Pentagon Proposes....wait for it....Boots on the Ground.

[leveymg]

46. So much of this still resonates.

I hear undertones of, "When they stand up, we can stand down" and rumblings of the Iraq insurgency is "in its Last Throws" and Gen. Petraeus' The Surge in the following:

Elsewhere in the conversation, it becomes obvious that McNamara’s withdrawal plan was contingent on getting the South Vietnamese to fight. General Maxwell Taylor is heard chiming in to say that when he asks his army officers,

When can you finish this job in the sense that you will reduce this insurgency to little more than sporadic incidents? Inevitably, with the exception of the [Mekong] Delta, they would say, ‘64 would be ample time.’ I realize that’s not necessarily…I assume there’s no major new factors entering [unclear]. I realize that….

And then President Kennedy interrupts Taylor to say, “Well, let’s say it anyway. Then, ‘65, if it doesn’t work out, [unclear: we’ll get a new date].”

The evidence is obviously murky. There is nothing clear-cut in these conversations one way or the other. But it is probably safe to say that President Kennedy had not made up his mind about Vietnam before he was assassinated. Bundy’s assistant, Michael V. Forrestal, later told CBS in 1971 that on November 21, 1963, Kennedy had told him in the Oval Office that when he got back from Dallas, “I want to start a complete and very profound review of how we got into this country, and what we thought we were doing, and what we think we can do. I even want to think about whether or not we should be there.”

This sounds like Kennedy—but this too is oral history told long after the fact.

Kai Bird
Kathmandu, Nepal

Nothing really changes, and not many lessons learned. Except for promises of No Boots, for now.