Earlier this week we were reminded, once again, of that awful, fateful day in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It’s now been 47 years. It gets no less horrific.
For many Americans, given our penchant for being history challenged, not enough is known of JFK beyond gruesome Zapruder footage, the Cuban missile crisis and maybe references to Jacqueline Kennedy. Not nearly enough is known, for example, of his Cold War crucible at home, when he was a president often under siege by his own Cold Warriors.
A re-read of his famous “Ask Not” inaugural speech is a reminder that Kennedy was calling for more than selflessness in January 1961. He was also assuming the office–and priorities–of Cold Warrior-in-Chief. To wit: “…We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
No, Vietnam was not a quantum leap.
But Kennedy had evolved by the autumn of 1963. Confronting Soviet ICBMs 90 miles away in Cuba, realizing the apocalyptic implications for mankind, and having his own young children had been as close to an epiphany as an American politician could get. One that didn’t want to be succeeded by a President Goldwater in 1964.
Shortly before leaving for Dallas, JFK was given a casualty update on Vietnam. Here’s what he then told Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, the man who would formally announce the president’s death two days later in Parkland Hospital: “After I come back from Texas, that’s going to change. Vietnam is not worth another American life.”
Moreover, this was in the aftermath of Kennedy’s issuance of National Security Action Memorandum 263 on Oct. 11, 1963. In it he was making it official government policy to withdraw from Vietnam “1,000 (of the 16,000) U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963” and “by the end of 1965 … the bulk of U.S. personnel.”
It was, in effect, an extension of Kennedy’s (now) celebrated June 10, 1963, “peace speech” at American University. This is where he memorably criticized the concept of a “Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war” and called for America to “re-examine our attitude toward the Soviet Union.” Kennedy also made the case for not (along with the U.S.S.R.) “devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty and disease.”
“And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity,” underscored Kennedy. “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit the same small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”
Warmongers Resist
The generals, still seething over Kennedy’s reluctance to invade Cuba or attack the Soviets while America still held the ostensible upper nuclear hand, were not impressed. Any more than they were by the 1963 nuclear test ban treaty or wheat sales to the “enemy”: the Soviets. The American University speech, ironically, played better in the U.S.S.R. than the U.S.A.
When it came to Vietnam, Kennedy wasn’t seeing light at the end of the tunnel. He was seeing a gusher of American blood, an inevitable byproduct of open-ended discretion conceded to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, featuring the hard line likes of Chairman Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer and Air Force Gen. Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, and their CIA enablers. Even Kennedy’s ambassador to Saigon, erstwhile political foe Henry Cabot Lodge, was working at cross purposes. Some of his advisers, including Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and uber trouble-shooter Averell Harriman, were not consistently on board.
In effect, the president, who was becoming increasingly dependent on back-channel contacts with Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, was routinely undermined by those who didn’t want to see Vietnam go the way of “neutral” Laos and didn’t want to risk losing more Cold War dominoes.
But Kennedy would find an ironic ally in retired Gen. Douglas MacArthur. He told the president that “Anyone wanting to commit American ground forces to the mainland of Asia should have his head examined.” JFK reveled in sharing the advice with the Joint Chiefs.
He also valued the counsel of Democratic Sen. Mike Mansfield, who had replaced Lyndon Johnson as Majority Leader. He was known as the Senate’s authority on Indochina. He had also championed the rise of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem in 1955. Then he did a 180. He delivered a devastating report to Kennedy on how the U.S. was being drawn inexorably into the infamous role vacated by the colonial French.
By late November of ’63, JFK had already seen–and foreseen–enough and was encouraged by the test ban treaty and the farmers’ more-than-favorable response to those Soviet wheat sales. By all accounts, he was preparing to decommit American troops to Vietnam.
“There is no doubt that he had shifted definitely and unequivocally on Vietnam,” later lamented Sen. Mansfield, “but he never had the chance to put the plan into effect.”
The rest is tragic history. President Lyndon Johnson wasn’t about to say no to the generals. Or even to Ambassador Lodge. In fact, on Sunday, Nov. 24, 1963, Kennedy had a meeting scheduled with Lodge. To fire him.