And just in case you still wonder if the Author of the Vietnam War, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the complete piece of personal shit later witnesses testified that he was, his ghost-written Pulitzer Prize "winner" Profiles in Courage has as one of its heroes the Republican Senator whose single vote allowed Johnson to escape being found g…
And just in case you still wonder if the Author of the Vietnam War, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the complete piece of personal shit later witnesses testified that he was, his ghost-written Pulitzer Prize "winner" Profiles in Courage has as one of its heroes the Republican Senator whose single vote allowed Johnson to escape being found guilty when he was impeached. JFK - believer in civil rights. He was dragged to support civil rights and LBJ was 10 times the president he was.
Kennedy took us into Vietnam to assuage his ego after Krushchev made a joke of him at the Vienna Summit in 1961, exposing him for the shallow dilettante he was.
And I say the above as the high school kid who was proud to hang door-knockers for him in 1960. We all grow up and find out the truth. It took me writing two books about my war - his war - to see the truth.
I can relate. I wrote my first real history paper in ninth grade. Subject? The Bay of Pigs invasion. Did my research at the local college library where I learned that Kennedy sent his Secretary of State Adlai Stevenson in to lie to the UN that America had nothing to do with the disastrous invasion. Worked my little ninth grade ass off on that paper. Typed every page myself on an actual typewriter. My conservative Midwestern civics teacher gave that paper a B+. Gave his conservative class favorite an A. At age 70, you would think I would’ve gotten over this. I would’ve thought that too.
Wow! You know I'm an admirer of yours TC, but come on now!
That Republican Senator, Edmund Ross, was an anti-slavery politician who voted against Johnson's impeachment not in support of Johnson, but for institutional reasons and the fact that the "Tenure of Office Act", the law that Johnson had refused to support, was clearly unconstitutional. And to call JFK a piece of personal shit is somewhat defamatory, don't ya think?!?
JFK was a supporter of civil rights but definitely more timid than his brother in advocating same, yet he certainly wasn't "dragged into supporting" them. LBJ was a President of Shakespearean dimensions, but was certainly not 10 times the President JFK was. There is no way LBJ would have saved US and arguably the world the way JFK did in October of '62.
Finally, to call the Vietnam War "his war", a war wherein American involvement commenced under Eisenhower, is not quite right. JFK was a Cold Warrior for sure. And his green lighting the assassination of Diem, the corrupt and effete out of step Prez of the RVA was ghastly. Yet JFK soon saw that the Pentagon and the usual suspects were gunning for a a larger American presence in Vietnam and he gradually turned against that.
His final major speech at American University was a clear example of his view of an actual Pax Americana, and as far removed from the preposterous Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passed by LBJ, as could be
How many women did he have to fuck in the Oval Office for you to see him for what he was? JFK is undefamable, he was such a shit.
He was the guy who ordered the overthrow of Diem that led to Diem's assassination. Lib'ruls who still believe in Camelot need brain transplants.
Graham Greene described Kennedy to a "T" when he described Alden Pyle, the main character of his novel "The Quiet American": "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused... impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance."
The Kennedy Adoration Machine did everything it could to slime LBJ with Kennedy's responsibility. In my research for two books, I found that LBJ's problem with Vietnam was he was dragged to every escalation by the JFK New Frontiersmen he stupidly kept around - like the completely incompetent Strange McNamara who had no clue how to run a war - and delayed it till it became the wrong decision.
So far as Tonkin Gulf is concerned, you know dick shit about what you are talking about. I'm sorry to say that to someone I like (I really do like you, Daniel). I was there, the Admiral whose staff I was on was the opeational commander of the two destroyers. That was where my life was turned around 180 degrees 30 days later when I ran into my best friend from boot camp in an Olongapo bar; he had been the POIC of the Maddox's gun tower that night and got court martialed for refusing to open fire on grounds there were no targets. He told me the "Incident" was nothing like what it was portrayed (not by LBJ, by all the JFK appointees who wanted a war in Vietnam). In fact LBJ was the only guy on the planet who got Tonkin right - when he was first informed of the event, he said "those poor dumb sailors were probably shooting at flying fish." In 2006, a retired NSA analyst demonstrated that "the lights in the water" were the reflections of the moon and the lightning strikes of the storms in all quadrants, on the South Asian School of flying fish (about 4 million fish) that annually transit the Gulf of Tonkin during the first week of August.
Since we both live in LA, we ought to get together for coffee.
Wow, from the horses mouth. Rare to find someone who looked out the window to see if it was raining instead of reporting what opposing voices said. Yes, I was a dumbass who thought McNamara was the smartest man in the room. Sort of like Enron, but I wasn’t fooled that time. Sorry for that weird digression…
I believe that his image will not tarnish even with the new info, mainly because of his heinous murder. Sad because his was one in a long line of egos that have screwed us all. Some bloodier than others…
The body count of the Cuban Missile Crisis was 1. JFK didn’t pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution or send 500,000 troops to Vietnam starting in 1965. JFK was dead.
Yeah, except you fail to note that every one of those increases was proposed by a JFK GUY. All the stupid decisions were initiated by the New Frontiersmen. LBJ was dragged kicking and screaming into every one of them. The unfortunate thing for us as a country was that LBJ was intellectually cowed by all the Harvard/Yale/Ive League backgrounds of the Kennedy people. He used to joke about all those guys reporting to "the graduate of Southwestern Texas State Teacher's College," but it wasn't really a joke, it was him being intellectually scared of them - despite the fact he know 1,000 times more about politics than all the New Frontiersmen combined.
I suggest you read David Halberstam's book "The Best And The Brightest," a complete takedown of the "geniuses" that got us into Vietnam. You can get it at Amazon for $11.99
The real story was that Johnson got Edmund Ross of Kansas to vote for Johnson’s acquittal in the Senate in return for Johnson’s doing a political favor for Ross by appointing one of Ross’s friends as a postmaster. This happened before we established a professional civil service because of Garfield’s assassination.
Yes, TCinLA, JFK should have extricated the US intelligence and military forces from Vietnam. And, he should not have helped people who built their fortunes by collaborating with the brutal dictator, Batista, to oppress 90% of the Cuban population. JFK made serious mistakes in those matters. However, in the matter of Vietnam, it seems to me fairer and more accurate to put most of the blame for the American-imposed catastrophe there on Eisenhower. He should have known better. He did know better. But Eisenhower had an anticommunist fervor shut up in his bones (to apply the superbly descriptive phrase from the King James Bible that Charles Blow adopted in an entirely different political context) that prevented him from sympathizing with people who had, at great sacrifice, thrown the French colonialists out of Vietnam and removed the local collaborators and beneficiaries of French rule from Vietnamese government. Instead, Eisenhower decided to permit and encourage the evil Dulles brothers to spew their venom unopposed. Vietnam was Eisenhower’s fault. He should have known better. He did know better. He had the power to shut down all US operations in Vietnam and let those who had thrown off their European oppressors build a government according to their own lights. But he didn’t. Vietnam is on him.
Eisenhower did all that (if you get my book "Going Downtown" be sure to read Chapter Two, "A Long Time Coming"), however Eisenhower did not commit troops - that crucial item was Kennedy's decision after he read the Soviet theory of wars of national liberation while looking for some way to "get back" at Khrushchev for publicly humiliating him at the Vienna Summit.
Yes. That is a plausible explanation. But I think Eisenhower should have made sure that JFK could not do that by pulling out all US opposition to Ho and maybe even publicly congratulating Ho for ejecting the colonists from his country. JFK was young and in need of wise council. Eisenhower was an old warrior who should have taken advantage of his experience and his popularity to put the US on a better track in Southeast Asia.
There was no way any American politician was going to do such a thing in the 1950s. they had all been through McCarthyism, they'd all seen what happened in the far right's "who Lost China?" campaign. Those events left a deep impression on every politician who had been conscious 1949-57. It had to do with why JFK wouldn't have pulled out in the year before standing for re-election and why LBJ went along with the New Frontiersmen.
Yes, that’s true, but Eisenhower was on his way out of politics. All he had to deal with was his legacy. Maybe I ask too much of him, but I think he should have done the right thing. I certainly don’t absolve JFK of blame. Nor LBJ, who, I agree, was far more skilled in politics than JFK (or, for that matter, than anyone since Lincoln but FDR and maybe Pelosi).
Unfortunately there was no way any American politician in that period was going to "do the right thing." It was the height of what would be seen as the coldest part of the Cold War. The GOP right wing would have attacked the "establishment" wing if such a thing had happened.
Eisenhower, who I respect, allowed the 1953 covert overthrow of Iran's Mosaddegh, which Truman had opposed. My knowledge of history is patchy, but it seems to me that move helped to set the stage for the surge of political "religious" fanaticism in the Middle East. In general, I think that covert campaigns to force changes in other nations tends to have troublesome unintended consequences. It's slimy. I believe that Eisenhower as not a fan of Joe McCarthy, but tolerated him (up to a point) because of the size and fervor of his base. I have read that JFK was a defender of McCarthy. I can't quite wrap my mind around what it means to be a president in the modern age. How it is possible to cover all the bases; how not wade into what might be out of one's depth. How not to commit the "sin of pride" or simply, in some ways, play the fool.
My overall impression of JFK remains positive, but I get that he had a creepy side. I think he still looks good compared to Bush II or Trump, and that social justice was more or less expanding under his watch. Vietnam was another strategic and moral disaster, in ways that I think still haunt us, but Kennedy was not the war's sole promoter, though he probably could have stopped it. I am unaware of any president of salient consequence that did not have a creepy side; TR, FDR? I hold some strong criticism of Obama for his seeming over-coddling of banks, his proposed "chained CPI" and the "TPP". Lincoln seemed phobic of black people, though he courageously defended their political rights. I condemn Nixon, but not as much as Reagan. I both admire and criticize Biden. I desperately want him to win.
"Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." - Churchill
The Mossadegh overthrow is The Major Plot Point for all Mideastern history. Had Mossadegh and his western-style "British Labour Party" government succeeded, taking back their natural resources and using them for a democratic , secular, moderniztion of Iran, it would have changed the following history by its success. None of what we deal with now would have ever developed and democratic secular governments might be the rule through the middle east. Eisenhower listened to the idiots at Can't Investigate Anything, who were all onboard with British MI6 to protect British Petroleum's "property" in Iran. The big problem was the "mid-Atlantic ruling class" types in the CIA saw themselves and the Pax Americana as the logical successor to the Pax Britannica.
JFK was a "light" defender of McCarthy, but RFK Sr actually worked for the committee.
As far as social justice expanding under JFK - he was dragged kicking and screaming to support civil rights, which he (correctly) saw as the thing that would destroy the Democrats "Solid South." The real social justice warrior was LBJ throughout his political career.
It very much did once the Republicans recovered from the debacle of 1964 in the 1966 off-year, defeating all the Democrats in the House who had won Republican districts (they were the progressives who voted for the War on Poverty)and cutting down the Democratic House vote - when there were still "Southern Democrats" to vote against the War on Poverty to make a majority against.
And just in case you still wonder if the Author of the Vietnam War, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the complete piece of personal shit later witnesses testified that he was, his ghost-written Pulitzer Prize "winner" Profiles in Courage has as one of its heroes the Republican Senator whose single vote allowed Johnson to escape being found guilty when he was impeached. JFK - believer in civil rights. He was dragged to support civil rights and LBJ was 10 times the president he was.
Kennedy took us into Vietnam to assuage his ego after Krushchev made a joke of him at the Vienna Summit in 1961, exposing him for the shallow dilettante he was.
And I say the above as the high school kid who was proud to hang door-knockers for him in 1960. We all grow up and find out the truth. It took me writing two books about my war - his war - to see the truth.
I can relate. I wrote my first real history paper in ninth grade. Subject? The Bay of Pigs invasion. Did my research at the local college library where I learned that Kennedy sent his Secretary of State Adlai Stevenson in to lie to the UN that America had nothing to do with the disastrous invasion. Worked my little ninth grade ass off on that paper. Typed every page myself on an actual typewriter. My conservative Midwestern civics teacher gave that paper a B+. Gave his conservative class favorite an A. At age 70, you would think I would’ve gotten over this. I would’ve thought that too.
I can more than totally relate to that story. Thanks for it.
You left part of your heart in that effort.
Wow! You know I'm an admirer of yours TC, but come on now!
That Republican Senator, Edmund Ross, was an anti-slavery politician who voted against Johnson's impeachment not in support of Johnson, but for institutional reasons and the fact that the "Tenure of Office Act", the law that Johnson had refused to support, was clearly unconstitutional. And to call JFK a piece of personal shit is somewhat defamatory, don't ya think?!?
JFK was a supporter of civil rights but definitely more timid than his brother in advocating same, yet he certainly wasn't "dragged into supporting" them. LBJ was a President of Shakespearean dimensions, but was certainly not 10 times the President JFK was. There is no way LBJ would have saved US and arguably the world the way JFK did in October of '62.
Finally, to call the Vietnam War "his war", a war wherein American involvement commenced under Eisenhower, is not quite right. JFK was a Cold Warrior for sure. And his green lighting the assassination of Diem, the corrupt and effete out of step Prez of the RVA was ghastly. Yet JFK soon saw that the Pentagon and the usual suspects were gunning for a a larger American presence in Vietnam and he gradually turned against that.
His final major speech at American University was a clear example of his view of an actual Pax Americana, and as far removed from the preposterous Gulf of Tonkin resolution, passed by LBJ, as could be
How many women did he have to fuck in the Oval Office for you to see him for what he was? JFK is undefamable, he was such a shit.
He was the guy who ordered the overthrow of Diem that led to Diem's assassination. Lib'ruls who still believe in Camelot need brain transplants.
Graham Greene described Kennedy to a "T" when he described Alden Pyle, the main character of his novel "The Quiet American": "I never knew a man who had better motives for all the trouble he caused... impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance."
The Kennedy Adoration Machine did everything it could to slime LBJ with Kennedy's responsibility. In my research for two books, I found that LBJ's problem with Vietnam was he was dragged to every escalation by the JFK New Frontiersmen he stupidly kept around - like the completely incompetent Strange McNamara who had no clue how to run a war - and delayed it till it became the wrong decision.
So far as Tonkin Gulf is concerned, you know dick shit about what you are talking about. I'm sorry to say that to someone I like (I really do like you, Daniel). I was there, the Admiral whose staff I was on was the opeational commander of the two destroyers. That was where my life was turned around 180 degrees 30 days later when I ran into my best friend from boot camp in an Olongapo bar; he had been the POIC of the Maddox's gun tower that night and got court martialed for refusing to open fire on grounds there were no targets. He told me the "Incident" was nothing like what it was portrayed (not by LBJ, by all the JFK appointees who wanted a war in Vietnam). In fact LBJ was the only guy on the planet who got Tonkin right - when he was first informed of the event, he said "those poor dumb sailors were probably shooting at flying fish." In 2006, a retired NSA analyst demonstrated that "the lights in the water" were the reflections of the moon and the lightning strikes of the storms in all quadrants, on the South Asian School of flying fish (about 4 million fish) that annually transit the Gulf of Tonkin during the first week of August.
Since we both live in LA, we ought to get together for coffee.
Wow, from the horses mouth. Rare to find someone who looked out the window to see if it was raining instead of reporting what opposing voices said. Yes, I was a dumbass who thought McNamara was the smartest man in the room. Sort of like Enron, but I wasn’t fooled that time. Sorry for that weird digression…
And this is why I hope TFFGs isn't assassinated. History will be kind to him if he is.
Better he dies, drooling down his shirt in his soiled Depends.
I fervently wish a natural death on him. Frankly, a martyr’s death is too good for the likes of him.
Daniel, I found this book to be a very informative look into the backstory of Joseph and his boys
JFK was the reluctant candidate pushed into service by his demanding father after his dream died when Joe Jr was killed in WWII
https://www.amazon.com/Kennedy-Men-1901-1963-Laurence-Leamer/dp/0688163157/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=273DN3GBLCE0I&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.S7ob0B_MaCIVYLdVUAW2uzeqiqdogkv8M2fqLPCt28XUQnY-tpkQ3oLApj467owR.qTAEu9n0CxM_T7hlSUILU_SH-saFgenIk3aSkohfHjY&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+kennedy+men+laurence+leamer&qid=1711883181&sprefix=the+kennedy+men%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-1
Thankyou
I believe that his image will not tarnish even with the new info, mainly because of his heinous murder. Sad because his was one in a long line of egos that have screwed us all. Some bloodier than others…
The body count of the Cuban Missile Crisis was 1. JFK didn’t pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution or send 500,000 troops to Vietnam starting in 1965. JFK was dead.
Yeah, except you fail to note that every one of those increases was proposed by a JFK GUY. All the stupid decisions were initiated by the New Frontiersmen. LBJ was dragged kicking and screaming into every one of them. The unfortunate thing for us as a country was that LBJ was intellectually cowed by all the Harvard/Yale/Ive League backgrounds of the Kennedy people. He used to joke about all those guys reporting to "the graduate of Southwestern Texas State Teacher's College," but it wasn't really a joke, it was him being intellectually scared of them - despite the fact he know 1,000 times more about politics than all the New Frontiersmen combined.
I suggest you read David Halberstam's book "The Best And The Brightest," a complete takedown of the "geniuses" that got us into Vietnam. You can get it at Amazon for $11.99
https://www.amazon.com/Best-Brightest-David-Halberstam/dp/0449908704/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3CGTNRBZ1E08X&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.hB4l3MLGpB_zFqNdKKZUW6P6PwJuUUd4QoLqFwuv37ZbdaumwHCSA-b5NNL-LbjmlUZKZ2UK7Jf-tUn2JpkL1Y96rxv6S7waA_6nEBswGTcOBZt7zL00dUPLQKKXhZXRQR7rCX_Imlvx90NueWCUQRqiZo8DA5lvIhCTaUcqtJgBZ8tLMB3tUxFsnCTeqH4t8vmxuudNJdz4FL0acZNwdvXyjoZ7oUyvDx1Benv6Ing.B_hEkDREiuocoAHmFNy5w-eSyTRngxNTwe2F3bCjsKQ&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+best+and+the+brightest+by+david+halberstam&qid=1711905210&sprefix=The+Best+and+the+Brightest%2Caps%2C3402&sr=8-1
Thank you TC. I suspect I’m about to learn something. I’ll get back to you in a week or so. I’m a slow reader. Sincerely, A.
The real story was that Johnson got Edmund Ross of Kansas to vote for Johnson’s acquittal in the Senate in return for Johnson’s doing a political favor for Ross by appointing one of Ross’s friends as a postmaster. This happened before we established a professional civil service because of Garfield’s assassination.
Yes, TCinLA, JFK should have extricated the US intelligence and military forces from Vietnam. And, he should not have helped people who built their fortunes by collaborating with the brutal dictator, Batista, to oppress 90% of the Cuban population. JFK made serious mistakes in those matters. However, in the matter of Vietnam, it seems to me fairer and more accurate to put most of the blame for the American-imposed catastrophe there on Eisenhower. He should have known better. He did know better. But Eisenhower had an anticommunist fervor shut up in his bones (to apply the superbly descriptive phrase from the King James Bible that Charles Blow adopted in an entirely different political context) that prevented him from sympathizing with people who had, at great sacrifice, thrown the French colonialists out of Vietnam and removed the local collaborators and beneficiaries of French rule from Vietnamese government. Instead, Eisenhower decided to permit and encourage the evil Dulles brothers to spew their venom unopposed. Vietnam was Eisenhower’s fault. He should have known better. He did know better. He had the power to shut down all US operations in Vietnam and let those who had thrown off their European oppressors build a government according to their own lights. But he didn’t. Vietnam is on him.
Eisenhower did all that (if you get my book "Going Downtown" be sure to read Chapter Two, "A Long Time Coming"), however Eisenhower did not commit troops - that crucial item was Kennedy's decision after he read the Soviet theory of wars of national liberation while looking for some way to "get back" at Khrushchev for publicly humiliating him at the Vienna Summit.
Yes. That is a plausible explanation. But I think Eisenhower should have made sure that JFK could not do that by pulling out all US opposition to Ho and maybe even publicly congratulating Ho for ejecting the colonists from his country. JFK was young and in need of wise council. Eisenhower was an old warrior who should have taken advantage of his experience and his popularity to put the US on a better track in Southeast Asia.
There was no way any American politician was going to do such a thing in the 1950s. they had all been through McCarthyism, they'd all seen what happened in the far right's "who Lost China?" campaign. Those events left a deep impression on every politician who had been conscious 1949-57. It had to do with why JFK wouldn't have pulled out in the year before standing for re-election and why LBJ went along with the New Frontiersmen.
Yes, that’s true, but Eisenhower was on his way out of politics. All he had to deal with was his legacy. Maybe I ask too much of him, but I think he should have done the right thing. I certainly don’t absolve JFK of blame. Nor LBJ, who, I agree, was far more skilled in politics than JFK (or, for that matter, than anyone since Lincoln but FDR and maybe Pelosi).
Unfortunately there was no way any American politician in that period was going to "do the right thing." It was the height of what would be seen as the coldest part of the Cold War. The GOP right wing would have attacked the "establishment" wing if such a thing had happened.
Might have been a good thing to have internecine Republican battles before they took over the Dixiecrats and the white working class.
There's definitely an argument to be made there.
Eisenhower, who I respect, allowed the 1953 covert overthrow of Iran's Mosaddegh, which Truman had opposed. My knowledge of history is patchy, but it seems to me that move helped to set the stage for the surge of political "religious" fanaticism in the Middle East. In general, I think that covert campaigns to force changes in other nations tends to have troublesome unintended consequences. It's slimy. I believe that Eisenhower as not a fan of Joe McCarthy, but tolerated him (up to a point) because of the size and fervor of his base. I have read that JFK was a defender of McCarthy. I can't quite wrap my mind around what it means to be a president in the modern age. How it is possible to cover all the bases; how not wade into what might be out of one's depth. How not to commit the "sin of pride" or simply, in some ways, play the fool.
My overall impression of JFK remains positive, but I get that he had a creepy side. I think he still looks good compared to Bush II or Trump, and that social justice was more or less expanding under his watch. Vietnam was another strategic and moral disaster, in ways that I think still haunt us, but Kennedy was not the war's sole promoter, though he probably could have stopped it. I am unaware of any president of salient consequence that did not have a creepy side; TR, FDR? I hold some strong criticism of Obama for his seeming over-coddling of banks, his proposed "chained CPI" and the "TPP". Lincoln seemed phobic of black people, though he courageously defended their political rights. I condemn Nixon, but not as much as Reagan. I both admire and criticize Biden. I desperately want him to win.
"Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time." - Churchill
The Mossadegh overthrow is The Major Plot Point for all Mideastern history. Had Mossadegh and his western-style "British Labour Party" government succeeded, taking back their natural resources and using them for a democratic , secular, moderniztion of Iran, it would have changed the following history by its success. None of what we deal with now would have ever developed and democratic secular governments might be the rule through the middle east. Eisenhower listened to the idiots at Can't Investigate Anything, who were all onboard with British MI6 to protect British Petroleum's "property" in Iran. The big problem was the "mid-Atlantic ruling class" types in the CIA saw themselves and the Pax Americana as the logical successor to the Pax Britannica.
JFK was a "light" defender of McCarthy, but RFK Sr actually worked for the committee.
As far as social justice expanding under JFK - he was dragged kicking and screaming to support civil rights, which he (correctly) saw as the thing that would destroy the Democrats "Solid South." The real social justice warrior was LBJ throughout his political career.
LBJ, Senator from.... Texas. Some things don't change but a lot has.
LBJ - raised a "poor boy" in Texas. Elected to Congress in 1934 as a supporter of the New Deal.
My understanding is that the Vietnam debacle kinda pulled the rug from under LBJ's anti-poverty initiative.
It very much did once the Republicans recovered from the debacle of 1964 in the 1966 off-year, defeating all the Democrats in the House who had won Republican districts (they were the progressives who voted for the War on Poverty)and cutting down the Democratic House vote - when there were still "Southern Democrats" to vote against the War on Poverty to make a majority against.