"Kennedy was NOT receiving optimistic reports. From October 11 onward the CIAs reporting changed drastically. Official optimism was replaced by a searching and comparatively realistic pessimism, which involved rewriting assessments as far back as the previous July, was a response to NSAM 263. (The withdrawal policy)"
Which supports both Saunders and my contention that the policy that was drawn up under the previous optimistic assessments would most likely have been rethought since Kennedy was now receiving overwhelmingly pessimistic assessments. There is nothing in anything you've posted that shows Kennedy had changed his mind about stemming the spread of communism and supporting allies in their struggles to remain free. His statements on that policy remain consistent.
YET, 2 days before Kennedy was assassinated, the official US policy was still in place; withdrawal of 1,000 troops by the end of 1963 (troops WERE withdrawn) and full withdrawal by the end on 1965.
AGAIN, you have a right to an OPINION, but that is all it is. An opinion that totally disregards what Kennedy DIDN'T do during the 1,000 days he was President. Bay of Pigs, Kennedy refused to invade the island, Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy refused to invade the island, Berlin Wall goes up, Kennedy refused to use any military force, Laos, Kennedy refused to send in troops
and even Vietnam, Kennedy refused to send in troops. In the autumn of 1961, when Gen. Maxwell Taylor, a White House military adviser, and Walt Rostow returned from Vietnam recommending a commitment of 8,000 combat troops, Kennedy again rejected the proposal.
You have willfully engaged in the very thing you accuse me of..."cherry picking" and you continue to lie and make stuff up that is only based on what you 'feel' Kennedy would have done, and ignored what he DIDN'T do, what policy he put in place and what he told numerous people in and out of government.
You slander Arthur Schlesinger, Jr as a liar and anyone else who doesn't support your slander of Kennedy.
YET, HERE is what Arthur Schlesinger, Jr wrote in 1992. Hardly a man who is of the mindset you portray.
March 29, 1992
What Would He Have Done?
By ARTHUR SCHLESINGER JR.
What Would He Have Done?
Did you
REALLY just make the statement that Kennedy didn't send troops to Vietnam? Under Ike there were about 900 advisers in Vietnam...under Kennedy there were over 16,000 troops in Vietnam! If Kennedy didn't send them...who the heck DID?
Do you have a reading problem, or a comprehension problem? Do you know what 'combat troops' are?
John Newman spent years researching ONE question. Would John F. Kennedy have escalated Vietnam into AMERICA's war.
"JFK and Vietnam" is the most solid contribution yet to such speculation. Its author is John M. Newman, a retired Army officer with years of service in East Asia, now teaching East Asian history at the University of Maryland. His book is based on a meticulous and exhaustive examination of documents, many newly declassified -- internal memorandums, cables, transcripts of phone conversations, minutes of meetings, intelligence reports -- supplemented by oral histories in Presidential libraries and by interviews with people involved with Vietnam policy at the time. The narrative is straightforward and workmanlike, rather military in organization, tone and style.
His book's thesis is that Kennedy "would never have placed American combat troops in Vietnam" and that he was preparing for the withdrawal of the military advisers by the end of 1965. The Joint Chiefs of Staff began urging the commitment of combat units, Mr. Newman shows, as early as three months after Kennedy's inauguration. The Chiefs' wretched performance in endorsing the Bay of Pigs invasion and in proposing military intervention in Laos had fortunately disillusioned the President, and he rejected this advice then and thereafter. In the autumn of 1961, when Gen. Maxwell Taylor, a White House military adviser, and Walt Rostow returned from Vietnam recommending a commitment of 8,000 combat troops, Kennedy again rejected the proposal. As Mr. Newman writes: "There Kennedy drew the line. He would not go beyond it at any time during the rest of his Presidency."
I must declare an interest in this argument. I well remember the President's reaction to the Taylor-Rostow report. "They want a force of American troops," he told me. "The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears off and you have to take another."
Mr. Newman is, I think, essentially right about Kennedy. Whether Kennedy was right is a question Mr. Newman does not face. Would the outcome have been better had the President sent an American expeditionary force in 1961? I doubt it -- for reasons much on Kennedy's mind. Mr. Newman does not mention Kennedy's reaction, when he visited Vietnam as a young Congressman in 1951, to the French colonial army; but this was crucial in his skepticism about American military intervention. The war in Vietnam, he used to say, could be won only so long as it was a Vietnamese war. If we converted it into a white man's war, we would lose as the French had lost a decade earlier. (This is not latter-day recollection; I wrote it all nearly 30 years ago in "A Thousand Days.")
Nor does Mr. Newman mention Kennedy's relish in citing Gen. Douglas MacArthur's statement to him that it would be "a mistake" to fight in Southeast Asia. Kennedy recorded this statement in an aide-memoire, something he rarely did, and, as General Taylor later recalled, "whenever he'd get this military advice from the Joint Chiefs or from me or anyone else, he'd say, 'Well, now, you gentlemen, you go back and convince General MacArthur, then I'll be convinced.' " Kennedy's private remarks to Senator Mike Mansfield, the majority leader, to Senator Wayne Morse, to Roger Hilsman, to Michael Forrestal, the National Security Council man on Vietnam, to Kenneth O'Donnell, his appointments secretary, and to Lester Pearson, the Canadian Prime Minister, further confirm his desire to withdraw.
For all the rhetoric of his inaugural address about paying any price, bearing any burden, meeting any hardship, Kennedy was an eminently rational man, not inclined to heavy investments in lost causes. He was prepared to be as tough as necessary when vital interests were involved, but he was no war lover. His foreign policy displayed a characteristic capacity to refuse escalation when it made no sense -- as in Laos, the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin wall confrontation, the missile crisis.
He believed from the start that the United States was, as he often said (privately), "overcommitted" in Indochina. As Mr. Newman reports, on April 6, 1962, he told Averell Harriman, then Assistant Secretary for Far Eastern Affairs, and Michael Forrestal to be prepared to "seize upon any favorable moment to reduce our commitment." But the Joint Chiefs kept up their clamor for military intervention. In a hysterical January 1962 memorandum cited by Mr. Newman, they predicted that "the fall of South Vietnam to Communist control would mean the eventual Communist domination of all of the Southeast Asian mainland" and that most of Asia would capitulate to what the military still stubbornly called the "Sino-Soviet Bloc." Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara declined to endorse this extravagance, and such hyperbole confirmed Kennedy's low opinion of the military.
KENNEDY made concessions about advisers, but he held the line against troops. The commitment of combat units, he observed in March 1962 with a deference to the Constitution not notable among his successors, "calls for a constitutional decision, [ and ] of course I would go to the Congress." In July 1962 he directed the Pentagon to come up with a plan for the withdrawal of the advisers by the end of 1965. The plan was approved in May 1963, with the first 1,000 men to be returned at the end of that year.
