In the film Fail-Safe do you think the president approached the crisis in the right way or do you think he should have followed the advice of the Mr. Groeteschele (the civilian Professor who wanted to attack).
I am not sure if the president approched this problem very well. When you know that something is wrong, you don't just continue doing it. If I were in the President's shoes, I might have just sent out all of the bombers towards the Soviets. I say this because; What makes you think that the Soviets will believe its an accident anyway? They knew you had the technology to do it so they would probably retaliate regardless of the fact if its an 'accident' or not. The President in this movie, after Moscow was bombed, showed to be vulnerable at the end of the movie because of him ordering his bombers to bomb New York to show the Soviets that it was a 'mistake'. Why would you want to bomb your own city just to show that "We're Sorry!"? You might as well continue with an all-out attack on Soviet Russia and at least have a chance that none of your cities will be bombed. If you have been 'at war' with these people for some time now, why are you waiting to negotiate a result out of it? Just do what Americans do, invade and bomb (i.e. WW2).
One thing I want to know more about was exactly why the President in Fail-Safe did not want to do anything? What was he waiting for? How come he didn't bomb the Soviets yet? Why didn't he take a "Kahn" approach to this war?
I disagree with you on what would be the best approach. I think that if you were to launch a full attack on the U.S.S.R. it would only lead to further destruction of lives, and a full scale nuclear retaliation. It is true that the Russians would think that the accident was actually an attack. But why attack in a full scale if you did not mean to? The way the president approached the situation was meant to save lives and try and keep as much peace as possible. He wanted to balance the destruction so the both sides would be "even". The president did not want to completely destruct the Russians, he as a mater of fact did not even want to attack them. note: Kahn believes more on the second attack than the first. :]
ReplyDelete