Cheat Sheet

Actually it was on Kennedy's watch that this blunder came about. McNamara was one of JFK's "best and brightest." He was the architecht of that dreadful war that cost us nearly 60,000 young lives. Plus the Bay of Pigs embarrassment!

The real out of control part of the mess came with Johnson who brought it all to new lows. In the end, we left with honor, but unfortunately we left a million people to be slaughtered in the aftermath.

As Colin Powell told Bush, "you break it, you own it". At the end of the day, Americans must learn to clean up their messes, not just walk away from them. That is a disease we all have here at home too.

Ozone & Constitutional Rights,

You are right to say that McNamara and the other chucklfks from Harvard redesigned the meat grinder that Eisenhower built and that took 3 million peoples' lives (we often forget all the Vietnamese that were killed for the sake of our empire).

They were trying to fulfill a policy inherited from Eisenhower, during which the Domino Theory was first espoused and later adopted by Kennedy and his crew.
Diem never accepted the Geneva Accords and thereby avoided elections. The North was supposed to choose between a national hero, Ho, and having a frakkin' emperor? come on! Let's not forget the role that the Vietnamese themselves played in gaining their independence.

My point, guys, is that nobody should over-simplify this clusterfrak. I am sorry if I did in response to you. Furthermore, I reckon that the lesson we should have learned in Vietnam and hopefully WILL learn from Iraq is to be more careful in the china shop so we don't have to purchase any thing we don't want. Of course, I do agree that we must fix the mess for which we are responsible and heal the wounds inflicted in our name and then never, ever do it again.

Those million deaths after we left were the natural, tragic outcome of trying to keep a lid on something that was too strong. Just like the sectarian violence in Iraq would have happened whenever Saddam's dynasty came to an end. It was a condition we didn't need to throw a bunch of American kids in the middle of.

Remember that these are very complex systems and should be given due deliberation (i.e. requiring a REAL declaration of war rather than some BS authorization to use force) and should require real accountability for those making the choice to commit our blood and treasure. McNamara got to run the World Bank later on! Where is the justice in that?

Eisenhower started it, Kennedy expanded it, Johnson inhereted it and expanded it further, then Nixon vowed to end it but expanded it further still and into otehr countries, illegally and covertly (like many things he touched) before finally cutting his losses and leaving many screwed in the process... There is plenty of blame to go around. Trying to pin it fundamentally on any one President is futile. That said, McNamara was an ass, no doubt.

I think you're right citivas. It is the American exceptionalists who believe we have to spread democracy at the edge of a bayonette, of which McNamara and Rumsfeld are two as well as the millions who enable them and encourage them or passively let atrocities be committed in our name.

We all own a share of the Vietnam War, it's part of our history as Americans like Iraq and Afghanistan will be history some day.

Kennedy shouldn't be blamed for the Vietnam fiasco. Yes he originally believed in the "domino theory" and yes he did earlier increase the amount of advisers in Vietnam. However, the JFK that was ran in 1960 and was elected was not the JFK the elites ended up with. He started out as a puppet of course (or he wouldn't have had the opportunity to be there), deferring to the previous administration's judgement about an invasion by C.I.A.-trained Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs and with the exception of the second set of airstrikes let it take place but it was probably this event, being sold a bill of goods by Bissell and Dulles and getting embarrassed in its spectacular failure, that began changing him into a president who (gasp!) actually tried to behave as if he were the president instead of a puppet on a string.

Despite having increased the number of advisers as I mentioned in Vietnam Kennedy ultimately decided that the involvement was a mistake and began making preparations to end it. Remember at this time there were only around 16,000 U.S. advisers, many C.I.A., in country so it wouldn't be like pulling half a million troops out of Vietnam, much less involved a process. This was solidified in National Security Action Memorandum 263. This and the process leading up to it is described in a book review by James Galbraith:
"In his review of Arthur Schlesinger's Journals, 1952-2000 [NYR, November 8], Joseph Lelyveld writes that while "Kennedy had now and then spoken in private about withdrawing [from Vietnam] after the 1964 election; when he died it was a faint hope, not yet a plan." This is incorrect.

Schlesinger himself says otherwise; in Robert Kennedy and His Times he writes of the "first application" in October 1963 "of Kennedy's phased withdrawal plan." Robert McNamara goes further, in his 1995 memoir In Retrospect, to speak of "President Kennedy's decision on October 2 [1963] to begin the withdrawal of US forces."
A presidential decision requires a plan. The elements of a decision must include: (a) previous planning, reflected in military documents in this case; (b) discussion of the plan; (c) a decision to accept or reject the plan, reflected in a decision document; and (d) steps to implement the plan. In the case of JFK and withdrawal from Vietnam, all these elements are present.

We have records of the 8th Secretary of Defense conference in Honolulu on May 6, 1963, which tell of a "Comprehensive Plan" for Vietnam, including: "plan to withdraw 1000 US personnel from RVN by December 1963." McNamara also ordered that "training plans" be developed for the Vietnamese to permit "a more rapid phase-out" of the remaining US forces.

On October 2, 1963, these plans were discussed at the White House. We have the tape. McNamara states to Kennedy: "And the advantage of taking them out is that we can say to the Congress and the people that we do have a plan for reducing the exposure of US combat personnel to the guerilla actions in South Vietnam."

On October 5, 1963, at a meeting at 9:30 AM, Kennedy made the formal decision to implement the withdrawal plan. Again, we have the tape. On October 11, the White House issued National Security Action Memorandum 263, which speaks of "the implementation of plans to withdraw" troops from Vietnam."
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20881

So about a month and a half before he would be assassinated, JFK laid out the formal plans to begin the withdrawl from Vietnam. Of course one of the first things the sellout puppet Lyndon Johnson did upon assuming the presidency was to void this plan and replace it with a plan to dramatically ramp UP the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, just as the C.I.A. and the American military-industrial complex wanted. Ending the involvement in Vietnam would mean ending not only the C.I.A.'s heroin smuggling from the "Golden Triangle" and forfeiting any hope of U.S. influence over Vietnam's oil resources but of course also mean a big cash cow for the defense contractors evaporating instead of expanding exponentially.

Though his decision to bring the Vietnam involvement to a close was probably his most noticeable threat to the American ruling elite, his most galling defiance of their wishes, there were other actions he took since becoming his own man that also made him powerful enemies, powerful enemies with converging interests...

Though the mafia is thought to have helped Kennedy get elected in the really close 1960 election by helping swing West Virginia and Illinois his way he ultimately had his brother Robert the attorney general start cracking down on the mafia to score political points. Aside from the obvious hazard it should also be noted that as mafia don Sam Giancana is said to have noted that "The mafia and the C.I.A. are like two sides of the same coin." Anybody who doubts their close cooperation needs look no further than to Google someone named Robert Maheu and something called Operation: Forty.

Kennedy was going to rescind Big Oil's 29% oil depletion tax credit. Johnson didn't.

Kennedy also wanted to let J. Edgar Hoover retire as F.B.I. director when he reached the mandatory retirement age. Instead Lyndon Johnson gave him a waiver and let him stay on.

And having fired the C.I.A.'s Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Kennedy began saying that when reelected in 1964 he would "break the C.I.A. into a million pieces" and take foreign covert operations away from them, giving it to the military, and convert what was left of the C.I.A. into a neutered intelligence analyzing organ. Johnson of course did nothing of the sort.

So to sum it up, the reasons why Kennedy was assassinated are that he was intent on ending the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, cracked down on the mafia after it probably helped him get elected, was to rescind the 29% oil depletion tax credit, would have let Hoover retire and was going to "break the C.I.A. into a million pieces." Instead he was assassinated in Dallas, the city whose mayor was the brother of Charles Cabell, one of the C.I.A. bigwigs fired by JFK over the Bay of Pigs matter. And no American president since, whether they have painted themselves as a "law & order conservative" or a "progressive reformer/change agent" has been anything more than a puppet of the elite who knows his place and won't do anything to upset their applecart.

I thought you MIGHT have something to say on this subject, SR.

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