Justice for JFK

[allrevvedup]

474. Thank you!

And thanks for the courteous response. Not everybody agrees here but I guess that's why this thread is pushing 500 replies. Hope we don't break the software, lol. As to your points, they deserve more consideration that I'm about to give them, so I hope to return later to fill in the gaps, but to prime the pump:

1 - On Douglass: I just looked through my copy and I agree that the organization is overly complicated. I think he tried to organize it thematically instead of chronologically so yeah there's a certain amount of repetition. But look on the bright side: my copy lacks an index! And I agree, the Khrushchev back channel was astonishing and entirely new to me, and the Castro back-channel too, which flies in the face of Chomsky wisdom.

2 - I think it's pretty clear who did it, i.e. disgruntled mil-intel types aided and abetted by disgruntled oil types and of course Brown and Root, aka Halliburton, coincidentally headquartered in Dallas, long-time backers of a certain Lyndon Johnson, as explained in "The Candidate from Brown and Root," Austin Chronicle, Aug. 25, 2000, link: http://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2000-08-25/78397/

3 - I think it's also pretty clear that JFK wanted to get out of the domino business and to be perceived as exiting Vietnam before the 1964 election, as supported by evidence in Douglass and in Simkin's EF article linked above, for example a 1988 interview with John McCone, and other sources including the well-known NSAM #263 of Oct. 11, 1963.

4 - One point I take issue with Douglass on is JFK's conversion, religious or otherwise, to a strategy of peace. Douglass dramatizes it with the Merton material but JFK was already pursuing that course while campaigning in 1960 and even before that. Yes he made Ike's reluctance to openly commit ground troops to SE Asia an issue, as Chomsky and others make manifestly clear, but he was running against Nixon. Douglass has a lot of material on the nuts and bolts but it seems JFK got burned a few times going along with the mil-intel guys, who were hot to nuke somebody, for example in the Bay of Pigs, and wised up fast. The problem was the mil-intel guys didn't want to be wised up, hence Nov. 22.

5 - There are many more reasons why I think JFK would not under any circumstances have escalated Vietnam, and it's clear he had no interest in getting bogged down there or anywhere else. His father for example was no interventionist, neither was Teddy, and intervention was incompatible with his signature policy of nuclear nonproliferation. Anyway I'll cut to the chase with a quotation from a 1960 campaign speech:

We can push a button to start the next war but there is no push-button magic to winning a lasting and enduring peace. To be peace loving is not enough, for the Sermon on the Mount saved its blessings for the peacemakers. The generation which I speak for has seen enough of warmongers. Let our great role in history be that of peacemakers. But in the two areas where peace can be won, in the field of disarmament and in our representations abroad, this country has been ill served.

-- San Francisco, Nov. 2, 1960, from a Sorenson collection of JFK's writings and speeches.

And so on. He pretty much campaigned on the issue and in his 1958 book (can't locate it at the moment) he goes on at great length praising the Bolivarian revolution sweeping Latin America and even has good words for comrade Fidel. Hard to believe, hard to find now, but true.