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JFK Saved Us From A Nuclear War And The Horrors of Vietnam
2013 Nov 21, 10:15pm 585 views 7 comments
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Tenpoundbass
2013 Nov 21, 10:23pm
His legacy of his real accomplishments were over shadowed by things he never actually accomplished before he was shot.
He gets a lot of credit, for things that never came into fruition before he was killed. It wasn't until recently that I saw the Cuban missile crisis broke down in real time, that I realized he was a lot more than hold my hand and let's sing Kumbiya. He was actually a world leader in every sense of the word, besides a warm and fuzzy Liberal idealist. More over, his Liberal ideas had real depth behind them, they weren't just 7,000 pages of blank junk that needed to be passed to see what's in it. His ideas still had legs even after he was killed.
Kennedy was a great president but let's be a little objective.
A military strike or invasion were never the first option. Diplomacy and the blockade were the first option. If the blockade had failed there would have been an invasion. It wasn't either or. Ever read the actual letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev? http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v06/comp1
Kennedy increased advisors in vietnam from 1000 to 16,000 and sent in 300 military helicopters with crews. He approved the cia staging of a military coup that murdered the president to replace him with "someone who would continue the war" (RFK april 1964). Kennedy was a firm believer in the domino theory. Asked about the domino theory by Huntley in summer 1963 interview Kennedy said " What I am concerned about is that Americans will get impatient and say, because they don't like events in Southeast Asia or they don't like the Government in Saigon, that we should withdraw. That only makes it easy for the Communists. I think we should stay. We should use our influence in as effective a way as we can, but we should not withdraw.". He said Oct 1963 speech "to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Vietnam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there.".
Kennedy may or may not have committed large scale troops like Johnson did (johnson used the same staff as kennedy that provided the exact same reccomendations they made to kennedy) but the idea he would have pulled forces out in 1965 is fantasy.
Rin
2013 Nov 22, 3:18am
but the idea he would have pulled forces out in 1965 is fantasy.
I think that this fantasy is one of the reasons why the Oliver Stone movie was more melodrama than based upon historical evidence.
Kennedy's only attempt at reducing the involvement was based upon this memo:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/w6LJoSnW4UehkaH9Ip5IAA.aspx
And in the movie, Guy Bannister, shouting about Camelot falling when Camelot was invented by Jackie K, after the shooting, not before it.
Donald Sunderland, as Mr X, talking on and on about the Cold War, reciting every clandestine operation (Iran, Central America, SE Asia, etc) in black ops history doesn't give credence that he was actually removed from the President's normal security protocols before the shooting. Plus, who was 'X', an imaginary secret agent?
I want a real secret agent's testimonial, not a fictitious one.
Ceffer
2013 Nov 22, 3:20am
Gee, that hands it to JFK. Mother Theresa learned everything she knew from JFK. JFK was the Chuck Norris of politics in just a few short years.
I guess his greatest asset is he's dead so he can be the perpetual rock star embalmed in amber.
Really, are Americans that hungry for delusion, artifice and edifice? Bodes well for the future.
Rin
2013 Nov 22, 3:23am
I guess his greatest asset is he's dead so he can be the perpetual rock star embalmed in amber.
This is the Jim Morrison effect. Without Morrison's death, the Door's legacy would have been another Steppenwolf, a flash-in-the-pan Woodstock generation band.
HydroCabron
2013 Nov 22, 3:47am
Jim Morrison is the symbol of a generation: a fat, intoxicated whiner.
Rin
2013 Nov 22, 4:30am
Jim Morrison is the symbol of a generation: a fat, intoxicated whiner.
Yes, but unlike that generation, he wasn't a hypocrite; he did "break on through to the other side". Other hippies and beatniks, stayed alive, grew old, and became policy makers. So much for flower power.
This is a sad morning for me. We lost John F. Kennedy 50 years ago today. We lost his humanity, intelligence, compassion, and decency (Please forgive him for his character faults.)
I am always haunted by the Cuban missile crisis. It could have easily escalated into World War III with 120 million Soviet dead and up to 40 million American deaths. The whole world might have gone into a nuclear winter. When we emerged from this disaster only a small part of the human race would have survived. We would have been back in the time of the Dark Ages over 1000 years ago.
Khruschev put the missiles and 45,000 Soviet troops in Cuba because he thought that Kennedy was a weak man who could be intimidated. (Ironically had Nixon been president, Khruschev would not have put missiles in Cuba. He feared Nixon and was sure that he was a mad man.)
Kennedy was tempted to order air strikes on the missile sites and to go for an invasion with an estimated 18,000 US casualties. Khruschev might have let him get by with the air attack on the missiles. But if an invasion started he would have used tactical nuclear weapons on the island to sink US aircraft carriers and destroy the naval base at Guantanimo Bay. This could have easily escalated to a full nuclear war.
Kennedy did not know about the tactical nuclear weapons on the island. His instincts told him that any aggressive actions using military force would lead to a war. He stayed cool and calm. He started a dialogue with Khruschev. He came up with a face-saving solution.
Let us now turn to Vietnam and what might have been had Kennedy lived. Believe it or not, almost every year a very serious academic conference is held each year in Georgia. Academics and public officials pour over thousands of pages of documents, recordings and testimony to answer one question:"Would Kennedy have committed US troops and done things as Lyndon Johnson did? The consensus from all of these meetings is that he would not have.
Kennedy have traveled to Vietnam in the early 1950's. He saw the situation there as a struggle for independence and national determination of the part of the Vietnamese people. He listened to Charles De Gaulle who warned him that a land war in Vietnam would be an awful mistake. (France lost some 250,000 men in Vietnam.) Kennedy would have continued material aid and withdrawn all US forces there. In 1965 he would have seen Vietnam as a lost cause and let nature take its course. We would have not had the nightmare with over 58,000 Americans killed, 366,000 wounded and some 3.4 million Vietnamese killed. Our country would not have been torn apart and pushed almost to the point of a civil war.
Yes one man can make a difference!!!
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