New research: JFK wanted all troops out by 1965, ordering the pullout to

"begin by the late fall 0f 1963. But he did not, of course, live to see their withdrawal."

http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050314&s=parker

The author of the article is Richard Parker, an Oxford-trained economist and senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, who recently completed a biography of John Kenneth Galbraith who was one of Kennedy's most trusted advisors.

In fact it was Galbraith who pressed Kennedy to pull all troops from Vietnam by 1965. Galbraith had strongly opposed the decision to send troops to Viet Nam. He was adamant that Vietnam was going to tear America apart.

Parker's biography of Galbraith is filled with interesting information about JFK as they were extremely close.

back then.

"At the Nehru-Kennedy luncheon, Galbraith and JFK began probing the Indian leader about ways to avoid American militarization of Vietnam, a subject on which (for complex reasons) the neutralist Nehru remained maddeningly ambiguous, emphasizing only that the United States must stay out. The next day in Washington, as the three men took part in formal White House discussions with Rusk and other top US officials who were far more eager for intervention, it quickly became clear to Galbraith how isolated the young President was."


From the article posted above. Particularly ominious is Galbraith's assessment that JFK was isolated.

The scion of a railroad fortune, Harriman became a financial baron, the founder of Brown Brothers Harriman where he taught Prescott Bush the ropes on Wall Street, in the halls of government and in the dark alleyways of the world, the tradecraft of spy vs. spy.

Harriman was a Democrat, the Governor of New York. FDR appointed him to serve as ambassador to the Soviet Union during World War II. Truman appointed him to serve as Secretary of Commerce during the Marshall Plan. The guy seemed to be a big player for the good guys.

But there was the NAZI thing. The US Government identified five companies associated with Harriman and Bush that directly aided Hitler’s war machine. When they said, "So?" -- in the middle of 1942 -- Uncle Sam took the companies away. Recently released government documents indicate Prescott Bush kept intact the "financial" relationship with the NAZIs through 1951.
Money has always meant a lot in American jurisprudence, so mainstream historians and legal authorities have pretty much stayed away from that part of this important player’s biography. So, of course, things get worse.

JFK named Harriman Ambassador-at-Large for Southeast Asia. Instead of helping defuse the worsening crisis when CIA decided Diem had to go, he acted the rogue agent and did all he could to ramp-up war in Vietnam. Seemingly a super-hawk in the fight against communism, it was Harriman who ordered the assassination of South Vietnamese President Diem, his brother and a Catholic priest accompanying them into exile. The result was chaos, from which the US and South Vietname goverments never fully recovered.

JFK was furious when he heard that the Diem brothers had been assassinated. He ordered the withdrawal of all American forces from Vietnam, a war he viewed as unwinnable. Two months later, JFK was dead. And LBJ signed orders stating the US would provide whatever level of support was needed to preserve the government of South Vietnam. A big mistake for our nation, the nation of Vietnam, and for our world.

Some Democrat. No friend of President Kennedy, that's for sure.

Just like Nixon. Vietnam War.

Just like Ford. Vietnam War and Cambodia War.

Not like Carter. No War. Hostages.

Just like Reagan. War. Central America and South America.

Just like Bush Sr. War. Invade Panama. Invade Iraq.

Not like Clinton. No War. Police Actions and Global Military Presence.

Just like Bush Jr. Afghanistan War. Iraq War. War on Terror.

Wasn't always like that.

President John F. Kennedy stood up to the sons of bitches the above list worshipped.

That Averell Harriman made money off of two world wars and the Cold War should come as no surprise: The guy was a business PARTNER of Prescott Bush and Allen Dulles.

without JFK's assassination and without the ugliness and pain that came out of that horrendous war.

For Galbraith, a trusted adviser with unique back-channel access to the President, a potential US war in Vietnam represented more than a disastrous misadventure in foreign policy--it risked derailing the New Frontier's domestic plans for Keynesian-led full employment, and for massive new spending on education, the environment and what would become the War on Poverty. Worse, he feared, it might ultimately tear not only the Democratic Party but the nation apart--and usher in a new conservative era in American politics.

How prophetic. I guess we have been on the losing side of history for all this time since that day in Dallas.

Kennedy lived and troops were out of Vietnam in 1965?

Simply amazing. Kennedy has been popping up a lot to me lately for whatever reason. Now it makes sense why they wanted him gone. I'm sure there were other reason's too.

they all know the military industrial complex is good at disappearing people who threaten their bread and butter.

"Newly discovered notes show that after listening to thearguments for intervention, an impassioned Bobby Kennedy kept insisting, "We are not sending combat troops. Not committing ourselves to combat troops."

they wanted Bobby killed too. And they shot MLK probably for his civil rights movement and also because MLK would've been the vice president of Bobby.

I don't know if Vietnam is covered explicitly in this online book, but it's a wonderful book whose link I like to post in JFK threads:

Farewell America by James Hepburn
http://www.jfk-online.com/farewell00.html

It's well worth reading for incredible insight into our situation now, today, as well as back then.

starting in 1963.

What I also found interesting was Galbraith's take on the situation and his influence.


"I have continued to worry far, far more about South Viet Nam. This is more complex, far less controllable, far more varied in the factors involved, far more susceptible to misunderstanding. And to make matters worse, I have no real confidence in the sophistication and political judgment of our people there."

I have heard for years that if JFK had not gone to Dallas, the Vietnam war would have been over by 1965. I have also heard just the opposite in response, that JFK was a hawk on Vietnam, and was planning to increase the number of troops deployed.

In the end, it really doesn't matter, because he DID go to Dallas, and the war DID go on for ten more years.

All this "what-if" is just pointless discussion, other than being a subject on which a professor can get published.

I understand this (definite, date-certain timed withdrawal of all forces by sometime in 1965) is also a contention of the documentary The Fog Of War. Of all people, Robert McNamara is the source.
(it's not just his say-so though, he points to archived documents and memoranda)

was to start in 1963?

I don't think there ever was one, I don't think it got as far as that. (Assassination has a way of monkey wrenching all kinds of travel plans!) But I wonder if any irreversible change of policy would have or could have gone into effect before the elections of '64.

McNamara had a conversation with JFK in Oct. 1963 in which he is clearly advising total withdrawal. First 1000 advisors by Christmas, then the rest of the 15,000 US "advisors" by sometime in 1965. Kennedy did apparently act on the 1,000 advisors part of the plan. I think the rest were to be withdrawn in regular stages. That's all I think that was ever discussed or developed about a possible schedule for disengagement. Which suggests of course that there was never a final committment made to disengage --nothing like an irreversible decision. Although at some point in the phased withdrawals it would have to be made clear to the public that they would be continuing until none were left. They could gradually prepare the country for the disengagement policy during the remainder of his first term with statements such as the one you can hear Kennedy making at the beginning of Oliver Stone's "JFK": "I don't think that we can win the war over there unless the government makes great improvements in its public relations..." (Not an exact quote) They could make the larger troop movements later on in the time window, protecting themselves into the election cycle, by keeping the "advisor" levels more or less up, but maintaining the pace of announced withdrawals.

Here is a key part of the transcript of the conversation from Oct. 2 1963:
Kennedy: My only reservation about it is if the war doesn't continue to go well, it will look like we were overly optimistic.

McNamara: We need a way to get out of Vietnam, and this is a way of doing it.

I think you can see from this tiny snippet alone that there is a lot of ambivalence in the deliberations over VN in late 63. It's a permissable thing to say "we need to get out any which way" in JFK's war council, in fact it seems to be an agreed upon, basic goal, and yet JFK himself, with no more than about one month to live, seems very concerned about the political repercussions of the war going badly should we leave. Of course it's possible those concerns would vanish after Nov 2, 1964. (however, look at it the other way: what would happen if the Saigon government began to really come unravelled before Nov. 1964 and the North invaded? Might a President, trying to tiptoe out of IndoChina feel compelled to rush back in and pretend he was never leaving at all?. It's kind of impossible to say just what would have happened in VN and our politics had Kennedy not been killed.)

After America had got itself ball-deep in Vietnam thanks to Johnson, McNamara apparently switched into full-auto MacBeth mode. Ie.:
...I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

Since we had become committed, victory was imperative for McNamara, at any cost. There has been widespread belief that McNamara bullied Johnson into the war after Kennedy's assassination, but apparently Johnson's taped exchanges, as used by Eroll Morris in F.O.W., prove that Johnson's inner committment to war was early and his famous handwringing after the first phase of escalation wasn't about whether to go to war or stay at war but all about the fallout sure to come due to the war going badly.

(from a oval office telephone conversation taped Feb. 25th 1964)
Johnson: I always thought it was foolish for you to make any statements about withdrawing. I thought it was bad psychologically. But you and the President thought otherwise, and I just sat silent.

McNamara: The problem is...

Johnson: Then come the questions: how in the hell does McNamara think, when he's losing a war, he can pull men out of there?

IIRC, he major build-up of U.S. forces didn't really occur until after the 1964 Tonkin Gulf "incident" and resulting "Resolution" to authorize President Lyndon Johnson to send military ground troops. Obviously, this was after Kennedy's death, so Kennedy couldn't have declared a desire to pull out troops that hadn't even been sent there.

There were, of course, advisors and other technical support personnel since 1960 or 61, and there were fears of escalation and increasing involvement, but the big push to militarize the region with U.S. forces didn't come until after Kennedy was out of the picture.

I'm not saying this guy is wrong, and I haven't read the article, but as I remember 1963, there wasn't a very big U.S. military presence in southeast Asia at the time.

that "put forward the rationale for open-ended US commitment to military engagement in Southeast Asia."


"After ushering Galbraith into his crowded office, Rostow the security adviser refused to discuss the report's contents because they were, in Galbraith's words, so heavily classified as "to limit access to God and the President." Then the phone rang. When Rostow turned to it, Galbraith, seeing a copy of the top-secret Taylor Report sitting on the desk between them, instantly decided what to do. "I simply picked up the copy and walked out."

Back at his hotel, Galbraith grew appalled as he read it: Here was the rationale for an open-ended US commitment to military engagement in Southeast Asia."


The point is that in 1961 plans were in place for an open-ended commitment to military engagement in Vietnam; and, McNamara was advocating 200,000 troops.


"Unnamed "senior White House officials" now began leaking word that, as one New York Times headline put it, "Kennedy Remains Opposed to Sending Forces After Hearing Report." Taylor and Rostow, as well as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Rusk--keenly aware that Galbraith had the top-secret document and was leaking the President's reactions--were appalled, and applied fresh pressures to convene the NSC meeting. (That said, they were in fact divided among themselves about what they wanted Kennedy to do: McNamara, for one, opposed sending 10,000 troops; he wanted at least 200,000 dispatched immediately.)"


http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050314&c=2&s=parker

. . . . I think it's very easy to read (and to have written) this article with 20/20 hindsight that distorts the situation.

We can look at it now, in 2005, and wonder what would have happened if Kennedy had lived and pulled out the troops in 1965 -- but the fact remains that at the time this was going on in 1961 through 1963 there was as yet no build-up of troops, only a few thousand advisors at the very most. Even though McNamara and Bundy and others may have pushed for a build-up to 200,000, Kennedy clearly was against it, thanks to Galbraith perhaps, and at any rate it didn't happen until after Kennedy was gone.

So I think it's unfair to say that Kennedy would have pulled the troops out and made a difference -- he would first have had to send them in in the numbers McNamara and others later got from Johnson.

In other words, it's probably more fair to say that Kennedy probably wouldn't have got us into Vietnam in the numbers that Johnson did, rather than that he would have pulled them out by 65, because as it turned out, they were really only going in by 1965.

Not sure if that's making any sense to anyone. I'm not disputing the author on the facts in the article, but rather I'm disputing the implication drawn from it. Kennedy didn't get us into Vietnam in any great quantity of troops, so he really couldn't have got us out.


Tansy Gold

Just for sake of discussion, how many thousand were in Vietnam in October of 1965, when President Kennedy signed the directive? Look at that, reconsider the description "only a few," and then look at NSAM#263. Then and only then can you decide if Kennedy was making a significant action.

...also helps to back up the argument that Kennedy was going to deescalate the war. Thanks.

I think recently unclassified documents show that de-escalation was a fact so it's no longer just an argument that needs back-up.

for over 15 years. Read "JFK" by LF Prouty.

The front page headline of the military newspaper on that day reads: White House Report -- U.S. Troops Seen Out Of Viet By '65.

Kennedy had just signed National Security Action Memorandum #263, which without question calls for the withdrawal of US combat troops. It is a fact that as president, LBJ immediately over-turned this.

.

...and then look at NSAM 273, signed by LBJ four days after JFK's assassination.

NSAM 263 authorized the withdrawal of the first 1000 troops from Vietnam. NSAM 273 stated that all possible support would be given to South Vietnam...in effect, an escalation of the war for the US.

how the day Kennedy was burried that Johnson was meeting with people about going into Vietnam. They couldn't wait until he was buried in peace. :grr:

... into a world that has been largely wrecked by those who followed JFK.

As my icon would hint at, I wish I could have lived during the days of John and Bobby. They must have been wonderful, hopeful times.