canedge
Refugee
true dat
JFK: WHAT RESONANCE Does He HAVE to People 40 YEARS Old and YOUNGER?
- Thread starter dazzledbylight
- Start date
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JFK was committed to the Truman Doctrine and reversed several of the policies of the Eisenhower administration which had cut back on the containment policies of Truman.
JFK ended the Eisenhower adminstrations policies of "massive retaliation" in response to any Soviet attack including a conventional attack anywhere in Europe or the US containment belt around the Soviet Union. JFK knew that such a threat was not credible especially with the Soviets now catching up to the United States in Nuclear capability. Once the Soviets achieved Nuclear parity with the USA (around 1970), a policy of "massive retaliation" with nuclear weapons to any conflict would essentially be suicide.
JFK adopted the policy of Flexible Response, in which conventional attacks against US interest around the world would be responded to with conventional weapons and forces, not an immediate massive response with nuclear weapons. This meant of course that spending on conventional weapons and the size of the military would have to be increased. There would be no savings as Eisenhower had envisioned from just using Nuclear Weapons as opposed to paying for troops and the equipment they needed.
So JFK increased the conventional military capabilities of the United States in order to better deter a Soviet breech of the containment belt, because the threat of "massive retaliation" to a conventional attack was becoming less credible every year as the Soviets got closer to nuclear parity with the United States. JFK's policy of Flexible Response remains in place today, 20 years after the end of the Cold War.
JFK developed US special forces and started the peace corp as he found both would be important elements in third world development as well as combating Soviet supported insurgencies around the world.
JFK was right to increase US aid to South Vietnam to protect it from Soviet supported North Vietnamese attacks. It is a tragedy that the United States essentially abandoned South Vietnam after 1972 and let it be overrun and raped by the North Vietnamese. The blame for this tragedy is on the 1973 Democratic led congress which ended all funding for US military operations in South East Asia as well as heavily reducing aid to the country of South Vietnam which severely crippled its ability to defend itself from invasion from North Vietnam.
JFK was a true cold warrior and in that sense, he was much more in line with today's Republican Party than the Democratic Party of today. JFK's Democratic Party died after 1968. After that point, the party was rapidly taken over by liberals and pacifict who had views that were the opposite of JFK.
The United States leaned back heavily towards the polices of JFK in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan. US military strength was restored under Reagan and the Soviet Union collapsed from the weight of the Cold War containment policy which was started under Turman in 1947 and continued under each President since then, but to a heavier degree under Kennedy and Reagan.
Kennedy indeed was a great President who understood better than most, the importance of US Defense Spending and military intervention around the world to stop the spread of Soviet supported Communism as well as protecting US global security interest.
Kennedy would have been better at fighting the war in Vietnam and would not have reduced Pacification efforts like Johnson did. This would have bolstered the strength of South Vietnam and allowed the United States to achieve more with a smaller military force and less casualties. Also, unlike Johnson, Kennedy would not be thinking about getting re-elected after 1964 since it would have been is last term in office due to term limits.
As I have said above Kennedy move the United States away from the "containment light" years of the Eisenhower administration and moved it back to what it was under Truman. Conventional defense spending was heavily increased, and Kennedy ended Eisenhower's strategy of "massive retaliation" and replaced it with "flexible response" which is still in use today.
On the contrary, US intervention in South East Asia was popular in the early 1960s. Strong opposition to US intervention in Vietnam did not occur until 1966/1967 and did not become a majority of the population until after February 1968.
Kennedy was committed to the Truman doctrine more heavily the Eisenhower had been and increased US involvement in South Vietnam from 700 advisors in January 1960, to over 17,000 military personal in South Vietnam in November of 1963.
There is absolutely no evidence that Kennedy would have allowed a Soviet supported communist movement to overrun South Vietnam. Kennedy was commited to the Truman doctrine and even Eisenhower advised by the mid-60s that the United States needed to increase its involvment in South Vietnam to prevent a communist take over.
I don't recall Kennedy and Johnson fighting over Vietnam. Is there a taped conversation that shows that, or is this just a 2nd hand alegation?
canedge
Refugee
And obviously the best way to deter social community or "The Reds" as you call it in the US is to go and torch innocent villagers in very distant lands in front of their families.
Bravo America!
canedge
Refugee
You forgot to mention Eisenhowers warning of "growing military-industrial complex."
Wouldn't want defense spending to spiral so out of control that it strangles the social growth of the homeland.
Wouldn't want defense spending to spiral so out of control that it strangles the social growth of the homeland.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
adam4bono said:
Context is key my friend.
Well, that is the stereotype that many non-US citizens and liberal US citizens like to promote and believe. But it is false, no matter how much they enjoy and cling to such beliefs. The United States saved the world from communism and World War III.
Good point! Another area where Eisenhower got it wrong. Eisenhower was a great General and its good thing he won the Republican nomination for President in 1952, because the challenger would have withdrew the United States from NATO and thrown the Truman doctrine in the trash. Eisenhower believed in containment, just a lighter form of it. Eisenhower did not have the long range vision of Kennedy though, nor the understanding of US peacetime strength and its ability to win the Cold War with the Soviets.
financeguy
ONE love, blood, life
Wow. A talking amoeba. Darwin is so pissed right now.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
adam4bono said:
Come on Sting, let's not pretend we know what the thoughts and beliefs of the late would be.
canedge
Refugee
There is more fantasy in that comment than a J.K. Rowling novel. But as long as it serves personal self-interest than why change right?
The Truman Doctrine worked. The United States successfully detered the Soviets around the world, especially a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe. So, nope, no fantasy there.
Cactus Annie
Refugee
Do you think that Lee Harvey Oswald really was his murderer? Do you think he was used as a pawn by the FBI who detested JFK's withdrawal rom Vietnam? Do you think the Kennedy's were responsible for the death of Marilyn Monroe? Don't you think that Jackie Kennedy looks like Ali? Do you really think JFK was that good looking?
the iron horse
Rock n' Roll Doggie
I think Lee Harvey Oswald was the only one who fired the shot that
killed JFK.
The other? I don't know.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Hard to believe that just 50 years ago the country's leading liberal was comfortable with the use of American power overseas, was anti-abortion, cut income taxes on the rich, fought labor union corruption, named a Republican businessman as his Secretary of the Treasury, was unabashedly patriotic and, gasp!!, believed in American Exceptionalism.
Hard to believe.
Hard to believe.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
And Goldwater looks like Lincoln compared to every GOP candidate since 1996.
maycocksean
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Oh come on.
Today this country's leading liberal is comfortable with the use of American power overseas (see Libya as Exhibit A, rubbing out Bin Laden as Exhibit B), is friendly enough with the wealthy to piss off and disappoint his own base, and had a Republican as his secretary of defense (and one of the Republican candidates as part of his administration), is unabashedly patriotic and, gasp!! believes in American Exceptionalism.
Hard to believe, I know.
Okay, maybe he's not anti-abortion, but then I'm pretty sure Kennedy had little to say about abortion since it wasn't an issue during his presidency so your supposition that he was "anti-abortion" his solely based on his faith.
As far as fifty years ago. . .fifty years ago I couldn't eat at the same lunch counter as you, and my marriage (to a woman) was illegal in many states and could have gotten me killed in more than a few. So you can keep your rosy "Fifty Years Ago" nostalgia.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
This glaring blindness Indy's posts make it hard to take him seriously.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
We will have to wait for history to write the final chapters on this president's foreign policy but compare the Berlin speeches of JFK, Reagan and Obama and you'll understand how this president sees the United States' role on the world stage differently than his predecessors.
"I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
-Barack Obama
I'm sorry but saying all countries are exceptional is the same thing as saying none are.
I'm not pining nostalgic, I'm stating facts. To which I could add this:
50 years ago the nation's leading liberal worried about the constitutionality and unintended consequences of an expansion of federal power over private enterprise in proposed civil rights legislation. Namely Title VII, which mandated the prosecution of discrimination by private employers. (This is what led conservatives like Barry Goldwater to vote against the 1964 Civil Rights Bill by the way) This provision was not added to the Civil Rights Bill until after Kennedy's assassination.
Arguably such an expansion of government power was necessary to break the stranglehold that Jim Crow laws had in the South but clearly, as feared, there have been many unintended consequences; quotas, racial set-asides, affirmative action beyond what could have been imagined in 1964, identity politics, and a new emphasis on group rights rather than individual rights.
Not to mention a federal government that, 50 years later, doesn't even consider the constitutionality of new laws, mandates and regulations on private businesses.
INDY500 said:
Why the extraordinary sensitivity to this notion of American exceptionalism? Is it so fragile that it wilts away if it isn't waved around in everyone's face constantly?
He wasn't saying that all countries are exceptional, he was saying that citizens of other countries think that their country is exceptional the way that Americans think the USA is.
Which, incidentally, is not true. The rest of us aren't that full of ourselves.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
I wouldn't defend American exceptionalism, as defined by the Left, either.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
but that's because Jesus doesn't live in silly cold no navy Canada; he lives in Indiana.
MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
As for President Kennedy the whole Kennedy thing is something I've just grown up with, because of where I was born and still live. Sure they've been idealized, including the President. It does seem like it was a far less cynical time in this country. But compared to now maybe every time would.
JFK Jr was very relevant to me
RIP 
I dreamed of meeting him but of course that never happened.Earnie Shavers
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Ha, almost straight after reading this thread, this article popped up in my Twitter feed...
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/12/08/australian-exceptionalism/
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2011/12/08/australian-exceptionalism/
the iron horse
Rock n' Roll Doggie
From what I have read, JFK was not ready or willing to expand American military
involement in Vietnam. He was acting with caution.
After his death, President Johnson was the opposite. He went along easy with
the military and expanded the U.S. commitment and sent a few thousand young Americans to their death for a lost cause.
Looking back, it might have ended sooner if Barry Goldwater had won that election.
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