Tale of The Sudden Sweetness of The President

Submitted by Allen Tobias (United States), Nov 22, 2013 at 12:00

Daniel,

I am in disagreement.

...

The world would be a better place had he not been killed. It would be a better place had he been wiser and more complete, and not made those fatal bad decisions which marked his presidency and which many ignore and you attempt to whitewash.

The claim about Vietnam is entirely disputable, and is only a claim unsubstantiated even by its most formidable proponents, the former advisers to the "good Kennedy."

You allege:

Had the president lived arguably our prosecution of the Vietnam War would not have done damage to the US as it did!

It, like the entirety of the Camelot myth is better as wish fulfillment, the story of a Michael Corleone gone straight.

It's latter day recirculation, on this commemorative day, is an attempt to restore the crown to an undeserved if attractive king who must be sold again reinvigorated like old wash to a believing public in this democracy, he reembodied from ground up.

No doubt JFK was the most attractive and most able of our American political leaders post-war, and he did reinvigorate America's youth for a time.

I was one.

In him administration, to its end, he was a big, big disappointment to me personally while he lived, and in death all reconsideration of his record which advances in the list his regrets over the missile crisis or his (much more doubtful) second thoughts about Vietnam

is again post hoc and wish fulfillment, very much to be regretted on this day for its malevolent influence on public policy and public debate.

We've seen some of this razzle dazzle and make believe made real recently, in the administrations of Clinton and Obama.

The audacity of hope indeed!

But with Kennedy there is no stop, no countervailing presumption. No accuracy in the report of him in public or private life. His handlers managed the press very smartly; the rotten truth of his life, his marriage and his policy decisions hardly seeped out in printer's ink in his lifetime.

The son who cannot know his father turns out a cowardly and weak leader no matter his talents: Clinton had great gifts, great talent. Obama less so..

In the case of JFK, the son of corrupt father turned out a strong leader a man of great intuitive ability and inexhaustible charm with no moral core capable upon which base to make and maintain honest policy with conviction within his power sphere.

That is JFK's fate.

And his performance no mere act, like that of Obama.

He was the more complicated man.

Still, the Monday morning quarterbacking is ridiculous. And, I am sorry to note that you've joined it.

So to return to Vietman, did not our president whose assassination in Texas we mark this day, some months before commit himself to the CIA sponsored and approved assassination of his core ... if corrupt ... friendly Vietnamese and Roman Catholic anti-communist leadership cohort, his ally Diem at the top of the list?

That ought to have been the end to argument about a change of heart. Even were it relevant to the question of decision making within the national and international leadership of the Kennedy administration.

If only, if only he lived?.

What were the changes in policy made in his lifetime for the good?

That is the question.

A fabric of decisions were repeated in a pattern of error.

Daniel, stick to facts and to the honest defense of American and Israeli interests.

That is job enough and you've done splendidly before.

My best,

Allen Tobias

PS The actual Kennedy record on Civil Rights is equally suspect and subject equally to second guessing and to rejiggering, by his former aides especially. Eisenhower grew up on a farm in Texas, attending segregated schools. And yet his enforcement of the law of the law was more vigorous and his attitude more than Kennedy's wavering pose. The president and his brother the attorney general attempted to blackmail King to silence; it was not merely the work of a nefarious Hoover; he'd become their puppet and instrument after all.

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