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History would have been a lot different indeed. One can also ask, had JFK lived would he had continued his planned withdrawal from Vietnam ? Would he have continued to resist calls from his Generals to escalate and send in combat troops ?
After the Bay of Pigs in '61 and Laos in '62, Kennedy was not willing to suffer another loss with Vietnam in '62.; however,after surviving the Cuban Missile Crisis it became evident that Kennedy was moving towards peace with the Soviet Union - the American University Speech clearly illustrates his mind set and desired American policy.
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Originally Posted by totsuka
I have always wondered how much different history would have been if JFK had pulled out of Vietnam in 62 when we pulled out of LAOS. I know there are some memo's or rumors that he wanted too, but knowing how JFK was I don't think he would have done it.
JFK increased the USA involvement from 1000 military advisors to 16,000. He also gave approval to removing Diem via a coup.
JFK like all the Kennedy's don't like to lose or defeat. I think that JFK would have continued to the build up in Vietnam, got reelected, and might have pulled out after the mood of the nation changed in 65/66. He was very hawkish and was "willing to go anwhere, pay any price" etc...etc..etc...
The war was a lost cause after the French were defeated. I think "Ike" just played to the conservatives/hawks and put some advisors into Vietnam to show he cared, but he was not too interested in getting too involved.
JFK was much more aggressive with his actions and words. Had he not got whacked in 63 he would have continued the war and increased the support with people and money.
JFK has pretty much received a free pass in history about his failed Vietnam Policy or Kennedy Doctrine. He had the chance to pull out in 62 when we left Laos and should have done it. He set into place the defeat for the USA in Vietnam and should receive credit for his failed doctrine.
In the case of Vietnam, how long before we reach "eventually?" The communist government has now been running the place for 36 years and I'm unaware of any internal revolutionary movement to oust them.
The commies have been in charge of N. Vietnam since 54 and the whole country since 75 so it really is not such a long time and they have pretty much destroyed the economy. But now, even those dummies realize they need some free market reforms or they will starve to death. For the average person in those countries they don't really care who is in charge since it is just another corrupt government.
Our biggest mistake since the end of WWII was trying to force our way of life and government on other countries. We should have learned our lesson after our defeat in Vietnam.
First of all, thanks to totsuka for clarifying your position and opinion. It did, and does, help.
Second, it seems that we are down to arguing and supporting our personal opinions. From here I don't think there's anywhere else to go. You see, opinons are just like noses -- everybody's got one, and most of 'em smell.
As Rodney King once said, "Can't we just all get along?"
True..there seems to be something missing about JFK's decision making process.....the decision to expand our involvement in Vietnam despite the failure at the Bay of Pigs and the very recent French defeat...seems too easy to blame Johnson when JFK had the more important role in setting the stage...
True..there seems to be something missing about JFK's decision making process.....the decision to expand our involvement in Vietnam despite the failure at the Bay of Pigs and the very recent French defeat...seems too easy to blame Johnson when JFK had the more important role in setting the stage...
The Bay of Pigs -- now THERE'S a topic deserving of its own thread! Though Kennedy was clearly in the driver's seat, and the go/no-go decision was ultimately his, the evidence strongly suggests that his subordinates gave him only the information that supported the "Go" choice. They hid, downplayed, revised or sugar-coated any information that supported other decisions. We regularly use the Bay of Pigs debacle to illustrate and demonstrate the concept of group-think.
Other examples include most of the high-level decisions surrounding the Vietnam War from about 1966 through its conclusion. If you want a real up-close and personal experience with group-think, just trace the life of a field report, from its beginning with a platoon commander all the way up until it reached Westmoreland. Its scarey, danged scarey!
The Bay of Pigs - JFK owns that bad decision. He was the President and made the call to invade. Such an idiot. There is a argument that failed invasion brought on the missle crisis and provoked the Russians to build the Berlin Wall...It might have been the drugs that induced some sort of haze in JFK's mind....
Westmoreland was a product of West Point, WW-II, Korea, he did not want to admit defeat. He got his marching orders and tried to carry them out. I will give him credit. He tried to get the South Vietnamese Army ready for the conventional war that would eventually come...1972, with the North Vietnamese Army invaded with tanks etc....
General Abrams did a much better job and was an excellent person to lead out efforts in Vietnam. Too bad he died so young.
[quote=Nighteyes;19684353]History disagrees with you. Yes, the camps were wiped out or closed, but only during or after the US pull-out. Some were overrun earlier than that of course, and a few of these were abandoned or relocated, but otherwise A-Detachment camps were alive and well in all four Corps Areas of RSVN. Recall, too, that the large-scale infusion of NVA regulars into RSVN began in 1965, to counter Johnson's massive introduction of US ground troops. (See below.)
A good deal of those camps were abandoned by 67. It seems to be a flawed logic to try and "build a wall" around South Vietnam instead of staying mobil or securing the areas where people actually lived and holding that ground.
As a point of information, SOG was not an Army Special Forces operation, but a joint operation created by the JCS in 1964, and run by the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). Its personnel came from the CIA, Army Special Forces, Navy SEALS, Marine Force Recon, and the Air Force (among others). And yes, the SOG casualty rate was high. A good bit of this was due to the nature of their missions, which encompassed much more than reconnaisance and intelligence-gathering.
Those SOG raids into the North were a pin prick, but did not accomplish much. Especially, the agents that were dropped into the North and even though we knew they were not going to do much, they kept dropping them.
The SOG missions to "sneak and peak" were pretty much a waste of good talent. The South Vietnamese Army needed massive amount of training of it's NCO's and that is where the SF guys excell. The massive amount of intelligence gathered was of little good if the army could not fight very well. One of the grips many senior officers had against SF was they took the best NCO's out of the regular ranks and ran off doing operations of limited value. Training the ARVN should have been the primary mission vice counting bomb craters in Cambodia or Laos. Such a waste of good people.
The Pentagon Papers do not reveal any evidence that JFK was going to curtail U.S. involvement in SE Asia. Further, I'm a liberal and a historian in training and the historiography on JFK is quite clear: he was a womanizing failure of a president. The only thing he did well was keep the world out of a nuclear war, but his policies toward Cuba actually caused the Soviets to put in the missiles in the first placed. He provoked them.
On the Vietnam front, JFK's strategic hamlet program was an utter failure and entirely undemocratic--it instead revealed how the U.S. represented the new imperialists in Vietnam.
On the domestic front, again JFK was an utter failure as a president. Very few pieces of legislation that his office sponsored even made it out of committee in the congress.
JFK was a hated president who had a miserable record on civil rights and instead used the movement as a political football.
JFK, Carter, Jefferson, next to Hoover and Buchanan and the two Bushes, will be recorded as the worst American presidents ever!
I always liked Hoover. A very educated man who got slammed by the FDR crowd.
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