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November 22nd. He was a friend of mine. Killed in order to keep us in Vietnam.
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47 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Who, by the way, is the subject of his own loony conspiracy theory. 
President Kennedy visited Vietnam as a US Representative in 1951.
Later, as a US Senator, Kennedy publicly opposed the Eisenhower Administration’s continuing efforts to support the French in an unwinnable colonial war of liberation.
Hear JFK express his position on Vietnam in 1954:
Around that time, CIA Director Allen Dulles evidently offered the French US nuclear weapons.
When he was President, JFK did all he could to preserve the peace. While he sent “volunteer advisors” to Indochina, he kept regular US armed forces (draftees) out of Vietnam.
JFK Had Ordered Full Withdrawal from Vietnam: Solid Evidence
JAMES K. GALBRAITH
WhoWhatWhy.org, 09/26/17
EXCERPT…
Evidence of JFK’s Decision to Withdraw from Vietnam
The evidence is massive and categorical. It includes:
* Robert McNamara’s instructions to the May 1963 SecDef Conference in Honolulu to develop the withdrawal plan.
* A detailed account of the McNamara-Taylor mission to Vietnam that returned with the withdrawal plan, drafted in their absence in the Pentagon by a team under Kennedy’s direct control.
* An audiotape of the discussion at the White House that led to the approval of NSAM 263 (National Security Action Memorandum), which implemented the plan; this audio was released by the Assassination Records Review Board at my request.
* The precise instructions for withdrawal delivered by Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to his fellow Chiefs on October 4, 1963, in a memorandum that remained classified until 1997.
Taylor wrote:
“On 2 October the President approved recommendations on military matters contained in the report of the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The following actions derived from these recommendations are directed: … all planning will be directed toward preparing RVN forces for the withdrawal of all US special assistance units and personnel by the end of calendar year 1965. The US Comprehensive Plan, Vietnam, will be revised to bring it into consonance with these objectives, and to reduce planned residual (post-1965) MAAG strengths to approximately pre-insurgency levels… Execute the plan to withdraw 1,000 US military personnel by the end of 1963…”
False Narratives
Why do so few Americans know that President Kennedy, a few weeks before his assassination, had decided to get the US military out, and avert what would later become the “quagmire” of a full-scale American war in Vietnam?
Because for three decades following these events, many historians adopted a false narrative which assumed an absolute continuity in policy between Kennedy and Johnson. By no coincidence, this was the line of the government at the time.
But a small minority of historians — beginning with Peter Dale Scott in 1972, followed by John Newman in his 1992 book JFK and Vietnam — were able to tease out the truth from the record. Their work was supported by a key witness, Robert McNamara, in his 1995 memoir In Retrospect.
The historian Fredrik Logevall has provided a chapter to the companion volume for The Vietnam War. [The Vietnam War: An Intimate History by Geoffrey C. Ward, Burn’s collaborator.] Logevall does not acknowledge the withdrawal plan, although he gives the following personal view:
“…the better argument is that JFK most likely would not have Americanized the war, but instead would have opted for some form of disengagement, presumably by way of a face-saving negotiated settlement.”
This is an improvement over the long-standing official story, but still misleading. Logevall states that “withdrawal theorists” have made their judgments “hastily,” with “evident reluctance,” based on “scant hints” in the documentary record.
In fact the record is rich and decisive. The issue has been debated many times. I would refer readers seeking a full account to the second edition of Newman’s JFK and Vietnam, which appeared in 2017 after a hiatus of 25 years following suppression by the publisher of the original book.
CONTINUES…
https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/jfk-ordered-full-withdrawal-vietnam-solid-evidence/
Galbraith’s father was the great economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, who also served as Ambassador to India.
Papers reveal JFK efforts on Vietnam
John F. Kennedy, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Jawaharlal Nehru
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff | June 6, 2005
WASHINGTON -- Newly uncovered documents from both American and Polish archives show that President John F. Kennedy and the Soviet Union secretly sought ways to find a diplomatic settlement to the war in Vietnam, starting three years before the United States sent combat troops.
Kennedy, relying on his ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith, planned to reach out to the North Vietnamese in April 1962 through a senior Indian diplomat, according to a secret State Department cable that was never dispatched.
Back-channel discussions also were attempted in January 1963, this time through the Polish government, which relayed the overture to Soviet leaders. New Polish records indicate Moscow was much more open than previously thought to using its influence with North Vietnam to cool a Cold War flash point.
The attempts to use India and Poland as go-betweens ultimately fizzled, partly because of North Vietnamese resistance and partly because Kennedy faced pressure from advisers to expand American military involvement, according to the documents and interviews with scholars. Both India and Poland were members of the International Control Commission that monitored the 1954 agreement that divided North and South Vietnam.
The documents are seen by former Kennedy aides as new evidence of his true intentions in Vietnam. The question of whether Kennedy would have escalated the war or sought some diplomatic exit has been heatedly debated by historians and officials who served under both Kennedy and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson.
CONTINUES…
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/06/06/papers_reveal_jfk_efforts_on_vietnam/?page=1
JFK had said he “would never send US draftees to fight in another nation’s civil war.” That didn’t stop his successors, though.
Ours would be a very different world today had President Kennedy completed his term in office. That thought was anathema to those who gain power and make money off war.
Actually I’m just marking it to read later.
