Reply #111: Blame the JFK Assassins for Vietnam

[Octafish]

A few days before he died, Kennedy signed orders commanding the removal of all US military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1964 — NSAM 263.

A few days after the assassination, Johnson countermanded those orders, stating the US would do whatever was necessary to help the South Vietnamese government win its war with the North — NSAM 273.

It's not funny. Nixon escalated the war, too. And while they are now gone to join those who died in southeast Asia, other bastards still live who need to be held accountable.

BTW: John Kerry believes in putting country ahead of himself. He felt the obligation to do his duty and volunteered for service.

Howard Dean, OTOH, believed in self preservation. His supporters call that being smart. Some call that being selfish and small. I call it draft-dodging.

EDIT: Misnumbered the National Security Action Memoranda. Added the following:

THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND THE VIETNAM WAR
By Peter Dale Scott

EXCERPT...

NSAM 273, Paragraph 1: The Central Object

            While noting that the “stated objectives” of the new covert operations plan against North Vietnam were unlikely to be fulfilled by the OPLAN itself, Mr. Gelb, like the rest of the Pentagon Study authors, fails to inform us what these “stated objectives” were. The answer lies in the “central object” or “central objective” defined by the first paragraph of NSAM 273:

It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported communist conspiracy. The test of all U.S. decisions and actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contribution to this purpose.<17>

            To understand this bureaucratic prose we must place it in context. Ever since Kennedy came to power, but increasingly since the Diem crisis and assassination, there had arisen serious bureaucratic disagreement as to whether the U.S. commitment in Vietnam was limited and political (“to assist”) or open-ended and military (“to win”). By its use of the word “win,” NSAM 273, among other things, ended a brief period of indecision and division, when indecision itself was favoring the proponents of a limited (and political) strategy, over those whose preference was unlimited (and military).<18>

            In this conflict the seemingly innocuous word “object” or “objective” had come, in the Aesopian double-talk of bureaucratic politics, to be the test of a commitment. As early as May 1961, when President Kennedy was backing off from a major commitment in Laos, he had willingly agreed with the Pentagon that “The U.S. objective and concept of operations” was “to prevent Communist domination of South Vietnam.”<19> In November 1961, however, Taylor, McNamara, and Rusk attempted to strengthen this language, by recommending that “We now take the decision to commit ourselves to the objective of preventing the fall of South Vietnam to Communism.”<20> McNamara had earlier concluded that this “commitment…to the clear objective” was the “basic issue,” adding that it should be accompanied by a “warning” of “punitive retaliation against North Vietnam.” Without this commitment, he added, “We do not believe major U.S. forces should be introduced in South Vietnam.”<21>

            Despite this advice, Kennedy, after much thought, accepted all of the recommendations for introducing U.S. units, except for the “commitment to the objective” which was the first recommendation of all. NSAM 111 of November 22, 1962, which became the basic document for Kennedy Vietnam policy, was issued without this first recommendation.<22> Instead he sent a letter to Diem on December 14, 1961, in which “the U.S. officially described the limited and somewhat ambiguous extent of its commitment:…our primary purpose is to help your people….We shall seek to persuade the Communists to give up their attempts of force and subversion.’”<23> One compensatory phrase of this letter (“the campaign…supported and directed from the outside”) became (as we shall see) a rallying point for the disappointed hawks in the Pentagon; and was elevated to new prominence in NSAM 273(1)’s definition of a Communist “conspiracy.” It would appear that Kennedy, in his basic policy documents after 1961, avoided any used of the word “objective” that might be equated to a “commitment.” The issue was not academic: as presented by Taylor in November 1961, this commitment would have been open-ended, “to deal with any escalation the communists might choose to impose.”<24>

CONTINUED...

http://history-matters.com/essays/vietnam/KennedyVietnam1971/KennedyVietnam1971.htm