This writer remembers the profound contribution that this young president made to the world in opposition to all the Pentagon officials who wanted a nuclear war.
For all his fabled rhetoric, the principle theme of his presidency was preventing nuclear war. It is difficult to understand quite what a fraught world Kennedy inherited from his predecessor, Ike Eisenhower. These were years when humankind came closest to nuclear destruction. Nothing we’ve faced before or since - not two World Wars, not bubonic plague, not even the war on terrorism - has come even close.Eisenhower has too often been credited with a warning about the "military-industrial complex". He only made reference to this threat in one sentence in his final speech as president. The fact is, he allowed it to thrive along with the emerging secret agencies of the spy complex. Kennedy in his short time in office had to contend with all these forces that wanted a preemptive nuclear war with the Soviet Union and a war in Indochina.