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We are all alive today because once in 1962 someone said, ‘I’m not doing that, it’s a stupid idea’, or words to that effect.
The speaker would have been former US president Jack Kennedy, refusing the advice of the clear majority of the ExComm – the ‘executive committee’ of high government officials and generals that he had assembled to advise him on how to respond to the discovery of inter-continental ballistic missiles in Cuba. The hawks on ExComm, who were in the clear majority, wanted Kennedy to order an immediate invasion of Cuba, something we now know would have precipitated global nuclear war. But Kennedy, who had direct experience of the chaos of battle, was unconvinced, and instead, in the face of their opposition, led a process that de-escalated the crisis.
