It's coming up to the 50th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy. If you weren't around at the time it will be hard for you to understand how we felt. It's welling up in me now.
What got me thinking about it was first of all an audio file I came across of Robert Kennedy on a Meet the Press program in 1961. This was the time when the Berlin wall had just gone up and it was feared the Russians would cut off West Berlin from the world, precipitating a crisis. All the talk was whether the President would be prepared to go to nuclear war if pushed. Robert Kennedy discussed how his brother was thinking about this every waking minute.
Yesterday I also heard a discussion on Philip Adams' program about Kennedy's last year.
The real crisis was to come over Cuba the next year of course when Kennedy stared down Nikita Kruschev and war was averted.

Both Kennedy & Kruschev later talked about how frightened they had been. They had people all around them urging them to shoot first and ask questions later. Fortunately they were both stronger people.
Out of this a respect developed between the two leaders and Kennedy delivered one of his finest speeches, known as the Peace Speech, in which he urged Americans to turn away from the Cold War, to re-examine their own attitudes and praised the Russian people for the great sacrifices they had made.
He went on to propose the Limited Test Ban Treaty, sign it with Kruschev and get it ratified by Congress.
It was the beginning of a detente and, who knows, it may have been what got him killed.
The Russians were anxious to build on this thaw and were proposing various new initiatives for 1964 but they were never to be.
During this time, the Kennedy administration was making the first legislative moves for a Civil Rights Bill and had overcome the first obstacle in getting it through the Senate Committee. Johnson was to go on and get it into law.

So it ended for John Kennedy and we'll never know what he might have achieved in the next five years. Almost certainly there would never have been the disaster in Vietnam. He was too smart and had too much vision for that.
And we'll never know what a Robert Kennedy presidency might have done for the world. He certainly would have been elected and you only have to listen to him to hear what a thoughtful and intelligent young man he was.

I'll HAVE TO END NOW

JFK was an arms dealer: what 's so smart about that?? 

Bogarde, I can't agree with you about Kennedy and Vietnam.

Kennedy supported the Domino Theory, financed an increase in the South Vietnamese Army and a rise in the number of US "advisers". The "strategic hamlet" program began under his reign.

JFK is, in my view, one of the most over-rated Presidents in American history. He looked good, spoke well, but did very little.

Yeah, just picked that up and modified it. My apologies.

Blame it on dimentia.

Tony Abbott is the new Dan Quayle.

IMO the fact he was assassinated mean she did something right but if bogarde likes him so much . . . . .

SOB

Kennedy supported the Domino Theory, financed an increase in the South Vietnamese Army and a rise in the number of US "advisers". The "strategic hamlet" program began under his reign.

Peter, I think I'm correct in saying that he continued the program started by the Eisenhower administration with advisers etc BUT what I am saying is he would not have gone down the Johnson & Nixon road and turned it into a massive ground and air war, not only causing devastation in Vietnam and Cambodia but also bleeding America dry.
And as for doing nothing, he was instrumental in changing America's cold war mentality and all the social & civil rights progress of the Johnson administration was founded in his few short years.

bogarde73 wrote on Aug 23^rd, 2013 at 9:39am:


Luckily for us (and the whole world) this didn't happen during George W Bush's presidency