JFK after watching the second installment of "The Vietnam War"

[question everything]

We've always held LBJ responsible for the war. The marches, the chanting, his decision not to seek re-election because of the war. The anti-war theme of the 1968 campaign.

As reported in the first installment, JFK visited there before he ran for Congress, in 1947, talked to a knowledgeable journalist and declared his support for an independent Vietnam.

But then, once he took office, he bought into the "Domino Theory." The more corrupt Bien regime was, the more oppressive, the greater was JFK resolve to stay there.

Yes, the Cuban Missiles Crisis highlighted the danger of the Soviet interest in expanding its sphere of influence, but I am still puzzled by JFK decision to stay there.

Two poignant comments from veterans: the first: JFK told me to go and he was God. The second: we were probably the last generation that believed what our government was telling us.

Just read an editorial in the Chicago Tribune about the program and their conclusion should resonate with us:

In all, the Vietnam War provides enduring lessons, but also puzzles. How is it that four decades after the morass of Vietnam, America is 16 years into another long-running, problematic war, this one in Afghanistan? What does that say about the significance of studying history?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-vietnam-ken-burns-pbs-0915-20170913-story.html

[LeftInTX]

1. Kennedy sent my dad, twice.

Although they were short TODs....(about a month each)

[ucrdem]

2. LOL, don't believe it. He didn't buy into the Domino Theory, he predicted the quagmire reality.

He defended the Diem brothers for personal reasons at least until the rogue CIA assassinated them but he had absolutely no intention of staying in Indochina after he won reelection in November. But the revisionists won't let go of this one, go figure.

p.s. here's his 1960 campaign theme:

[question everything]

5. But until the elections - which were more than a year away - he was going to tolerate

the brutality, the loss of life, the immolation of priests?

And I just recently read that LBJ did not want to end the war, either, after his reelection in 1964 because he wanted to concentrate on the Great Society. A novel goal, no doubt, but meanwhile the situation there was deteriorated.

Will have to wait for the next installment. This one ended with JFK assassination.

[ucrdem]

7. No, LBJ didn't want to end it.

He was the candidate from Burnham Root, remember? But JFK saw it as a colonial war and he saw colonial wars as inevitable and unwinnable. The US had obligations to France but it was clearly as hopeless as Algeria and he didn't want to get dragged into what we eventually got dragged into. France had already lost in Algeria by then.

[Spider Jerusalem]

9. LOL yourself

Mr. Brinkley: Mr. President, have you had any reason to doubt this so-called "domino theory," that if South Viet-Nam falls, the rest of southeast Asia will go behind it?

THE PRESIDENT. No, I believe it. I believe it. I think that the struggle is close enough. China is so large, looms so high just beyond the frontiers, that if South Viet-Nam went, it would not only give them an improved geographic position for a guerrilla assault on Malaya, but would also give the impression that the wave of the future in southeast Asia was China and the Communists. So I believe it.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=9397

[ucrdem]

13. Right, I've seen it. Quite the gotcha considering that he was killed shortly after.

Anyway that was the official US position propounded partly as I recall to head off a 1964 challenge from the bellicose right.

[riverbendviewgal]

3. I noticed one of the supporters of the show is David H. KOCH

Perhaps some history was "rearranged".

[question everything]

6. The reality is that the Kock brothers, or, perhaps only one of them, has been an underwriter

for many PBS programs.

But I cannot imagine he causing history to be "rearranged." There are too many historians who would cry bloody murder.

[BigmanPigman]

24. I laugh out loud then say a few 4 letter words

everything I hear that the Kochs are paying for anything on PBS...(hypocrites).

[karynnj]

21. Ken Burns is the documentarian

He is a friend of many Democrats.

[SharonClark]

4. "We've always held LBJ responsible for the war."

Not all of us held LBJ responsible for the war but he was responsible for continuing it.

This is a powerful documentary but the first 1.5 hour segment on the background leading up to the US involvement should have been longer and more comprehensive. There was so much good information that just flew past the viewer.

[Arkansas Granny]

35. I learned a lot of the background in the first segment. I was a high school student, then a young

wife and mother during that period and probably didn't pay as much attention as I would today. You also have to remember that we didn't have the 24/7 news coverage and analysis that we have today. You read the paper, listened to the radio or watched the 30 minute news that was carried on three networks.

[RandySF]

8. If you want to go back to JFK, let's also go back to Eisenhower.

After Eisenhower took office in January 1953, US aid to the French effort in Vietnam increased, and by 1954 the US was paying 80 percent of the financial cost of the French effort. The Communists were receiving heavy weaponry from China, which was no longer bogged down in Korea, and the Communists were defeating the French. Since September 1954 France was a member of the Eisenhower administration's Southeast Asia alliance (SEATO). The view of France fighting to re-establish its colonialism in Southeast Asia was minimized in favor of France fighting communist aggression.

The French asked the US to contribute air and naval power. Admiral Radford, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, wanted to help the French with a force of planes from the aircraft carriers Essex and Boxer. Army Chief of Staff, Matthew Ridgway, complained to Eisenhower that US bombing would need to be followed by US ground troops – around 500,000 – and that Vietnam was a mess not worth getting into. Eisenhower listened to Ridgway and also heard a chorus of calls for intervention from the let's-be-strong members of Congress, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the National Security Council.

If the Communists win in Vietnam, said Secretary of State Dulles on 26 March 1954, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand would be threatened. Eisenhower agreed. He believed in the domino theory of falling nations in Southeast Asia. Congressmen wanted France to declare Indochina independent so that the United States would not appear to be fighting for colonialism, but France did not want to declare Indochina independent. The Eisenhower administration decided that if the US was to intervene in Vietnam it had to have allies, and Dulles went to Britain, where Winston Churchill – now eighty - was again prime minister. Churchill's view of the communist menace had changed since his "iron curtain" speech in 1946. On 1 January 1953 he had spoken of the Soviet Union having digestive problems regarding its satellites in Eastern Europe, and he had predicted that Eastern Europe would be free of communism in about thirty years or so. Churchill did not fear that the Russians were out to conquer the world or that the free nations were so weak that they were about to crumble. He saw weakness instead in the Soviet Union's position in Eastern Europe. Churchill was opposed to joining Britain to a US intervention in Vietnam. And some in the United States favoring a more aggressive stand against communism dismissed Churchill as having become senile.

Dulles also asked Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines to join a US effort to stop the Communists in Vietnam, but without success. A month later, on May 7, the French at Dienbienphu surrendered to the Viet Minh, with Dulles claiming that the US would have joined the war in Vietnam if it had not been for Britain's opposition.


http://www.fsmitha.com/h2/ch24t4.htm

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. Go back to Truman.

FDR in conference with Stalin in Tehran in 1943 agreed that Indochina (as it was then) shouldn't return to French rule at the end of the war. Then FDR died, and at Potsdam Truman told De Gaulle "you want to reclaim your territory in Indochina? Go ahead, here, have some money for military aid since you're fighting communist insurgents".

[elleng]

14. Right, thanks, was gonna post that,

but you did so with more facts than at my fingertips.

[pokerfan]

19. This!

French colonialism of Indochina China should have ended with the end of WWII. They had lost twice. First to the Nazis and then with the French (Vichy) collaborating with Imperial Japan in Indochina. Imagine an independent Vietnam in 1945 which should have been granted in 1918 or 1919. Vietnam would have been a fierce ally of the U.S. had we done this, whether or not HCM went Communist. Not only was it time (for the end of colonialism), it was the right thing to do.

What? To the losers go the spoils? The rubber and tin tin and (yes) the opium? To hell with that. And Charles de Gaulle's threat to join the Soviet bloc? You always call a bluff that makes no sense.

Where's my time machine?

[Warren DeMontague]

27. Exactly. Ho Chi Minh was already working with the OSS.

He quoted Jefferson in declaring an independent Vietnam.

It just blows me away at how fucking ignorant and wrong-headed we were.

[dalton99a]

20. And that little money became $3 billion

and soon the French had 500,000 troops in Vietnam - and got stuck until they were thrown out in 1954

[question everything]

31. And, of course, Churchill was wiser than all of them

I've often wondered about the fear of Communism in this country. Did any one ever think that the Soviet Union could take over this country, the way it did in Eastern Europe?

And no matter how many here were proud to call themselves Communists, they would have never been able to take control anyplace.

The reason why this country will never have a revolution is because most Americans do not hate the rich; they want to be rich. (Just an aside).

[RandySF]

11. Is it me, or do most editorials and columns in the Tribune bash Democrats?

Here's a real gem:

Liberal America has a political violence problem

Hamburg, Germany, July. As world leaders gather for the G20 summit, far-left “anti-fascist” (antifa) rioters set fire to cars and property, terrorize residents and injure more than 200 police officers attempting to keep the peace. Did you miss it? CNN’s initial reports referred to the “protesters” as “eclectic” and “peaceful.”

But you need not cross the shining seas to experience violence, destruction of property and a general dismantling of liberal values from the political left. You could simply visit America’s elite college campuses like Yale or Middlebury or Berkeley, where tomorrow’s leaders attempt to shut down conservative voices with protest or riots. At Middlebury, rioting students landed liberal professor Allison Stanger in a neck brace for the crime of defending a conservative academic’s right to speak. At Berkeley, mobs of students created a “war zone” ahead of a planned visit from conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, injuring Trump supporters and causing $100,000 in damages.

Or head to Portland, Ore., one of the most liberal cities in the nation in the heart of the progressive Pacific Northwest, which this month Politico labeled “America’s Most Politically Violent City.” The progressive paradise —where Republicans are virtually an extinct species — has witnessed millions in damages attributed to the same types of anti-fascists-in-name-only that kept Hamburg residents paralyzed in fear this month. A “counter-protest” to a planned pro-Trump rally landed 14 antifa in jail for attacking the police with explosives and bricks.

Witness the blood-soaked congressional baseball field in Alexandria, Va., site of the June attack on U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and other Republicans batting up for their annual bipartisan game. James Hodgkinson, a “fervent supporter of progressive politics,” showed up to the field with a rifle, a handgun and a hit list of Republicans. As Scalise fought for his life, MSNBC host Joy Reid felt conflicted: The attempted assassination was a “delicate thing” because of Scalise’s conservative views like opposition to gay marriage. “Are we required in a moral sense to put that aside in the moment?” she wondered. Yes, Joy, you are. The shooting of a mainstream, congressional Republican leader is reprehensible, and in no way justifiable.)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-liberals-antifa-violence-20170718-story.html

[RhodeIslandOne]

12. They endorsed Gary Johnson

That's all you need to know.

Other than Clarence Page, they are worthless.

[mopinko]

15. compared to the days of old man mc cormick, they are pussy cats. but yeah.

at least, for decades, the crap stayed on the opinion pages. round about the ronnie years, they started firing good reporters and closing all the foreign bureaus. then it wasnt hard to see the bias on every page but the grocery store ads.

[karynnj]

22. The Chicago Tribune leans right and it has for at least 50 years. Nt

[ProfessorGAC]

30. Much Farther Back Than That

They were very strong FDR critics all the way back into the 1930's. The founder was a crackpot.

[question everything]

28. They certainly have been on the right, historically

I think that for many years their motto was "My country right or wrong."

But that comment that I posted, about the need to learn the lessons of Vietnam to apply to Afghanistan are certainly valid.

[msongs]

16. USA supported free elections then refused to honor the outcome. that's where it began for us nt

[tirebiter]

17. Kennedy had begun a withdrawl from Vietnam

This was no secret in the service. LBJ promised to continue Kennedy's policy meaning he'd continue the withdrawal but once elected he halted the withdrawal. Read Maj. John Newman's "JFK and Vietnam."

The thing to keep in mind about Vietnam is Ho Chi Minh was willing to kill as many Vietnamese as it took to win the war and we weren't. JFK got involved and realized the stakes. MacNamara did the math and saw how things would end. Tried to tell his boss...

[karynnj]

23. Johnson became President when JFK died, not when he was elected

There have been accounts that JFK intended to get out after the election. There are others who deny that.

[tirebiter]

25. Timing. LBJ ran for reelection a year after the assassination.

One need not rely on "accounts." Historical records tell the tale. JFK was drawing down before his death.

[FairWinds]

18. Well, from a historical point of view, Vietnam did have a . .

tiny thread of justification (Commie threat, dominoes),

the Iraq invasion of 2003 had ZERO sane rationale or reason,

100% lies.

And from a strategic standpoint (for those who give a rat about
the fate of the empire) Iraq was really way stupider.

Veterans For Peace (which, btw, is having a lively discussion
about the Burns/Novick Doc)

[question everything]

32. Ah, but Hussein tried to kill Papa Bush!

That was the "justification"

[Hekate]

26. JFK had plans to start withdrawal, iirc, which were forestalledby his assassination...

Then everything he planned or thought of doing past that November went dark.

This recollection is very old and I've never independently researched it (no Google or Wiki in 1967-68). I'm glad to see others confirm it. Tha ks.

One of my friends, Bob, was a Poli Sci major who talked us into supporting a Senator we'd never heard of: Eugene McCarthy, the first to come out as a presidential candidate in opposition to the war that was taking so many of our friends.

As college kids will do, we often talked far into the night -- it was Bob who brought up that bit about JFK. It struck us so hard -- the catastrophe that was the Vienam War did not have to become what it became.

[question everything]

33. And yet, McCarthy never endorsed Humphrey

left town. Had he did, many anti war voters who chose to stay home may have come out to vote and defeat Nixon.

Our history is full of the roads to hell paved with good intentions..

[Hekate]

34. I became a Democrat-for-life in 1968, and nothing has shaken me from that stance since ...

I have no patience for those who let ego get in the way of trying to stop the Party of Goldwater (okay, he lost), Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, and now Trump. I have no fcks to give for those who bleat that there is no difference between the two major parties.

[jalan48]

29. In my high school civics class we were educated about the Vietnam War from information supplied

by the Department of Defense. We "learned" about the War and the reasons for its existence from pamphlets provided by our own government. All those young men volunteering because they thought our country was in peril. In the end Imperialism was what it was about.