7 of 9, nope...6 of 9!Follow

Really? When did Kennedy send TROOPS to Vietnam? What was the date?

So, JFK never sent combat troops to Vietnam, at all.

Correct?

Hmmm... Whether you call them "troop", or "avisors", Kennedy increased the number of US servicement in Vietnam from ~30 to ~3000 between taking office and by mi 1962. There were somewhere around 15,000 US servicement in Vietnam when he was assassinated.

He certainly took the Eisenhower Doctrine (which was previously about military aid and training only) and turned it into an excuse to put US military in county in large numbers.

The use of Agent Orange in Vietnam began during Kennedy's administration.

How much of that was his choice and how much was simply following the policies that Eisenhower started? That's hard to say. However, it's pretty clear that the more you invest in an area in terms of men and material, the more difficult it is to walk away from it.


The great myth about Kennedy is the assumption that he would have walked away. He alone saw the danager that the US was headed towards, and he was going to put a stop to it. If only he hadn't been killed, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam (and it makes a great conspiracy theory too!). Unfortunately, that's just a myth. There is no evidence on record to indicate that Kennedy had any intention to reverse the course of Vietnam. Sure. The biggest escalation occured after Tonkin in 64, but it's pretty obvious that the administration was just waiting for a valid excuse to openly move massive ground troops into Vietnam. The only thing we don't know is how long they'd wanted to do that. Would Kennedy have done the same thing if the Tonkin incident had occured in 63 instead of 64? There's no way to know for sure, but there is no reason at all to suspect that he wouldn't have.

We can speculate all day long. I still think it's reasonably accurate to say that Kennedy's decisions certainly led to our increased involvement in Vietnam.

So what you're saying, Smash, is that advisors (wearing US military uniforms by-the-way) are not soldiers, but upon entering the country in dispute become paramilitary, ummm, guys? Even though they are receiving a paycheck from their respective sevice branch, fall under UCMJ, and answer to uniformed superiors back in The World?

That is pure semantics on your part.

As for casualities, 1864 "advisors" were killed between 1961 and 1965. Close enough for non-governmental/black ops/quasi troopish kind of work? However, if that is not detailed enough, three advisors were killed in action on January 2, 1963. That was the start.

Totem

A little reading for you.

http://hnn.us/articles/3446.html

Eb

So less than Died in Iraq in May.

My point exactly.

500 a week were dying when Johnson made the troop commitment.

OK, yearly quota for this word has been filled.

Gentlemen, start your Thesauruses.

Eb

/em gets his sunglasses, a map and a compass for the trip.

Wow. 186 deaths by water buffalo gorings. Amazing not one of these military advisors thought to use the guns that they were training those Viets on in self defense from those crazed behemoths. Perhaps those peace loving Americans were the prototype for future war protesters? Perhaps they shoved bamboo shoots in the barrels and chanted, "Make water buffalo steaks, not war!" in the face of frenzied asian bovines churning up the mud and water in a mad dash to hook those hapless soldiers with their horns.

Funny thing is, at first glance you'd think bullets flying from enemy soldiers would be the cause of our troop's death, but whatdyaknow! Kamakazi water buffaloes!

Heheh. Lefty revisionist history at its' best.

Totem

Well. I skimmed the paper, but here's the gist of what I got:


Basically, Kennedy expressed in secret a desire to reduce the number of US forces in Vietnam if it was politically expediant to do so. That's wonderful news, but it doesn't at all mean that had he been alive during the events between Fall of 63 and Summer of 64, that he would not have made the exact same choices that Johnson did.

Note that while the author injects the wording that Kennedy would have withdrawn whether we were successful in creating a South Vietnam capable of defending itself, the actual wording of the directives from Kennedy are specifically about building up S. Vietnam's ability to protect itself *first* and then withdrawing. The total withdrawel was contingent on that issue. There's a contradiction here, and I think the author is just using that area of unknowns to inject his own opinion onto Kennedy's actions. The reality is that we have no way of knowing what he would have done. There is nothing to indicate that even if he'd adopted the policy of withdrawel in spirit, that he would have actually done so given the political situation at hand.


A relevant snippet:



So an ex-cia guy is telling us what Kennedy would have done? That's reading a bit into it, isn't it? He's taking a position by Kennedy that clearly looks to be someone undecided about whether to withdraw or not, and assuming that Kennedy would have done it even if it was going to be viewed as a failure. But that's Newman's assumption. We have nothing from Kennedy himself that suports that opinion.

Sure. And we also have Johnson changing the wording of NSAM 273 just days after Kennedy's assassination. Which, if you believe the conspiracy theories would seem to support the idea that Johnson wanted to green light Vietnam, but Kennedy disagreed, so Johson had him killed. Um... But if you don't think that's what happened, then you might think that this was just Johnson continueing to follow the policies of the administration. Which would imply that those were changes already agreed upon by Kennedy shortly before his death.


The point is that we can't know for sure. It's a nice myth to assume that Kennedy would have saved us from Vietnam if only he'd not been killed. But that would assume a whole lot. It would assume that Johnson's agenda differed from Kennedy's *prior* to the assassination. It would assume that Johnson was working against Kennedy's wishes all along. It would assume that the CIA was also working against Kennedy's wishes. Now, that's entirely possible. But it's just as equally likely that Kennedy was undecided in Oct about what to do with Vietnam, and approved in principle the idea of reducing the US presense there, but then the assassinatio of Diem changed his mind and his policy and Johnson just continued that policy past Kennedy's own assassination.

And even then, regardless of what he "might have done", the fact is that Kennedy's policies prior to his death *did* lead us into Vietnam. He did escalate the US presense in that country significantly. He did authorize the first US military actions in that country. What's important isn't what he might have done if he'd lived out his term, but what he did do in the time he was in office. And during that time period, he got us into Vietnam.

The current US president openly admited having serious ethical problems earlier in life, apparently an affair and an addiction to cocaine. He seems to have "come clean" about them and I'm amazed and thankful that so little is made of them - even though I want him out of office very badly.

Lying about personal details is big news, but lying about money influences positions is not. If you are an American, you can go to http://www.opensecrets.org and find out who is giving money to who.

The big lie is that all that money does not grant influence.

It is the responsibility of US voters to ensure they are represented well and, if your politicians are taking money from, say, the RIAA and Disney and voting for copywrite extension which you personally oppose, write to them. Obviously, some things are not up for discussion but use your voice when it is - or use your voice with the opposition to get them to take a clearer position opposing the current incumbent.

Participate. All the money in the world can't buy votes - it just buys air time which can sway voters. The biggest anti-bribery tool we have is not campaign finance reform laws, although they help considerably, it is the office water cooler. Use it (or your equivelant). I'm not saying fight, necessairly, just talk about it and the power of wacko TV ads is reduced.

The rise in voter apathy in the US has correlated with the rise of corporate takeover of the government: when the people don't care, the companies will always be standing by with the check.

Or, if you like, the unions, or the PAC's, or the national parties.

During the most valuable gap in airtime in the US, probably, we have had a strange array of semi-washed up singers. Why not have a political debate? Since this is the Asylum, I suppose I can offer insane suggestions less likely to occur then the second coming.

Personally, I just tell people when the last day to register to vote is in my state for the next elections. I mention when the state of the union address happens, when the debates will be televised. I talk politics when people are interested.

We are the ones who are allowing the TV ads to effect us (our friends, our relatives). We have the ultimate power: the vote, which no corporation or pac or union has.

So the description of the problem is easy. My solution here proposed may seem weak and inadequate. Criticise it all you want, just vote anyhow even if it is for the evil candidate.

Not really, Smash. I just find the burnishing and polishing of the gold leaf around the plastic base of the Kennedy statue that people have erected in their minds to be funny.

Objectively-- and I mean that sincerely --do you really think he was the greatest thing since sliced bread? I find that he was more a symbol of what could have been than anything that he did or didn't do. It's like Janis Joplin or Jimmy Hendrix. Because they died before they made utter and total fools of themselves due to their lifestles (although Kennedy and these rock stars alike were well on their way to that point) they get put on a pedestal for those things they might have accomplished.

That's pretty thin evidence for posterity's sake.

Totem