Originally posted by: ProfJohn
Craig, I understand that Giuliani has a secret plan to end the Iraq war once he is elected. He can?t talk about that plan though since he knows that so many conservatives oppose the idea. So he will keep talking tough for the next year and then when elected he will end the war? :roll:
John, idiotic attempts at satire to cover your ignorance are not helpful.
If I post sarcasm about Squeaky Frohm being in a conspiracy to shoot Ford, have I said anything of substance about John Wilkes Booth being in a conspiracy?
You try to substitute sarcasm for any actual knowledge of what the hell you're talking about, of which you have nothing but a few cherry picked quotes.
Your continued insistence not to listen to the facts, not to get informed, reflects poorly on you.
Another nice quote for you:
"Kennedy hadn't said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would [completely] withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn."
You might want to actually say who you are quoting (Robert McNamara).
So Kennedy never said he would withdraw. The whole idea that he WOULD withdraw is based on the opinions of people who worked with him. Strangely most of these people didn't exprese these opinions until AFTER the war had fallen out of favor with everyone in the country.
You are not listening. I never said Kennedy said publically he would withdraw. The discussion is about the claim that JFK 'started' the war in Vietnam, and he did nearly the opposite - while he increased the advisers, he refused to send combat troops, and he did say publically that the war had to be lost or won by the Vietnamese, and that US participation was limited to material assistance and advisers, not combat troops.
We have to make an educated guess what he 'would have done'; we don't have a written 'secret plan' to unveil, we don't have a long-lost public statement to say proves his intent, we have what you would expect to have given what I said is the case - the informed opinions and quotes from his private conversations with trusted advisers and his other actions from which we can infer his direction. But I'm not saying Kennedy himself had a 100% plan - I have to repeat myself to you that he had a proclivity but kept options open.
I'm pretty sick and tired of your debate style of posting whatever cherry picked info you can find and ignoring all other evidence and stridently proclaiming you proved something.
Your own quotes, the unbolded parts, have Kennedy himself saying that he was seetting US policy to not limit US participation to supplies and advisers, i.e., not combat troops.
They have one of the few administration officials closest to this issue, Robert McNamara (the others include Robert Kennedy, Ted Sorensen, Maxwell Taylor) saying that Kennedy had listened to the 'what if Viet Nam were to be faced with being lost' debate, and that Kennedy had come down on the 'withdraw anyway' side, in private meetings (see quote below).
And there are all the bits of evidence you don't include, such as his trusted friend and political ally Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, who as I said and repeat to you again, Kennedy sent to Viet Nam for an assessment he'd rely on more than those from the people he 'needed' to send, and who came back and told Kennedy the only sensible policy was to withdraw, and Kennedy told him that he had plans to do so but not until after the election. Was that entirely for politics? No, there was also seeing how the war was going.
It was at a stage Kennedy did not yet have to decide whether to withdraw, as McNamara said.
You can't be bothered to get informed, to read the books by independent scholars who each conclude Kennedy was likely to withdraw. You only post snide comments about the speculations you have on the fact that you heard more about this once Viet Nam became more unpopular. You discount the issue of how history takes time to come out; and you go beyond the simple political motive to publicize something more when opinions have changed to make the person look better, to accusing the people of fabricating the info.
With zero evidence. As usual.
It's not about what makes Kennedy look good or bad, it's about the accurate information on his policies and his likely policies.
But I'll repeat yet again, the claim was that JFK was the president who initiated the war in Viet Nam, and I challenged that false claim. He's a president who prevented a ground war. He had to balance many things, from determining how legitimate the 'Domino Theory' was - he may well have believed it was largely true, but he had to evaluate where the line could be drawn, to the politics, to seeing how the war was going. The evidence points to one conclusion, the one I stated.
You are not very familiar with the Kennedy administration much it seems, as you don't seem familiar with things like the relatively limited role of Dean Rusk as a sort of 'placeholder' Secretary of State since Kennedy was largely his own Secretary of State; while he thought more of McNamara, who he said was most likely to succeed him as president in 1968 (which LBJ's Viet Nam derailed).
For another example of the independent analysts' opinions, I'll quote one of the few who did not as clearly conclude Kennedy would withdraw, but his info still makes the point:
link
The argument that Kennedy, had he lived, would have steered the United States around and ultimately away from the kind of military investment his successor made in Vietnam must confront Kennedy's actual behavior as president: he approved escalation of the U.S. military advisory effort in Vietnam to direct U.S. involvement in combat operations in violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954, and he encouraged a coup against the Diem regime that dramatically elevated U.S. political responsibility for South Vietnam's fate. He did both of these things because he not only subscribed to the official rationales for a U.S. stand in Vietnam but also feared the domestic political reaction that abandonment of Vietnam would provoke. Having bungled a U.S.-sponsored invasion of communist Cuba and acceded to a neutralization scheme for Laos that many--including South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem--regarded as a sell-out to the communists, Kennedy could not afford to be seen as an appeaser in Vietnam. As he told senator and Vietnam skeptic Mike Mansfield after the Cuban Missile Crisis, "If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have another Red scare on our hands." In July 1963 he is said to have told reporters at an off-the-record news conference: "We don't have a prayer of staying in Vietnam.... But I can't give up a piece of territory like that to the Communists and get the American people to reelect me."
What you see here is not a Kennedy out with an agenda against the American people, but just as he gently guided the US public on civil rights, just as he was gently pushing the public opinion to be open to beginning detente with the USSR at the height of the cold war, an agenda which he was convinced was right for the nation, if the war was not going well from the material assistance and advisers, and which he recognized the need to lead the country to an opinion shift on.
Here's a good book on the topic:
American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Origins of the Vietnam War
As reviews noted:
"This masterpiece of governmental history locates the roots of the Vietnam War not in the Johnson or even Kennedy administration, but back in the military policies of the Eisenhower era. Eisenhower and his advisors took an aggressive attitude--including an openness to using nuclear weapons toward communist advances anywhere, "especially in Southeast Asia," Kaiser finds. Neutralist, nonaligned governments in emerging nations, such as in Laos, were treated as enemies; Kennedy was more open to nonaligned governments and more interested in detente than in war. But the positions of the Eisenhower administration were entrenched institutionally among both civilian and military advisors in the State and Defense Departments. Drawing on a host of documents from recently opened government archives and tape recordings of White House meetings, Kaiser offers voluminous and meticulous evidence that Kennedy repeatedly rejected, deferred or at least modified recommendations for military actionsAmost notably in Laos. Misled by aides into thinking we were winning in Vietnam, even after Diem's overthrow, Kennedy never aggressively redirected policy there. President Johnson, less skilled than Kennedy in foreign affairs, readily reverted to Eisenhower's narrow policy framework, despite the emergence of critics among his advisers whose thinking echoed Kennedy's. Kaiser repeatedly says they ignored problems they couldn't solve and failed to heed clear evidence that their assumptions were flawed, making defeat a foregone conclusion. This is a commanding work that sheds bright light on questions of responsibility for the Vietnam debacle."
"Kaiser (strategy and policy, Naval War Coll.; Politics and War) offers the second excellent investigation of the roots of the Vietnam War in as many years, following Fredrik Logevall's Choosing War (LJ 7/99). Having spent nine years researching recently declassified documents, the author describes in exacting detail the evolution of Vietnam policies from 1961 to 1965, the year that Johnson committed the United States to a war it couldn't win. Kaiser differs from Longevall by portraying Kennedy as skilled at keeping under control the prowar instincts of top cabinet members. The first-rate research is complemented by an intriguing model of intergenerational policy-making, whereby Kaiser attributes much of the failure to the heavy-handed actions of the "GI generation," the successful leaders of World War II. "
"According to Kaiser, "the four key men who led the United States into the Vietnam War" were Johnson, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy. Kaiser writes that "Johnson, McNamara, and Rusk - with Bundy's general support - had forged a personal bond around the cause of the war in South Vietnam." Kaiser's indictments are hard, if not harsh. Johnson never evinced "interest in any long-term alternative to escalation." The President later told Bundy, "I don't think [Vietnam is] worth fighting for," but Johnson seemed to believe that the United States could not get out without a substantial loss of face. Rusk "clung to his version of the lesson of the 1930s: that firmness alone could deter Communist aggression anywhere around the world." According to Kaiser, "[t]he mystique that built up around McNamara should not obscure the essence of his role: implementing other men's plans, in pursuit of other men's objectives," and "McNamara lacked the ability, or perhaps even the intention, to change the manner in which the U.S. Army planned to fight this war." And, in May 1964, Bundy told Johnson that "the US cannot tolerate the loss of Southeast Asia to Communism.""
Regarding the Robert Kennedy quotes, there are a few things to consider.
One is that as close as the brothers were, they were not unknown to conceal things from each other; for one famous anecdote, Robert Kennedy had managed John's presidential campaign, and when it came time to select a VP, had promised labor groups John would not select Lyndon Johnson, if they backed John; and John went ahead and selected Johnson, infuriating Robert. There were incidents during the presidency as well. Kennedy was not likely to have shared his speculations about withdrawal with Johnson, who was a supporter of Diem (having called Diem "the Winston Churchill of Southeaast Asia" on a visit, angerig Kennedy who was trying to get some distance from Diem who he later allowed to be removed in a coup (which killed Diem)), while he would share them with his friend Mike Mansfield who agreed with him and would keep them confidential, not try to undermine them.
Another is Robert Kennedy's careful phrasing; he did not contradict John's own limiting of the US assistance to materials and advisers; why would he say there was a policy to withdraw, at a time when the war was more popular and he was in the cabinet of Lyndon Johnson, when that was only a matter of speculation?
In fact, Robert was careful to take responsibility for the war policies of his brother, as he apologized for President Kennedy's part in escalating the war as Robert renounced it.
That, too, does not contradict John's limits on the US role not including combat troops, nor the chances he would withdraw. Some part of that may have been precisely because it would have looked opportunistic to reveal the private planning when it became closer to public opinion.
You have Robert saying there were no plans to end the limited assistance the US was providing, speaking in 1964 as a cabinet member (it reminds me of Bush saying there were 'no plans on his desk for invading Iraq' months before the invasion, as he was trying to pretend a vote for his war resolution was not a vote for war); and you have McNamara saying Kennedy had sided with the group who felt withdrawal was best in a while, and you have Mansfield as a close adviser saying Kennedy said he planned to withdraw by 1965.
On Walt Rostow, Kennedy had a number of hawkish advisers - who were a factor in Johnson escalating the war, because they led Johnson to believe that was Kennedy's planning as well - even though Johnson had to cancel Kennedy's directive leading away from the war.
You need to resolve these quotes, and determine the situation. You did not do so so far, with the cherry picking.
There were three groups of individuals among his advisers. One group believed that the situation [in South Vietnam] was moving so well that we could make a statement that we'd begin withdrawals and complete them by the end of 1965. Another group believed that the situation wasn't moving that well, but that our mission was solely training and logistics; we'd been there long enough to complete the training, if the South Vietnamese were capable of absorbing it, and if we hadn't proven successful, it's because we were incapable of accomplishing that mission and therefore we were justified in beginning withdrawal. The third group believed we hadn't reached the point where we were justified in withdrawing, and we shouldn't withdraw.
Kennedy listened to the debate, and finally sided with those who believed that either we had succeeded, or were succeeding, and therefore could begin our withdrawal; or alternatively we hadn't succeeded, but that ... we'd been there long enough to test our ability to succeed, and if we weren't succeeding we should begin the withdrawal because it was impossible to accomplish that mission. In any event, he made the decision [to begin withdrawing advisers] that day, and he did announce it. It was highly contested. ...
Kennedy hadn't said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would [completely] withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn rather than substitute U.S. combat troops for Vietnamese forces to save South Vietnam. I think he would have concluded that U.S. combat troops could not save Vietnam if Vietnam troops couldn't save it. That was the statement he in effect made publicly before his death, but at that time he hadn't had to choose between losing Vietnam, on the one hand, or putting in U.S. combat troops on the other. Had he faced the decision, I think he would have accepted the loss of Vietnam and refused to put in U.S. combat troops.
- Robert McNamara
Facebook
Twitter