Bfgrn
Gold Member
- Apr 4, 2009
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I think I'd have to go with Vietnam and the mindset of the times of our young people. Not only for the unnecessary loss of so many lives, but it is in my mind the era of the beginning of the end of civility and unity in America.
There would have been no Americanization of that war had Kennedy lived.
Vietnam was another growing source of tension within the Kennedy Administration. Once again, Washington hard-liners pushed for an escalation of the war, seeking the full-scale military confrontation with the communist enemy that J.F.K. had denied them in Cuba and other cold war battlegrounds. But Kennedy's troop commitment topped out at only 16,000 servicemen. And, as he confided to trusted advisers like McNamara and White House aide O'Donnell, he intended to withdraw completely from Vietnam after he was safely re-elected in 1964. "So we had better make damned sure that I am re-elected," he told O'Donnell.
Fearing a backlash from his generals and the rightunder the feisty leadership of Barry Goldwater, his likely opponent in the upcoming presidential raceKennedy never made his Vietnam plans public. And, in true Kennedy fashion, his statements on the Southeast Asian conflict were a blur of ambiguity. Surrounded by national-security advisers bent on escalation and trying to prevent a public split within his Administration, Kennedy operated on "multiple levels of deception" in his Vietnam decision making, in the words of historian Gareth Porter.
Kennedy never made it to the 1964 election, and since he left behind such a vaporous paper trail, the man who succeeded him, Lyndon Johnson, was able to portray his own deeper Vietnam intervention as a logical progression of J.F.K.'s policies. But McNamara knows the truth. The man who helped L.B.J. widen the war into a colossal tragedy knows Kennedy would have done no such thing. And McNamara acknowledges this, though it highlights his own blame. In the end, McNamara says today, Kennedy would have withdrawn, realizing "that it was South Vietnam's war and the people there had to win it... We couldn't win the war for them."
Read more: Warrior For Peace - The Lessons of J.F.K. - TIME