Zellow Journalism: Tribune Bureau and New York Times Pile on JFK In Re: Vienna Summit w/ Khrushchev

I read a horrendous little piece in the NY Times Op Ed department this morning, which was written by a Jerusalem Post journalist and an doctoral student at Columbia. 

The assertion in Kennedy Talked, Khrushchev Triumphed was that Kennedy's talks with Khrushchev in Vienna were so disastrous that the US didn't survive the 60s.

No, well, obviously the US did survive the 60s, didn't suffer nuclear conflagration, partly thanks to John F Kennedy, so when Nathan Thrall and Jesse James Wilkins say the talks were disastrous, it is rather confusing (Unless you're the type to swallow GOP propaganda whole) as to what they mean.

Kennedy gave too many concessions? 

They warble about how it led to the Cuban missile crisis. 

But the Cuban missile crisis led to demonstrations of US strength that actually benefited the US in world standing.

Oh yeah,  it was right after that the the USSR attacked us and destroyed life as we know it, though, right?

So, what is the Op Ed's point, exactly then?

In fact, you really can't talk yourself into a position of strength.  You have to show it.  In fact, the showing was probably more effective that if some bullheaded idiot like Bush, Cheney, or McCain had postured and blustered his way through talks with the Soviet leader in Vienna.

A nation's strength is of paramount importance, but the Bush, Cheney, McCain team have drained our strength.  Maybe that's why the GOP talking points continue to orate about Kennedy and Vienna!  Kennedy and Vienna!  To cover the fact that they have done much worse than stumble a little in a summit.

Now lets look at how a nation really suffers disaster.  The USSR fell, not because they couldn't bluster and spout belligerent rhetoric anymore, but because they couldn't back it up with real strength.  The Soviets lost their strength because they stayed the course in Afghanistan until the back of their economy and military was broken. 

This is what experts keep saying appears to be happening to our military.  And ominous signs indicate we might be losing the economic strength to build it up again.  Again, much of our economic weakness comes from the debt created by the war.

I am surprised that The Tribune's Washington Bureau "Should Obama rethink JFK-Khrushchev?" treated the Times Op Ed like a revelation from God  though in reality it is just some old talking points from the GOP that have been passed around for months.  Frank James who wrote the piece for The Swamp blog as linked to above at the Baltimore Sun even expands on the Kennedy bashing and uses it to take swipes at Barack Obama.

But even James realizes that Thrall's complaints about the Vienna summit leading to the Cuban Missile Crisis aren't "scary" enough so he hints that Kennedy is responsible for all the deaths in Vietnam from that point on.

James gets some words from a biography by Robert Dallek "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 2003)" (I've used the Wikipedia description of the book since it seems to be more complete than James'.

Kennedy left Vienna convinced the U.S. had to take steps to show Khrushchev that he meant business:

Here's Dallek again:

"He now needed to convince Khrushchev that he could not be pushed around, and the best place currently to make U.S. power credible seemed to be in Vietnam."

Pretty chilling, isn't it, that Kennedy decided to compensate for his inadequate performance with Khrushchev by pushing forward in Vietnam?

So Frank James concludes that Kennedy is became culpable for all the subsequent deaths in Vietnam?  

I'm afraid Mr. James didn't do the least bit of internet homework before jumping off that gangplank.

I don't know Dalleck,or if he has a bias, but I do know that Kennedy can't be held accountable for the decision to send advisors to Vietnam, he only added to the advisors that Eisenhower had in the nation. Neither can he be held accountable for any deaths in Vietnam after 1965 (even if you think he can be blamed for any beyond his own death in the first place).

According to  James K. Gailbraith writing in "Kennedy, Vietnam and Iraq ":

I believe the evidence now available shows that Kennedy had decided, in early October of 1963, to begin withdrawing 17,000 U.S. military advisers then in Vietnam. One thousand were to leave by the end of 1963; the withdrawal was scheduled to be completed by the end of 1965. After that, only a military assistance contingent would have remained. The withdrawal planning was carried out under cover of an official optimism about the war, with a view toward increasing the effort and training the South Vietnamese to win by themselves. But Kennedy and McNamara did not share this optimism. They were therefore prepared to press the withdrawal even when the assessments turned bad, as they started to do in the early fall of 1963. This was a decision to withdraw without victory if necessary, indeed without negotiations or conditions. In a recent essay in Boston Review, I assemble this evidence in detail.

So what little part of the horrors of Vietnam could be ascribed to Kennedy?  Even if Dalleck actually had insider information that the Vienna summit led to Kennedy's increasing the advisor level to Vietnam, the had the plans in place to take their numbers down by 1963 and to take them out by the end of 1965.  The most American casualties took place after Nixon took office (though he'd run with a vague promise to end the war ("Peace with honor").  Most of the rest were under president Lyndon B. Johnson a president that really didn't think he could win reelection in 1968 because his own party had turned against him due to the war.  

Any tiny part of the Vietnam war that can be ascribed to John F. Kennedy is very minor, and as shown above was about to be reduced about the time that he was killed, and put into a minimal mode in 1965. 

No Tet Offensive.  No invasion and destabilization of Cambodia. No endangering of Laotians. No, Mai Lai.  The worst of the human rights offenses missed.

The result for the US the same as we acheived later.  Some initial expansion of the Soviet Union, but since we rebuilt our economy and military faster and didn't start another major decade long conflict we did actually eventually win the Cold War.

So those with too little experience for their jobs, are apparently oped writers and journalists who do too little research and analysis before regurgitating GOP talking points. 

tags: jfk  president kennedy  barack  obama  viena summit  khrushchev  vietnam war  ussr  cold war  

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