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Comment by Pinckney | Hacker News Reader

What sort of covert op? Who would want to start WWIII?

In the decade or so before the Cuban Missile Crisis there were some US military leaders who thought that a "preventative" attack on the Soviets was a good idea - by the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis the public estimates of Soviet capabilities were so high (overestimated by a factor of 100 in some cases) that people probably thought it was too late for such an attack.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2005/03/13/to-be-sorted/the...

it's probably crack-pot conspiracy theory, but you could definitely sense there were elements of our government who thought a pre-emptive strike to level russia/china in one swift move would be agreeable. Perhaps they thought they would not be capable of retaliating, or the retaliatory strikes would not be nearly as impactful?

I'm not suggesting that is a rational approach, but I've heard crazier things uttered in terms of foreign policy even in modern day (e.g.: nuke entire regions, turn them into glass).

It terrifies me to no end that people could ascend into power with such ideas, but we'd be fools to think it doesn't happen. Look at any big org (company/government, whatever).. the best and brightest are not always the ones being promoted up, -- it's often the sociopaths.

I believe the thinking among many at the time was that war with the Soviets would result in "acceptable" losses to the US i.e. 20 million Americans dead, give or take. This was probably not too far off given extremely limited Soviet capabilities at the time. (Europe would have fared far worse, but I don't know that they cared too much.) There's a scene in Dr. Strangelove where this is advocated, and I think it's reasonably true-to-life.

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