January 2011

One of the most common American proverbs, “Never swap horses in midstream,” is indelibly associated with Abraham Lincoln. The observation is a distillation of more extended remarks that Lincoln made on June 9, 1864, to a delegation from the National Union League who had come to the White House to congratulate him on his nomination for a second term as President. What Lincoln said was: “I do not allow myself to suppose that either the convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am either the greatest or best man in America, but rather they have concluded that it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not make a botch of it in trying to swap.”

Harry Truman and the Price of Victory Why Do We Say That? “An Hour Of Pretty Music” Editors’ Bookshelf Rock City Revival On Exhibit Mafia Souvenirs Screenings War Movies

Kevin Baker’s “In the News” column (”Violent City,” February/March 2003) refers to “incompetent ‘political generals’ drawn from the ranks of those same Protestant Republicans.” The implication is that Democrats and the Irish didn’t produce such men. On the contrary, officers who made their mark in the party of Jackson included Benjamin F. Butler —one of the most disappointing of the Union’s political generals— as well as John A. Logan and John A. McClernand. As for Ireland’s sons, Baker could have mentioned Gen. Thomas F. Meagher, who was as Irish as anyone who ever wore a shamrock.

Is it not astonishing that Sergei Khrushchev would quote his father telling Andrei Gromyko, even as the endgame in the Cuban Missile Crisis was unfolding, “We have no right to take risks“? Could those words really have emanated from a leadership that in full recognition of its vast overall inferiority in nuclear capabilities had nonetheless quietly delegated to military commanders in the field the discretion to initiate first use of such weapons in the form of nuclear torpedoes and tactical missiles?

May I also offer a minor technical correction? The photograph on page 73 identified as an F-8U spy plane was no such thing. Although the venerable F8 series did include reconnaissance variants, the particular aircraft you’ve pictured isn’t one of them. Rather, it is an F8U-3, a quite distinctive experimental design limited to a handful of prototypes. Most assuredly, it never flew over Cuba.

I have just read and enjoyed Sergei Khrushchev’s article on the Cuban Missile Crisis (“How My Father and President Kennedy Saved the World,” October 2002). During that crisis I was attached to the Navy’s Light Photographie Reconnaissance Squadron 62 (VFP-62) and with others flew one of the October 27, 1962, missions mentioned in the story. Mr. Khrushchev states that our planes were hit with ”30 millimeter shells.” Some of our planes were fired on that day, but none was hit. If my flight was fired on, I was not aware of it.

October 27 became known to us as Black Saturday, because we had been briefed that “Washington” wanted us to look for evidence that the missiles were being pulled out. Without such evidence
the crisis would rapidly escalate. I was able to report that the missile sites we flew over were in fact being bulldozed.

Congratulations to Joshua Zeitz on his interesting and insightful look at how the American South has influenced the nation (”Dixie’s Victory,” August/September 2002). Particularly, it was surprising and refreshing to see an accurate understanding of religion and its role as a key piece of the puzzle. It is extremely rare to find an author or reporter who understands the different roles and perspectives of evangelicals, fundamentalists, mainline Protestants, and charismatics. Usually those groups are misidentified, confused with one another, or simply lumped together.

I was reading the interview with respect and enthusiasm until I came to the sentence “The operation on September 11, detestable though it was, was brilliantly executed: complex, well imagined, and amazingly well conducted.” It seems to me that any high school basketball coach, if he were as crazy as a bedbug and had $100 million and a team convinced the cause was worth dying for, could have pulled off the atrocity. If the purpose of the attack was only to make a statement, it is hard to see how the adverb brilliantly or any other of the high-powered words applies. It accomplished nothing except to give George Bush increased ratings, which was hardly the intent. The utter devastation of the two buildings must have surprised Bin Laden. There is no evidence that he anticipated such success. The same technique did not destroy the Pentagon.