Cuban Missile Crisis: The War That Wasn't. . .

Saw the PBS documentary, "Cuban Missile Crisis: Three Men Go To War", about Kennedy, Khrushchev, Castro and the aforementioned crisis. 

Many times in history things go 100 percent wrong, expressing the worst possible outcome ("No worst, there is none", to quote Gerard Manley Hopkins), e.g., World War I, and the invasion of Iraq, which keeps on finding ways to be wrong.

The Cuban Missile crisis went right or we wouldn't be here.

God bless Kennedy for resisting his generals — at times he was "the only man in the room", according to this film, who wanted to negotiate rather than resort to bombing — and Khrushchev, too, who, having lived through WW II, wanted to avoid blundering into its sequel.

As for Fidel, he was eager to let Cuba be incinerated to make a point — that point being Yanqui go home — and was outraged that Khrushchev chose, without so much as consulting him, to avoid that unspeakable outcome.