“JFK asked the same question about Nam.”
One of the great Kennedy myths. When Kennedy took office there were 750 American military in South Vietnam. He had raised that to 16,000 by the time of his death and was building up the Special Forces to fight a counter-insurgency war there.
Kennedy’s personal view of South Vietnam isn’t hard to discover, he gave it in a speech to The American Friends of Vietnam in 1956 when he was still a Senator.
” First, Vietnam represents the cornerstone of the Free World in Southeast Asia, the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike. Burma, Thailand, India, Japan, the Philippines and obviously Laos and Cambodia are among those whose security would be threatened if the Red Tide of Communism overflowed into Vietnam. In the past, our policy-makers have sometimes issued contradictory statements on this point - but the long history of Chinese invasions of Southeast Asia being stopped by Vietnamese warriors should have removed all doubt on this subject.
“Moreover, the independence of a Free Vietnam is crucial to the free world in fields other than the military. Her economy is essential to the economy of Southeast Asia; and her political liberty is an inspiration to those seeking to obtain or maintain their liberty in all parts of Asia - and indeed the world. The fundamental tenets of this nation’s foreign policy, in short, depend in considerable measure upon a strong and free Vietnamese nation.
“(2) Secondly, Vietnam represents a proving ground of democracy in Asia. However we may choose to ignore it or deprecate it, the rising prestige and influence of Communist China in Asia are unchallengable facts. Vietnam represents the alternative to Communist dictatorship. If this democratic experiment fails, if some one million refugees have fled the totalitarianism of the North only to find neither freedom nor security in the South, then weakness, not strength, will characterize the meaning of democracy in the minds of still more Asians. The United States is directly responsible for this experiment - it is playing an important role in the laboratory where it is being conducted. We cannot afford to permit that experiment to fail.
“(3) Third and in somewhat similar fashion, Vietnam represents a test of American responsibility and determination in Asia. If we are not the parents of little Vietnam, then surely we are the godparents. We presided at its birth, we gave assistance to its life, we have helped to shape its future. As French influence in the political, economic and military spheres has declined in Vietnam, American influence has steadily grown. This is our offspring - we cannot abandon it, we cannot ignore its needs. And if it falls victim to any of the perils that threaten its existence - Communism, political anarchy, poverty and the rest - then the United States, with some justification, will be held responsible; and our prestige in Asia will sink to a new low.
“(4) Fourth and finally, America’s stake in Vietnam, in her strength and in her security, is a very selfish one - for it can be measured, in the last analysis, in terms of American lives and American dollars. It is now well known that we were at one time on the brink of war in Indo-china - a war which could well have been more costly, more exhausting and less conclusive than any war we have ever known. The threat to such war is not now altogether removed form the horizon. Military weakness, political instability or economic failure in the new state of Vietnam could change almost overnight the apparent security which has increasingly characterized that area under the leadership of Premier Diem. And the key position of Vietnam in Southeast Asia, as already discussed, makes inevitable the involvement of this nation’s security in any new outbreak of trouble.
You are correct about JFK and Vietnam.
https://www.csmonitor.com/1991/1119/19182.html
Reston on Who’s to Blame for Vietnam
November 19, 1991
By Godfrey Sperling Jr.
No one has provided more persuasive evidence that it was President John F. Kennedy who got the United States into the Vietnam war than James Reston in his recently published memoir, “Deadline.”
Describing his interview with Mr. Kennedy following the young president’s summit with Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna, Mr. Reston has this to say: “I remember that Saturday morning very well. He (Kennedy) arrived at the US embassy (in Vienna) over an hour late, shaken and angry at having been delayed by an unexpected extra meeting with the Soviet leader.
He was wearing a hat - unusual for him - and he pushed it down over his forehead, sat down on a couch beside me, and sighed. I said it must have been a roug h session. Much rougher than he had expected, he said.” Kennedy then told Reston that Mr. Khrushchev had threatened him, warning that if the US did not agree to communist control over access to Berlin, the Soviet Union would proceed unilaterally to dominate the routes from Western Europe to Berlin. Kennedy said that he replied that the US would fight to maintain access to its garrison in Berlin if necessary.
Kennedy then went on to tell Reston that he felt sure that Khrushchev thought that anybody who had made such a mess of the Cuban invasion had no judgment. “Khrushchev,” writes Reston, “had treated Kennedy with contempt, even challenging his courage, and whatever else Kennedy may have lacked, he didn’t lack courage. He felt he had to act.” Soon thereafter Kennedy sent more advisers to the battlefront in Vietnam. “This, I thought,” Reston continues, “was a critical mistake.
Once Kennedy had over 15,000 ‘advisers’ engaged not only in giving advice but also in giving support on the battlefield. US power and prestige were thought by many officials in Washington and in Asian capitals to be committed.” And here is Reston’s assessment of the “who done it” argument that still is being waged - of who it was that got the US into what became a winless war that killed many Americans and finally sapped morale on the homefront: “No doubt, as President, Johnson was more responsible for commiting the US to that struggle (he eventually had 500,000 Americans in the war), but in my view Kennedy started the slide.”
Defenders of Kennedy on this issue usually point to Robert Kennedy’s denial that his brother had any intention of going to war in Vietnam. Reston writes: “Robert Kennedy, eager to protect his brother from blame, always denied that the President intended to increase the nation’s commitment to Vietnam, and also denied that the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna had anything to do with it. But he didn’t hear what his brother said to me in the Vienna embassy, and I did.” This is not just another reporter telling us of how something important happened. This is James Reston, one of the most respected men in American journalism.
So it is that when Reston tells us about his long and exciting life in the world of national and global affairs - about our wars, our presidents, and our leading politicians - we know we are hearing views of someone who has had insider knowledge of what he is writing about and who always is, indeed, seeking to stand square with the finish.