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Please relieve the general of his raincoat before he reaches the Oval Office later today. And, to be on the safe side, invite the President to don his bulletproof vest.
The Unspeakable
Obama might be forgiven for fearing for his own personal safety,
particularly if he has read James Douglass's book, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It
Matters.
Kennedy inherited a senior military that then-Under Secretary of State George Ball called a "sewer of deceit." They lacked confidence in Kennedy's steadfastness before the menace of Communism, and salivated over how to maneuver the young president into military confrontations. These included operations to provoke war with Cuba, the Soviet Union, China, North Vietnam -- you name it.
The senior military and CIA operatives bitterly resented Kennedy's adamant refusal in April 1961 to be mouse-trapped into ordering U.S. forces to rescue those Cuban counter-revolutionaries marooned on the beach of the Bay of Pigs and send in U.S. troops to get rid of Fidel Castro once and for all.
A lesser-known challenge to Kennedy came in early March 1962, when JCS Chairman Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer proposed a plan called "Operation Northwoods" to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Working from declassified documents for his book, Body of Secrets, James Bamford gave the following concise description:
"Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere."People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."
Kennedy rebuffed the JCS, creating still more bad blood that, in my opinion, eventually would help seal his fate.
In his book, James Douglass lists some of the other grievances held against the young president by the super-patriot Joint Chiefs of Staff, who thought of themselves as self-appointed, authentic guardians of the United States against the Communist threat -- not the Constitution they took an oath to defend, if it got in the way.
During the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, the top military were aghast at Kennedy's unwillingness to risk war with the Soviet Union by invading Cuba. After Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev found a way to stop at the brink of nuclear catastrophe, both saw more clearly than ever a mutual interest in preventing another such occurrence. This led to a sustained back-channel dialogue from which the Joint Chiefs were excluded, and of which they were highly distrustful.
The kiss of death -- literally, I am persuaded -- came when Kennedy ordered the withdrawal of 1,000 U.S. troops from Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the bulk of the rest of them by 1965.
To the senior military that was proof positive that Kennedy was soft on Communism, which -- if you can believe it -- was an even more heinous offense in those days than being soft on terrorism is today.
Kennedy Gone, Johnson
Caves
President Lyndon Johnson knew no better than to let himself become
captive to the same military leaders -- the more so, since he was determined not to be the first U.S. president to lose a war. They assured him the war in Vietnam -- sorry, I mean the counterinsurgency -- could be won.
And they were sure they knew best how to do that. (As a result, young Army infantry officers like me were required to educate ourselves on the writings of Che Guevera and Mao Zedung, but, alas, not those of the more profound military strategist, Sun Tzu, from two-and-a-half millennia earlier.)
There was a conventional side to the Vietnam War as well, and conventional provocations. A prime example is the U.S.-military-provoked incident in the Tonkin Gulf on Aug. 2, 1964.
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