A Real Man Talks to an Admiral

In the wake of Barack Obama's abject surrender to the National Security State (as Tom Englehardt writes, we should now refer to him as the "Commanded-in-Chief"), a dialogue from the past between a President in a similar fix and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff may show how much of a surrender this was.

As the April 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco unfolded:

KENNEDY: I don't want the United States involved in this.

ADMIRAL ARLEIGH BURKE: Hell, Mr. President, we are involved. Can we send in a few Navy jets?

KENNEDY: No, because they could be identified as United States planes.

BURKE: We can paint out their numbers.

KENNEDY: No.

BURKE: Can we get something in there? Anything?

KENNEDY: No.

BURKE: If you let me have two destroyers, we'll give gunfire support and we can hold the beachhead with two ships forever.

KENNEDY: No.

BURKE: One destroyer, Mr. President?

KENNEDY: No.

No.