I voted no because quite frankly, had Bush been pPresident during the Crisis he would have invaded Cuba and missiles would have started to fly. That said, I will agree that if he had been President during the Bay of Pigs fiasco, it would have either seen him squelching it before it happened or he would have given US support from the beginning. Had he gone forward tho, we would have been figting in Cuba for many years to come, since he and advisors would always be trying to do it on the cheap without much thought for long term planning.
Bush waited 15 months ebtween the Axis of Evil Speech and the invasion of Iraq. Do you really think he couldn't wait thirteen days for Kruschev to turn the boats around?
Yes. We should have waited longer so that we had enough troops in place to do the Iraq invasion right. Instead, he followed an overly optimistic assumption of what would happen and went in. Several of Kennedy's advisors (including most prominently LeMay, IIRC) were of the opinion that the Crisis gave the US the opportunity to invade Cuba and that we could do so without much risk. Given W's track record to date, had he been President, he would have used the Crisis a justification of an invasion of Cuba and not been interested in getting the missiles pulled out.
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