Kennedy, Vietnam and Iraq

[Classical_Liberal]

Kennedy, Vietnam and Iraq
The evidence is clear: JFK decided to withdraw from Vietnam a month before he was assassinated. Setting the record straight is crucial as Baghdad continues to explode.

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By James K. Galbraith



Nov. 22, 2003 | This week's crescendo of Kennedy commemoration has ranged from banal to lurid. The New York Times' Alessandra Stanley has pointed out how the event signaled the rise of modern television as our dominant medium for news. Forty years later, every vice of TV is on display: an obsession with glamour, sex, hearsay, computer simulation and sentimental appeals to authority; along with reckless disregard for evidence, complicated ideas, policies and organizations. Plainly, given the nature of the medium, access to even a small part of the underlying history of our defining trauma will be restricted to those who read.

Meanwhile, over in Iraq, crashing helicopters are giving resonance to a persistent mystery: What exactly was Kennedy planning to do, in the fall of 1963, about Vietnam? Some parallels between the two wars are uncanny. In both cases, U.S. intervention was driven by small, secretive, bellicose, conspiratorial factions within the government. In both cases, military intelligence was officially optimistic -- but the optimism was believed neither by its authors nor its readers. In both cases, the question of how and when to exit had to be considered early on -- and in light of an upcoming election campaign. In both cases, though details were energetically shielded from public view (and though neither North Vietnam nor Iraq had nuclear weapons), the specter of escalation to nuclear war hung over the conflict. The fate of millions depended (and today still depends) on how carefully and responsibly the decision-makers in Washington behaved.

In the Vietnam case, events took an ugly turn, beginning in November 1963, and spun out of control thereafter. As that happened, Kennedy's exit strategy disappeared from history for decades. What will happen to us in Iraq remains to be seen. To be sure, there are those who wanted us in and do not want us to leave; their next move will be interesting to watch. Now, as then, the government is divided, and neither faction is anxious to lose. So it is worthwhile to read the history of Kennedy and Vietnam now, partly for its own sake, partly for general lessons about neocolonial war, and partly with a view to understanding how the questions of national security and domestic politics play out in Washington

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/22/vietnam/index.html