^^

Case in point: Before he got whacked, the Joint Chiefs of Staff presented Kennedy with a plan to enact a pre-emptive nuclear strike against the USSR. The logic was that war with them was inevitable, so better to take them out now while we still had a large advantage in nuclear capability. They estimated something like 100 million Russian dead vs. 10 million US dead. Kennedy said "So we should start World War III? Thanks, but no thanks."

A lot of them then complained that he was "soft on communism."

That's the kind of mental cases were working in high level national security jobs at the time, and I'd be surprised if the mentality of those people has changed much over the years.