
The air force was aghast that they had to co-ordinate with the navy, and the likewise for the navy.
I was there.
Re:all out nuclear way impossible (Score:1)
The designers then realized that conditional situations had to be enforced and so various switches were used that could only occur in a normal delivery condition of the warhead such as what you describe.
This was at first top security information, but then this information in great detail was given to the USSR so that they too could safely keep from blowing themselves up and thinking it was us that did it.
Re:Trailer time! (Score:1)
Bombs might be more likely, but not nuclear war (Score:2)
That's my take anyway. Someone want to scare me?
Re:Bombs might be more likely, but not nuclear war (Score:2)
Re:Next Sunday (Score:2)
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
Re:Don't follow this... (Score:1)
Given that a large terrorist organization or small "rouge state" (euphemism of the week) could obtain a nuclear weapon, how do they get it to the their favorite Great Satan?
The most effective method for delivering a nuclear weapon is an intercontinental ballistic missile. Nobody has an effective defense against a dozen nuclear weapons raining down at Mach 30. The next most effective is the shorter range missles, or medium range missle. This is similar to the weapons in Cuba. These are effective because they can be launched from a boat far out in international waters. Finally, a terrorist can simply carry a suitcase nuke into a sensitive location.
The first method of Nuke delivery, ICBMs, is quite expensive. It takes a huge amount of training, manpower and resourses. Quite frankly, an ICBM installation with an single missile would be rather more difficult to procure that the warhead itself. Also, nuclear launch sites are difficult to build without being visible by the US. And the US has not been hesitant in bombing terrorist camps, like the training camp in Afghanistan.
So, which rouge states can launch weapons at us? An ICBM from a rouge state means a space program. The only non-western country with even the possibility of a space program is China. So, I generally think that a NMD is useless, until China makes a use for one. They don't have an ICBM system yet, as far as I know, but my knowledge in this area is spotty, at best. We do not need a NMD of the scope Bush wants until we see some compelling evidence that China is in fact tooling up to be agressive toward the United States.
Long and medium range missiles are the next biggest treat. However, systems like Aegis (or whatever the USN calls their shipborne missle defense), Patriot and the 747 laser system are largely effective. Operated redundantly, these systems provide effective defense against known threats. However, they are not deployed widely enough to protect against all treats, like the freighter at sea.
There is a tradeoff, though. These medium and short range defenses protect against a known target, but they do not protect against an unknown, surprise assault. By it's very nature, an unknown terrorist assault would be a single missle, or maybe two. New York and Washington are both within range of a ship. So, the only way missiles could get through is if they are not all that dangerous.
And finally, there is the terrorist carrying the nuke. This nuke would almost certainly come from outside the country, and it would be quite the job to get it past customs. Even assuming it could be imported into the country, it would not be a huge nuke.
The threats today are more numerous, but they are less likely to happen and less dangerous. In the fifties and sixties, the threat was that thousands of huge warheads would be raining down over every large city in the United States. Many of these warheads would be Hydrogen bombs, thousands of times more powerful than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. The total time from launch to detonation would be about thirty minutes, and there was not a single defense.
Today we have few hydrogen bomb threats, and few organizations capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The ICBM assault is laughable: only the US and former soviets have them, and the US gives the soviets huge sums of money to prop them up. Why would the soviets bite the hand that feeds them? Medium range threats are not as dangerous, a handful of missles launched at the coasts is not armageddon. And finally, the low tech "suitcase" delivery is the lowest grade nuclear threat.
I don't see how you can claim that the first scenario--the US and Russia completely decimated with the rest of the world in a nuclear winter--is better than the second--a handful of low grade weapons likely to be stopped before they are launced. Even given this ridiculous argument, you don't even try to back it up. How did you arive at this conclusion?
And further, are you really blindly accepting Powell and Bush's statements at face value? Make no mistake, Powell is a politician, and he's a better one than Bush. Colin Powell would not say the a missile launch against the US is the greatest threat because it's true, but because it serves his interest. (BTW I think the greatest threat is a biological weapon). While I disagree with you, I think you're pompous and condescending and I share almost no interest in you, I have rarely found you to be uninformed. If this is really you, I may have to change my mind.
Re:What if... (Score:2)
GWB probably would rely a lot on his military advisors - that's what (in theory) experts are there for. His job is to distill that knowledge and make the final decisions based on what he is informed.
I'd much rather have someone who listens to advisors than someone who will start dropping bombs based on a hair-trigger reaction to an opinion poll somewhere or to divert attention from a sex scandal.
...and while he probably wouldn't have had the sex scandal problem, Gore lived and died (and lost an election) by the opinion polls. Just watch the three presidential debates for proof of that.
(not saying Bush will be any good - I don't know - but I don't see why anyone should sell him short before he proves himself a good or bad president)
- Jeff A. Campbell
Re:Don't follow this... (Score:3)
Emphasis mine. Back when the USSR and the US shared all the weapons, each player had a large arsenal at their disposal.
Now that we have two-bit dictators with missles, it would seem quite likely that we'd have a lot more. Due to our greater finances, resources, and even land mass 'mutually assured destruction' is not so mutual. We might lose New York, but they'd lose most of their country.
Yeah, it's still something to worry about. But as another poster said, biological weapons are probably far more cost effective and harder to justify return strikes against.
I'm not sure I agree with your premise that things are necessarily riskier now - we may be more likely to be attacked, but the extent of the attack will likely be far less...
- Jeff A. Campbell
Re:I don't understand this pacifist bleating (Score:3)
The fashionable stereotype this year is that conservatives sell out to EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS, most definitely not EVIL CHILD MURDERING DEFENSE CONTRACTORS. It's best to stick with the former this year - as popularized by Ralph Nader and Al Gore - as the latter is so 80's it's not even funny.
Please do keep your stereotypes in sync with your colleagues, though. It's hard to further an agenda when your message is fragmented.
...
BTW: Rumor is that next year they'll be pawns of either BIG TOBACCO or THE LOGGING INDUSTRY. I can hardly wait!
- Jeff A. Campbell
NMD deserves to die (Score:1)
And why not? Simple. It won't live up to its promises. No matter how many of your tax dollars go towards it.
NMD is the direct descendent of SDI, which was the paranoid brainchild of Edward Teller. Teller may be a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (even though he may have used someone else's work to get said honor), but the guy uses fear and secrecy to the extreme. He preys upon the fears of Americans to justify budgets, and uses secrecy to justify hare-brained schemes. (In fact, he rarely submits his "findings" to peer review, which brings his qualifications as a competent scientist in question.)
NMD, if I remember correctly, is now being sheltered by a Teller protege, Dr. Lowell Wood. (I may have the name wrong, sorry.) This guy at least is showing some more political finesse than the hyperbolic Teller, since he's trying to sell NMD (and its "smart pebbles" concept) much like NASA was trying to sell "faster, better, cheaper" probes: getting more for less. (Compare and contrast with the $8 billion flushed down the toilet with SDI in the midst of a Cold War frenzy.) But, Teller & his acolytes still prefer using a veil of secrecy in the name of national security to justify their claims, as opposed to allowing their ideas to stand on their own merit in a public (or at least not so classified) forum, the way real scientists do.
I'll conclude by recommending a great book on the subject of hoodwinking the public with faulty science: "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud" by Dr. Robert Park. Read about it here [powells.com].
(If you're real nice, and CmdrTaco wouldn't mind, I'll submit a review of it. Ask me or I'll forget about it.)
.sig a .sog, .sig out loud, .sig out .strog"
".sig,
A "good" movie general? That's easy. (Score:2)
If Truman.. (Score:1)
we'd all be gone, I suspect. I'd have to think about Reagan. Clinton would definitely negotiate..
Wise post... (Score:2)
But who gets to teach history? And about generals? (Score:2)
The winners of course. "RFK"s book was roundly criticized for failing to deal with Russian and Cuban perspectives accurately..I think this movie is tepid enuf that it will get into civics classes.
I agree about the portrayal of generals, tho. When did Hollywood come to hate them so? And does anybody know if they are that bad..
Easy enuf..and talk about Denial (Score:2)
According to the Washington Post, there are more than 2,000 missiles aimed at the Soviet Union today, many times more than thirty years ago. And an equivalent amount aimed back. You may notice from the recent Russian sub acccident that things are not good for the Russian military now. So almost all military and political experts feel that that reality..plus of course terrorism, the Middle East, etc., make it more likely. More bombs, more people eager to use them, poorer maintenance.
Your message (and your faux amusement) is a great example of denial in action.
IMHO, not Strangelove at all (Score:2)
I sure wouldn't compare this move to Strangelove in anyway, apart from shot pretty nuke shots..This movie is without irony or bite at all...Yes, the shots were pretty great..
I'd nominate Berlin (Score:2)
The overrunning of the Berlin Wall was the end of the Us/Soviet pissing match, preceded by the detente engineered by Reagan, of all people, with Gorbachev. There were enormous tensions for years after Cuba, and raging surrogate wars, from Vietnam to Afghanistan to El Salvador..I don't th ink it was nearly the end. I think when those kids came thundering over the wall looking for m usic videos, that would be my nomination.
Hello? Hardly the lst.. (Score:2)
I'm not nearly the lst to review it..it's been reviewed all over the place..and everybody is welcome to post their own reviews here along with mine..er..that's sort of the point.if I were going to be the lst I'd have done it already..we wanted to wait until enuf people had seen it to talk about it..
No... (Score:2)
Prov? (Score:2)
I'd think Providence is more snow-savvy than that..
A classic illusion...Why the missile shield? (Score:2)
According to the Brookings Instituion, and stories in the Washington Post (series in the NYTimes after the Russian sub incident) and many books on military policy (I'm not home, and I don't have URL's..easy nuff to get tho), there are now more than 2,000 U.S missiles aimed at the Soviet Union, and as many aimed back. But the soviet military is deterioriating (as the Russian sub episode and others have revealed) and many of their nuclear warheads have remained behind in breakaway or disconnected Republics like the Ukraine..tons of stories about the money the U.S. is spending to try and disarm them and get them out.
Plus there were not well financed terrorist networks then..the fact that some of you have no idea that this is so is the most interesting thing to me about the movie. It doesn't seem to be an issue, though in fairness, it's the reason George W. Bush and Colin Powell are arguing for a new multi-gazillion dollar missile shield.
Couple of Russians. (Score:2)
Don't follow this... (Score:2)
Next Sunday (Score:2)
We decided to wait a week to review Antitrust so that the maximum no of people could see it and talk about it. Lots of people can join in that way. So next Sunday. Come on by.
Campaign pledge. (Score:2)
Neat memory (Score:2)
I've also gotten some e-mail from people in the South who remember parents brothers, cousins and uncles vanishing and heading for bases. Roads were clogged. In fact, a NWTimes reporter got onto the story partially because towns were emptying out in N carolina and Georgia.
Cept for O'Donnel role and Soviet thinking (Score:3)
Most of the interviews I 've read say O'Donnell's role in the actual crisis was much less pivotal than portrayed in the movie. And as another poster has pointed out, we have no real clues as to what Soviet or Cuban thinking or feeling was from this movie. Also some military people have said the portrayal of the generals was a bit heavy-handed..
Didn't know? (Score:3)
Re:This isn't the only time generals are the antag (Score:2)
Hollywood and Generals... (Score:1)
Re:Why we aren't as worried about nuclear war (Score:4)
Getting the fissile material and explosive triggers are one thing, but ASSEMBLING a nuclear bomb is quite something else--it requires an extremely high level of precision machining that very few can afford.
That's why at most a terrorist nuclear device would have a yield of at most 4-5 kT. Mind you, a 4-5 kT device detonated in front of the New York Stock Exchange will still kill many thousands of people.
Previews @ colleges (Score:1)
Does anyone have any info on the system used to send movie previews to colleges via satellite? Encryption? Any way to hijack the signals?
It reminds Katz?!?! (Score:2)
All I want to know is: How can Katz even say this with a straight face? He is king of hysteria and hype...
Well said, moderate this up! (Score:2)
Re:how a terrorist could deliver a nuke (Score:2)
Re:I wasn't around then either (Score:1)
Sorry, but I can't agree with this. I'm only 20, but everybody I've talked to who was around at the time of the missile crisis fully realized how close everybody had come to going up in pink smoke. Seeing a movie about it wouldn't have made this any more clear. Also, a successful peace-and-love movement, unless matched by a similar successful movement in the Soviet Union (and you can guess how likely that would have been at the time), would simply have resulted in my first language being Russian instead of English. Making peace and putting down the guns can not be a one-sided thing, and it would have been at that point.
Re:Antitrust (Score:1)
i don't think there were a lot of geeks in the theatre i was in last night, b/c a lot of ppl missed out of a ton of "jokes/coinsedenses(sp)" of the movie and microsoft.
i especially liked "bill who?".
What if... (Score:1)
What would the outcome have been if George W. Bush had been President during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Al Gore?
Ronald Reagan?
Harry Truman?
Re:I don't understand this pacifist bleating (Score:2)
What if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
Ronald Reagan?
Would we be here today?
IMHO, rationalism only won out because you had a rational president. I doubt any other President of the last 50 years would have been as rational.
Yep (Score:2)
I was shocked my first winter in MA: 6" of snow overnight and the schools were closed. Don't know if you've ever been around that part of the country, Jon, but it's a LOT of small towns. Most just don't have the budget to react right away to snow storms to get the ploughs out..
I don't know about Providence, though. The stockpiling does seem a little bizarre.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
Boom Mikes (Score:1)
a) The boom mike operator on those shots should have a hard time finding another job
b) They could've dropped the $ and had the boom mikes removed digitally. The shots weren't complex--at best there was a slow pan and the mikes weren't visible for much more than
Re:Prov? (Yes, it's true) (Score:1)
Plus, every single fscking person on the road has forgotten how to drive in snow (even sanded/salted snow) before each and every snowstorm. Dicks.
This will sound like a troll, but I just came home from a fairly exciting ride to the Prov. post office. 9 miles, every single fucking mile had a dork playing games. (Like, zip around me at 70+, and jerk in front of me as we're approaching an offramp. Dicks)
Ohhhh.... What a great place to live. Not.
-lf
Re:Why we aren't as worried about nuclear war (Score:1)
Re:Why we aren't as worried about nuclear war (Score:2)
Re:What if... (Score:1)
Throw in the fact that Bush's father stood up to Saddam and it becomes more obvious the whole thing just would not have happened.
Clinton would have not made an issue of missiles in Cuba. Either the KGB would have bought Clinton off with previous campaign contributions a la the Chinese (Year of the Rat [amazon.com]) or Castro would have threatened a refugee crisis thus causing Clinton to cave in a la Elian.
Maintain a questioning attitude
all out nuclear way impossible (Score:1)
Re:If Truman.. (Score:1)
----
Re:Easy enuf..and talk about Denial (Score:1)
And post hoc ergo propter hoc. The reason the reds were so pissed at us was because of the Crisis. As a few posters have already pointed out, we were doing the same thing to the USSR as we had missiles in Turkey, just as backdoor to the USSR as Cuba is to Florida.
----
Political Irony (Score:1)
----
Re:Boom Mikes (Score:2)
Sad thing was...I saw garbage light below the screen, so I know that the projectionist could have moved the movie up and helped remove most of the boom mike sightings...
Oh well...it wasn't like the movie was really taking me away into it's magical land.
By the way... I got to see the "premiere" showing of Lord of the Rings trailer during this movie (of course, thank to the internet, we could see some of those over a year ago...) Pretty cool. Hope it's a hit. We need some success in the fantasy genre..and obviously the D&D movie isn't doing it for us :)
Rader
Re:Bombs might be more likely, but not nuclear war (Score:1)
---
ANext week anti-trust (Score:1)
LOTR Trailer (Score:1)
(slightly offtopic)
The LOTR trailer looked really sweet. It looks like they're spending a hell of a lot of money on that thing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Historical Errors in Thirteen Days (Score:1)
Re:High School Teachers? (Score:1)
And it does NOT have to be coherent with the actual fact either.
Re:But who gets to teach history? And about genera (Score:2)
I agree with the person who said the movie was 30 minutes too long. I thought it was a really good movie, but, it is hard to hold the audience in suspense for over 2 hours.
I too think it would be interesting to hear about this story from the Soviet Union's perspective, but the chances of that happening anytime soon are nil. This movie was clearly one sided, and they didn't claim that it wasn't.
Re:I don't understand this pacifist bleating (Score:2)
Dumb luck. Not necessarily my view, but certainly one way to look at it.
High School Teachers? (Score:5)
The movie acts like its the Kennedy brothers against a vast conspiracy of generals who want world destruction, when it wasn't that at all. Additionally, we never get to see or hear about some of the most important decisions of the crisis, such as Kruschev's two letters to Kennedy and the meetings of the OAS when they decide to back the US. Finally, the UN scenes are a circus, with everyone cheering on Stevenson as he yells at the Russian ambassador.
All in all, an interesting movie with some nice looks at the U2 pilots etc., but not worthwhile for serious history buffs.
Re:What if... (Score:2)
Uhh, you do realize that distinction is held by FDR or Truman--right? I mean there is a slight difference between the brushfire wars Clinton has prosecuted and the largest armed conflict in human history.
Accents (Score:1)
Now, given this information, it's quite a possibility that that was the accent that the Kennedy's had. I don't know, however, since I'm not old enough to have heard either of the Kennedy's speak, and I've only heard the occassional recording of JFK.
Of course, using Occam's Razor, it's just actor incompetence... but it would certainly be interesting to see that.
Speaking of accents, I get the feeling that we're never going to see a President of the United States from the northeast again, especially given the demographics, census, and population trends.
yours,
Re:Bombs might be more likely, but not nuclear war (Score:1)
You can't effectively retalliate if you can't even identify, let alone find, your attacker. It also makes it harder to assess the magnitude of the potential threat. It may not mean the End of the World, but it's great for blackmail. And what if two subs were subverted... and then Moscow and D.C. both were hit? The responses might be... interesting.
Re:Think of the threats, though... (Score:1)
The terrorist scenario is a good motivation for boosting the assets of the CIA and FBI for their investigative roles; the primary way of stopping such operations is infiltration and espionage beforehand since you can't possibly search all transport methods. You can, however, take advantage of the fact that people talk, and can also be pressured. Especially with the help of our allies; I have no doubt that the Mossad, for instance, would try very hard if they learned that, say, Hezbollah obtained a nuclear warhead -- and they've been less politically hamstrung than our own agencies.
Re:A classic illusion...Why the missile shield? (Score:1)
Terrorists could use a missile, true. But -- on what vehicle? A fixed silo can be guarded rather heavily, and in turn is a fixed target... but a submarine is designed to be able to operate rather stealthily independently for long periods at a time. And a submarine could perhaps get fairly close to a US (or Israeli, or Russian, or British) coast, which should probably result in a faster transit time to target and a smaller -- perhaps a completely impractical -- window for interception. So there's a case to be made that it's far more efficient to focus on infiltration and prevention, in the case of subversion.
The NMD case seems stronger against the possibility of nations that aren't easily deterred. For instance, Iraqi agents were, if memory serves, at one time arrested while plotting to assassinate former President Bush. Obviously, such a (perhaps useless; he was, after all, _former_) reckless act would lead to reprisals... but apparently, he didn't care. He also shows no particular regard for his civillian population, or in fact for most of his military. So somebody like him might indeed be tempted to launch, if he had one, regardless of US response. And for such a scenario NMD makes sense.
Re:Saw it yesterday... (Score:2)
GRU[*] Col. Oleg Penkovsky, an asset run by both the British and the Americans, passed along such valuable documents as the missile site construction plans early on, allowing them to figure out what exactly was being built on Cuba. In 1962, he was arrested by the KGB, and presumably interrogated and executed...
Source -- Andrew, Christopher. "The Sword and the Shield", Basic Books, 1999.
[*] Soviet military intelligence, which made him a VERY useful asset until he was caught.
You're a journalist. Use sources. (Score:1)
According to whom?
Re:No... (Score:1)
And there is a difference between more nukes and the liklihood of them being used. That period was the closest this country has come to getting into a nuclear exchange, much more than what's going on now. It was a standoff. We haven't had a situation like that since.
Re:No... (Score:1)
Re:Trailer time! (Score:2)
"Due to the extremely high interest in the 'Lord of the Rings' trailer, we regret to inform you that individuals who purchase tickets to 'Thirteen Days' only to see the trailer will NOT receive a refund if they choose not to stay for the remainder of the movie."
And I didn't think it was that good of a trailer, anyway. I think hyping 3 movies 1, 2, and 3 years in advance (respectively) is a setup for disappointment.
nlh
Re:JonKatz knows his technology... (Score:2)
Actually, it can be. Many 1.85:1 aspect ratio movies use what's called a "soft-matte" to achieve their framing. The movie is shot in wide-open 1.33:1 aspect ratio, and then printed that way. It is then up to the theater to mask it to 1.85:1. But if they take that 1.85:1 area from the wrong part of the frame, they may end up with stuff on the screen that shouldn't be there, such as boom mikes.
There has been a bit of discussion about this on rec.arts.movies.tech. Go there and look for the thread "'Thirteen Days' needs a hard matte!".
Naturally, the solution is that filmmakers shouldn't be so dependent on theaters to do their framing for them. I'm frankly surprised that this happened. I would have thought that in this day and age of 16-year-old untrained "projectionists" running movie projectors, people would know better.
The "soft-matte" process can work if, as you describe, the cinematographer were to take care to keep microphones out of the entire negative area, and not just the "intended" area. Beats me why they didn't do that on this movie. If they really needed the microphones that close for some reason, then they should have used a hard-matte for the release prints.
Saw it yesterday... (Score:3)
Also, I'll point you to Corona [corona.bc.ca] with a bit that I think was a mistake to be left out. Though Anderson was mentioned, and it showed his plane being shot down (along with a bit at near the end about it), a dedication would have been appropriate:
"I am concerned because so little attention has been given to the 'only casualty' of the Cuban Missile Crisis....Maj. Rudolf Anderson, Jr....the U-2 pilot who was brought down by a Soviet SAM.
"The missile ripped through the cabin of the U-2....tearing into the spacesuit...and right arm of Maj. Anderson.
"At that altitude...there was an immediate decompression...do you know what happens to a balloon at high altitude...as his blood began to boil...I need not go on with the gory details...I believe that you get the 'picture' (no pun intended!)
"Maj.(Rudy) Anderson made the 2nd U-2 flight.... the 15th of Oct 1962...was responsible, according to his awards and citations per Gen LeMay for locating the SS-5 missile site, most advanced Soviet missiles.
"Rudy sacrificed his life for the 80,000,000 Americans as refered to in the film...as he was shot down on Sat morning, Oct 27, 1962.
"BOTTOM LINE: I would think that this film would be dedicated to our only casualty who gave his life that ALL of us would see 'another Saturday' according to Robert McNamara....Sect of Defence...
"I have been researching Rudy Anderson for over 10 years and file of research on this subject and his role in the CMC...if anyone is interested.
"Most importantly..I believe that we all owe a debt of gratitude to Maj. Anderson...perhaps this is our opportunity to repay this debt...Dedicate the film to Maj. Anderson.
"I am not interested in any monetary gain...only a means of acknowledgeing what this pilot did for all of us!
"I wonder how this story would have really ended if not for Rudy Anderson...would we all be speaking 'Russian' now?
"You wanted a 'scoop' I can only assume that you got more than you bargained for...."
Here's a cool link I found today. (Score:2)
I was doing research for someone on where I work [whquestion.com], and trying to find out exactly how old Castro is now (75). Anyway, I came across this [upenn.edu] in my epic trek through google.
Enjoy.
Rami
--
Re:Don't follow this... (Score:3)
During the 60's the standard nuke was 10-20MT. That is a seriously huge bomb. One bomb will level metropolitan New York. And during the 60's the standard targeting was cities and industrial areas. Targeting precision was poor but when one bomb is that big it matters less. The threat of war is the threat of total civil destruction.
Current ICBM nukes are in the 50-300kT range. That is roughly 1% the size. Current targeting is specific military and industrial sites, and the current targeting has very high precision. This is one reason why the warhead count is so much higher. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs flattened a roughly 1km radius, and did serious damage for about 5km radius. Current nukes are only a little bit larger.
Current tactical nukes are in the 1-100kT range. These are the ones that are really numerous. They are seriously destructive, but not an end to civilization. Think in terms of having the impact of a major tornado. We survive dozens of those each year. They cause widespread destruction, loss of life, and we recover from it.
The threat of an attack that causes huge damage is much higher than it was before. The threat of an attack that threatens the end of civilization is much lower.
The reason for concern and one motivation for missile defense is that this much lower level of destruction makes blackmail threats much more credible. Few doubt that Saddam Hussein would be willing to use a tactical nuke. The North Koreans have already made veiled threats about their willingness. The policy makers have to consider the potential of a secret threat to flatten downtown SF if some treay deal is not made.
Re:What if... (Score:2)
Al Gore : I think we have a 76% chance of convincing the Russians there is a 23% probability of destroying the world if we go to war over this. And that has about 62% chance of happening.
Ronald Reagan : We will vanquish the evil empire. The bombs will start dropping immediately.
Please quantify (Score:3)
How do you quantify "much more likely"?
Such rhetoric is typical of a piece not well researched, but written by ear instead.
I am always amused by Katz's pieces : they resemble mega-trolls.
No wonder the
Iconifying incompetence. (Score:3)
Krushchev was in an odd position at the time; he'd been the one to expose the crimes of Stalin at the 20th Party Congress (it wasn't done out of a sense of humanity or decency, since Krushchev didn't do anything dramatic like, say, disbanding the KGB; it was more of a tactical maneuver designed to smash the last vestiges of 'Father Joe'-worship within the Party apparat, removing Stalin as the measuring-stick against which Krushchev would be compared by the nomenklatura), and, like Gorbachev, realized that something had to be done in order to provide for economic expansion of the USSR. Also like Gorbachev, he was still a committed socialist - he wanted to find some way of 'humanizing' socialism without allowing the populace the complete freedom of choice which is the growth-engine of free-market societies.
Indeed, we could've had glasnost and perestroika - with the inevitable crumbling of the apparatus of repression, since once people have tasted a little freedom, their hunger for it becomes insatiable - if not for the hollow blustering of the Kennedys. You must remember, JFK was a conservative Democrat who ran to the right of Richard Nixon on national-security issues and the illusory 'missile gap'. Someone with maturity and a nuanced view of the world (someone like Richard Nixon, perhaps, before the stealing of the 1960 election embittered him to the point of paranoia) might've understood this, and given Krushchev the breathing-room he needed to try and implement some kind of reform.
Instead, JFK's apocalyptic rhetoric, coupled with his inner callowness, which Krushshev had sensed, a) forced Krushchev to play the bully in order to maintain his precarious grip on power, and b) by doing so, made it impossible for Krushchev to do anything regarded as 'soft' by the Politburo and the Central Committee.
Being tough, and meaning it, is a legitimate tactic; Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan used it to great effect. Acting tough, but not meaning it, marks one as being unserious, an unworthy adversary who will crumble when push comes to shove. Thus was JFK.
Finally, you need to remember something else not hinted at in the movie - in exchange for removing the IRBMs from Cuba, the US secretly agreed to remove IRBMs pointed at the USSR from Turkey. When all was said and done, Krushchev had achieved a major geopolitical gain for the USSR by playing the game of nuclear brinksmanship during those 13 days in October.
Re:If Truman.. (Score:2)
Ronald Reagan might have triggered a war; not only was he pretty much unconnected from reality, he surrounded himself with advisors who ranged from relatively competent to dangerously unbalanced. Bush's advisors seem to be a little better, but it would still be a gamble.
Clinton probably could have negotiated quite effectively for their removal, though we might have lost more than in them than the missiles in Turkey, though probably not much more, he's pretty shrewd.
--
Powerful movie, but the best part came later (Score:3)
He proceeded to tell me his account of the entire thing from his perspective: from the day they loaded up his entire division and shipped them to Georgia (they got to listen to JFK and LBJ speak to them), to when they were sent to Florida and told to set up camp for 2 days at a Horseracing Track, to when they were all loaded up into large beach invasion type boats to set sail. He said they were floating out there for a day or 2 (out of sight from Florida, even) and being given maps and invasion plans of their sections of beaches when they got the word that they were dismantling the missles.
Well, that happened 5 years before my parents got married, and I wasn't born until '76...
So maybe Costner's character wasn't as powerful as the movie portrayed... I'm just glad cooler heads prevailed in that one.
Re:I don't understand this pacifist bleating (Score:2)
What if George W. Bush had been president during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Ronald Reagan?
I don't know about GWB, but if Reagan had been President, they wouldn't have tried it in the first place, because he was perceived by the Soviets as a strong leader. We had the problem precisely because Kennedy was a weak leader.
Fortunately, he managed to stumble his way through it, but it was a clear case of getting lucky.
--
Sorry to say it but... (Score:4)
Re:Easy enuf..and talk about Denial (Score:2)
Re:Easy enuf..and talk about Denial (Score:2)
Hello? China first detonated a nuclear weapon in 1964. [google.com]
Re:Why we aren't as worried about nuclear war (Score:4)
Maybe the sword will fall, maybe it won't. In the meantime, there's life to be lived.
This isn't the only time generals are the antag... (Score:2)
I don't think we should pay much attention to this silliness. Hollywood movie writers just aren't creative/intelligent enough to come up with anymore more original. Now, I'm not a republicrat and I'm as anti-war as the next guy, but it's getting incredibly old. *shrug*
I wasn't around then either (Score:2)
The Cuban missile crisis seems to me like the beginning of the end of the great U.S./U.S.S.R. pissing contest. There weren't any obvious changes reflected in our (U.S.) culture, but the aftermath of a trauma such as impending armaggedon definitely brews quietly in the subconscious mind.
We had The Day After when I was about ten years old. That movie educated an entire American generation in the folly of full-scale nuclear war. Does one's form of government (communism vs. pseudo-democratic) really matter so much that all of life must come to an end, either in a blinding flash or a slow poisoning? Had Thirteen Days been release while still timely, the spontaneous peace-and-love revolution of the late 60's probably would have come sooner and not been crushable by The Man.
I could be wrong, but I think we are still experiencing the slow changes from those thirteen days where our leaders were confronted for the first time with the ugly fruits of the anti-Communist zealots who had planted the seeds not a generation before.
I'd rather be a unix freak than a freaky eunuch
Atomic Clock (Score:2)
Re:JonKatz knows his technology... (Score:2)
I hate Jon Katz as much as the next guy, but please don't post unless you know you are right (and in this case I, as well as any other film buff, knows you are dead wrong), and also moderators: please don't mod him up unless you know he is right.
Re:Couple of Russians. (Score:2)
Gromyko didn't lied. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I know that the conversation was something like this - "You have offensive weapons in Cuba? Gromyko - No".
To understand why it wasn't the lie, one should know the context. When surrounding SU with nukes in Canada, Alaska Japan, Turkey and Europe, Americans politician were talking about "shield" against evil SU. Some of then were at approximately the same distance as Cuba from Florida. US called these nukes defensive weapon against SU. Americans of cause were expecting that Russian should call theirs nukes offensive weapons, they are bad guy after all.
A Russian Guy.
Re:Didn't know? (Score:2)
On Oct 26 1962, one of the MRBM sites in Cuba was spotted with - possibly - Frog 7 rockets. The Frog series could either have a conventional or nuclear payload - and they weren't quite sure whether it was a Frog launcher or a SAM launcher or whatever...
But my main information on this comes from an interview with Robert McNamara, where he stated quite forcefully that they didn't know the Russians had deployed Tactical nukes. This
wasinterview shown a couple of weeks ago on the History Channel when they did a marathon on
the crisis.
Another source for you is at:
http://www.hfni.gsehd.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/CWIHP/B
Which points out that our knowledge of what
the Soviets had, and had authority to use was
at best sketchy...
Historical Errors in Thirteen Days (Score:3)