Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: JFK worked to keep peace, bring prosperity for all. Others since 22 Nov 1963, not so much. [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)8. JFK was a Democrat of the New Deal.
He believed in using the powers of government to make life better for ALL Americans. He also believed in democracy for other countries, from Congo to Vietnam.
Dodd and Dulles vs. Kennedy in Africa
In assessing the central character ...
Gibbons description of the Byzantine general
Belisarius may suggest a comparison:
His imperfections flowed from the contagion of the times;
his virtues were his own.
Richard Mahoney on President Kennedy
By Jim DiEugenio
CTKA, From the January-February 1999 issue (Vol. 6 No. 2)
EXCERPT
The Self-Education of John F. Kennedy
During Kennedys six years in the House, 1947-1952, he concentrated on domestic affairs, bread and butter issues that helped his middle class Massachusetts constituents. As Henry Gonzalez noted in his blurb for Donald Gibsons Battling Wall Street, he met Kennedy at a housing conference in 1951 and got the impression that young Kennedy was genuinely interested in the role that government could play in helping most Americans. But when Kennedy, his father, and his advisers decided to run for the upper house in 1952, they knew that young Jack would have to educate himself in the field of foreign affairs and gain a higher cosmopolitan profile. After all, he was running against that effete, urbane, Boston Brahmin Henry Cabot Lodge. So Kennedy decided to take two seven-week-long trips. The first was to Europe. The second was a little unusual in that his itinerary consisted of places like the Middle East, India, and Indochina. (While in India, he made the acquaintance of Prime Minister Nehru who would end up being a lifelong friend and adviser.)
Another unusual thing about the second trip was his schedule after he got to his stops. In Saigon, he ditched his French military guides and sought out the names of the best reporters and State Department officials so he would not get the standard boilerplate on the French colonial predicament in Indochina. After finding these sources, he would show up at their homes and apartments unannounced. His hosts were often surprised that such a youthful looking young man could be a congressman. Kennedy would then pick their minds at length as to the true political conditions in that country.
If there is a real turning point in Kennedys political career it is this trip. There is little doubt that what he saw and learned deeply affected and altered his world view and he expressed his developing new ideas in a speech he made upon his return on November 14, 1951. Speaking of French Indochina he said: "This is an area of human conflict between civilizations striving to be born and those desperately trying to retain what they have held for so long." He later added that "the fires of nationalism so long dormant have been kindled and are now ablaze....Here colonialism is not a topic for tea-talk discussion; it is the daily fare of millions of men." He then criticized the U. S. State Department for its laid back and lackadaisical approach to this problem:
One finds too many of our representatives toadying to the shorter aims of other Western nations with no eagerness to understand the real hopes and desires of the people to which they are accredited.
The basic idea that Kennedy brought back from this trip was that, in the Third World, the colonial or imperial powers were bound to lose in the long run since the force of nationalism in those nascent countries was so powerful, so volcanic, that no extended empire could contain it indefinitely. This did not mean that Kennedy would back any revolutionary force fighting an imperial power. Although he understood the appeal of communism to the revolutionaries, he was against it. He wanted to establish relations and cooperate with leaders of the developing world who wished to find a "third way," one that was neither Marxist nor necessarily pro-Western. He was trying to evolve a policy that considered the particular history and circumstances of the nations now trying to break the shackles of poverty and ignorance inflicted upon them by the attachments of empire. Kennedy understood and sympathized with the temperaments of those leaders of the Third World who wished to be nonaligned with either the Russians or the Americans and this explains his relationships with men like Nehru and Sukarno of Indonesia. So, for Kennedy, Nixons opposition toward Ho Chi Minhs upcoming victory over the French in Vietnam was not so much a matter of Cold War ideology, but one of cool and measured pragmatism. As he stated in 1953, the year before the French fell:
The war would never be successful ... unless large numbers of the people of Vietnam were won over from their sullen neutrality and open hostility. This could never be done ... unless they were assured beyond doubt that complete independence would be theirs at the conclusion of the war.
To say the least, this is not what the Dulles brothers John Foster and Allen had in mind. Once the French empire fell, they tried to urge upon Eisenhower an overt American intervention in the area. When Eisenhower said no, Allen Dulles sent in a massive CIA covert operation headed by Air Force officer Edward Lansdale. In other words, the French form of foreign domination was replaced by the American version.
CONTINUED
http://www.ctka.net/pr199-africa.html
Jim DiEugenio is a DUer.
Thank you for caring about what being a Kennedy Democrat is all about, Waiting For Everyman. That is, the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.
Edit history
Please sign in to view edit histories.
114 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
RecommendedHighlight replies with 5 or more recommendations
JFK worked to keep peace, bring prosperity for all. Others since 22 Nov 1963, not so much. [View all]
Octafish
Nov 2015
OP
Don't turn a nice post into some CT shit. Just keep it like it was. I knew you started it for this.
Logical
Nov 2015
#13
The video taken minutes before the assassination shows the agents ordered OFF the bumper.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#47
If logical questions unanswered all these years bother you, change your name
MrMickeysMom
Nov 2015
#78
I caught a little bit of a program today that was running clips of the actual coverage from
dflprincess
Nov 2015
#34
Thanks, Octafish! JFK and his story are really more complicated than his admirers or detractors....
LongTomH
Nov 2015
#3
Thank you, CaliforniaPeggy! Did you read what Prescott Bush wrote to Clover Dulles?
Octafish
Nov 2015
#31
Thank you, my dear octafish--I had not read this. Pretty interesting stuff!
CaliforniaPeggy
Nov 2015
#35
Phil Shenon on Coast To Coast last night claims Poppy had no connection to the assassination
librechik
Nov 2015
#49
Guy is working to divert discussion of conspiracy involving secret US agencies.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#69
People still love JFK and project their hopes on him decades later. In truth he was moderate.
craigmatic
Nov 2015
#6
Ok name one initiative he got put in place to help the poor in this country?
craigmatic
Nov 2015
#12
Plus Peace Corps, space program, nuclear test ban treaty, and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964
ucrdem
Nov 2015
#32
Recording of JFK telling Sargent Shriver not to let CIA infiltrate the Peace Corps [audio]
MinM
Nov 2015
#56
The truth about how close we came to annihilating each other wasn't known for 30 years.
Major Hogwash
Nov 2015
#52
Interview with blacklisted comedian, Mort Sahl, 1968 quotes and warnings after JFK's death.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#98
CIA Dulles hired MAFIA to kill Castro in 1960, yet US media continue to misreport it as JFK's idea.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#106
''All of them together will observe the law of silence...They don't want to know.''
Octafish
Nov 2015
#107
Regarding Bay of Pigs: Dulles and CIA did not tell JFK security mission was compromised.
Octafish
Nov 2015
#71
Recced. Thanks for the o.p. info, and for making a space for the info provided by other good
Mc Mike
Nov 2015
#92
Stephanie's 2-22-2006 UAE and BCCI thread reposted for those that love the truth
bobthedrummer
Nov 2015
#99
Who could imagine "our" goverment would actively seek to move jobs overseas.
Enthusiast
Nov 2015
#102