Reply #15: Fact: JFK signed executive orders starting the WITHDRAWAL of U.S. military 'advisers'

[Peace Patriot]

from Vietnam just before he died. LBJ rescinded those orders immediately after JFK's death in late 1963, and, within 11 months, we were in a full scale war in Vietnam, based on the lies and trickery of the "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution, a war in which 2 million people were about to be slaughtered and over 55,000 U.S. troops--a mind-boggling war profiteer escalation that JFK would never have supported.

JFK thwarted the invasion of Cuba, a war that the CIA tried to inflict on him early in his shortened term as president. He also managed to prevent a nuclear war with Soviet Russia (by the compromise of withdrawing U.S. missiles from Turkey--a compromise that the 'hawks' in the U.S. government and military opposed). By the end of his term, he had signed the first nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and gave an extraordinary speech promoting world peace at the United Nations.

JFK and his brother also drafted or laid the ground work for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the anti-poverty legislation that was passed in the same period, just after he was killed.

Your argument that JFK accomplished little in his shortened term is a non sequitur. Think about this: "JFK could have been a great president had he lived and served a second term, but history (ahem...the 'lone assassin's magic bullet') says otherwise (sure did). His accomplishments were few (because he was dead). In fact, it was LBJ who carried out the agenda JFK put in motion." (--LBJ and, not incidentally, JFK's brother, first as A.G., then as a U.S. Senator and the likely successor of both JFK and LBJ).

If you know anything about the Congress that JFK had to work with, and the climate of the times--barely out of the 'red-baiting' McCarthy era--you would understand better why the civil rights, voting rights and anti-poverty policies of the JFK administration were hard to implement in the little time he had. In fact, on November 22, 1963, I was sitting in a student union building in Los Angeles, reading about JFK's trip to Texas (on the front page of the Los Angeles Times), to prepare the way for his own reelection and the election of a progressive Congress in 1964, in order to pass this legislation. He was hated by southern bigots because he supported black civil rights. His trip to Texas was an effort to bolster progressive forces in the south. It took courage to make that trip. That is what I was thinking about at the very moment that I heard the news on the student union radio that he had been shot in Dallas: JFK's courage--a quality that you dismiss much too easily as "few accomplishments."

The courage to defy the CIA, in the many wars they were trying to drag the U.S. into.
The courage to defy the 'hawks' on withdrawing missiles from Turkey.
The courage to defy the war profiteers that Ike had warned him about (the "military-industrial complex").
The courage to propose worldwide nuclear disarmament.
The courage to try to start bending the U.S. military budget toward peaceful programs, like putting men on the moon.
The courage to go to Dallas.

In his shortened term of office, he was aiming the U.S. out of the "Cold War" towards a more peaceful world. You dismiss this learning curve too easily. He didn't live long enough to finish it.

Nor did his brother.