General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: What if JFK, MLK and RFK had lived? [View all]coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)in governing South Vietnam. IOW, if and only if the puppets were able to self-govern, then the U.S. would pull out. Otherwise, faced with the rule of the inept and corrupt council of generals and continued gains by the NLF in the countryside, JFK might equally have opted to escalate.
I'm not cooking this up out of thin air - it is the assessment of most serious historians who have studied the Kennedy administration and its foreign policy.
Please don't misunderstand me. I think JFK showed an enormous capacity for growth as a human being while in office and it is possible that, after Jan. 1965, he very well might have withdrawn as the moral bankruptcy of our policy made itself ever clearer. But the consensus is that, in November 1963, JFK was keeping his options open. Seen through one lens, that's effective leadership and policy-making.