Posted on 07/06/2007 7:52:19 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
"All war is stupid." -- John F. Kennedy
Although support for the Iraq war diminishes daily, even among Republican senators, the neocons continue to write articles about why "we" must stand firm. That's what neocons do: They write articles and memos. "We" have an obligation to the Iraqi people, they tell us. "We" must stand by them in their struggle for "democracy." "We" have a moral obligation to continue the war. A war that may have been unjust at the beginning, it would seem, becomes a just war because we are "responsible" for the current civil war in Iraq -- even if it seems obvious that the Iraqis will continue to kill one another no matter how many troops "we" send or how long they stay.
Another article lamented that America is losing its "warrior culture." I didn't know we had one such. If we did, I would have thought that getting rid of it was a good thing. Americans are not Spartans, they are not Gurka, they are not Prussians. Upon reflection I realized that the country had fought a lot of wars, most of them against push-over enemies: Indians, Mexico, Spain, Panama, Grenada. But when the country stumbled into a war that it could not end quickly, the public lost interest and then rejected the war: Korea, Vietnam, Japan in 1945 before the bomb. Even the Revolution until the French came along.
The warrior culture, which can make a lot of pseudo-patriotic noise, tends to be male, Southern, and never to have seen combat. In 1963 they were the ones who were denouncing President John F. Kennedy because he did not nuke them and "get it over with." He also had to fend off his own military leaders who almost started a war without his consent.
Last week's Time magazine praised Kennedy's restraint in those terrible days, for which conservatives and Republicans have always condemned him. Without perhaps knowing it explicitly, he was following the Catholic teaching on war -- only when there is absolutely no other choice. It was this long tradition of restraint, of which the missile crisis was the high point, that eventually won the Cold War, and not President Ronald Reagan's grandstanding at the Brandenburg Gate.
It was a great good fortune for this country that a man of restraint who thought war was stupid was in the Oval Office in those anxious days. It would turn out later that the Russian commanders in Cuba had been ordered to return fire if they were attacked. One shudders at the image of what the current incumbent of the Oval Office would have done if he were the "decider" then. Many Americans would have died, and many more would never have been born.
The establishment media never liked Kennedy, an Irish Catholic from Boston. The Time article, which also acknowledged that he would never have escalated the Vietnam War, is revisionism with a vengeance, though it's not clear that the skimpy current version of Time is establishment anymore. Perhaps it is the beginning of a long overdue reappraisal of President Kennedy.
John Kennedy was not a perfect human being, nor was his presidency a flawless presidency. Yet his behavior on those critical days in May 1963 entitles him to the title of a great president. Time did well to remind us that Americans should always keep in mind when voting for a president whether the candidate has the valor to stand up to screaming "warriors," bellicose senators and men in fancy uniforms with stars on their shoulders. Would that we had a similar ironic, cautious, restrained chief executive in 2002.
agreel@aol.com
He was like Clinton. More concerned about other things, and thinking with the other head.
I read the whole excerpt, then I looked up and saw the author, and cursed my self for losing 30 seconds of my life which I’ll never get back..
Greeley must be getting senile! The establishment media loved JFK, to the point of looking the other way regarding his sexual escapades, both in and out of the White House.
So you’re a hypocrite if you support defending your country and you’ve never been in combat, but if you’re a general who’s risen through the ranks of command to the topmost post, you’re a guy in a fancy uniform with stars. Thanks for clearing that up, Greeley. Ass.
It looks like this a$$hat didn’t take any history courses in journalism school. Why do citizens of the greatest nation in the history of man hate themselves for being a part of it?
That is funny coming from an aborto facist liberal. When do they care about the unborn.
Dealey Plaza made JFK a ‘great leader’. Otherwise, his true record was mediocre at best.
“All war is stupid.” — John F. Kennedy
Did he say that before or after he had the South vietnamese leader ‘offed’?
Largest tax cuts in American history
Pro-gun (NRA Life Member)
Anticommunist and not afraid to use troops for America’s national interest
Anti-abortion (we can assume by being a ardent Roman Catholic)
JFK would be shunned by the left today...
yah
That legendary JFK “caution” is what made the Bay of Pigs invasion such a raging success too...
Agreed. JFK is probably the most overrated President ever.
“All war is stupid.” — John F. Kennedy
The inevitable alternative, appeasement, is stupider -Eye F. Guy
JFK almost got us nuked...the bay of pigs was a fiasco. We let down the Cuban people in a big way. Castro is a direct result of Kennedy’s failed policies-how many people died because of this I wonder.
The Democrats weren’t totally batsh!t crazy then. Later on in the ‘60s is when the Dems went postal and have pretty much stayed in the zen of lunacy since.
“we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
“To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required”
“lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.”
“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”
— JFK, neocon.
What is the Libs’ plan for a post Cut and Run Strategy, other than to blame Bush?
When Kennedy was assassinated, the old Democratic Party died with him. Add in five years of LBJ and you have the perfect recipe for the chronic cynicism and defeatism we have today in the US.
He also tried to off Castro, a commendable project that probably got him killed in Dallas.
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