Why Kennedy Said No to Vietnam Combat Troops William Pfaff

Why Kennedy Said No to Vietnam Combat Troops
William Pfaff
2009/11/28

Paris, November 24, 2009 – The pressure that has been on Barack Obama
with respect to reinforcement of the war in Afghanistan resembles
that placed on John F. Kennedy to send American combat troops to
Vietnam during the eighteen months before his assassination.

Kennedy made an early decision which displeased most of his own staff
as well as much of the Washington press and political establishment.
It was not to send combat forces. He did not waver. The controversy
continued, but he was able to contain it by leaving the matter open
to debate while doing the strict minimum necessary to appease his
aides, nearly all of whom were for sending troops.

He counted on the fact that one of the most effective ways to take a
decision is to postpone it until it no longer is relevant. This is
what Barack Obama has been able to do until now, while the evolution
of political events in Afghanistan and Pakistan has steadily reduced
the public pressure on him brought by the Pentagon and a revived and
militarized American right.

Next Tuesday, when the President speaks to the country, one will
learn his response to the demand for dramatic escalation that has
been issued by Generals David Patraeus and Stanley McCrystal, the
Pentagon adviser David Kilcullen, and certain rejuvenated Neo-
conservatives and others from the last administration determined to
pursue the “long war” for what they see as permanent American global
politico-military domination.

There is a lesson in the past. Before leaving office, President
Dwight Eisenhower warned John F. Kennedy of the pitfalls before him
in the entire area of Southeast Asia. Eisenhower recalled that in
1954, when France asked for U.S. intervention in support of the
French troops besieged at Dienbienphu, he had refused the request
because he could not accept without congressional approval and an
indication of British support. At one meeting with his staff he had
said that “without allies and associates,” military intervention
would be the act of “an adventurer, like Genghis Kahn.”

He also said that he had been elected in 1952 to end one war in Asia,
in Korea, which might have become a total war with China, at a time
when the United States had both allies and a UN mandate. He “was in
no mood to provoke another one in Indochina….”

The new President Kennedy sought the advice of another eminent
American soldier. He invited Douglas MacArthur to Washington.
According to Robert Kennedy’s account, MacArthur said that it would
“be foolish to fight on the Asiatic continent,” and that “the
future... should be determined at the diplomatic table.” JFK’s aide,
Kenneth O’Donnell, has added that MacArthur said to Kennedy that
“there was no end to Asia and even if we poured a million American
infantry soldiers into that continent, we would still find ourselves
outnumbered on every side.”

General Maxwell Taylor, Kennedy’s military advisor, said that
MacArthur “made a hell of an impression on the president,” adding
that when presented with further proposals from the Pentagon for
military intervention, Kennedy would say, “well, now, you gentlemen,
you go back and convince General MacArthur, and I’ll be convinced.”
Taylor said, “none of us would undertook the task.”

President Kennedy remained adamant. He was determined not to send
American combat troops to Vietnam. In his first formal meeting on
Southeast Asia, in January 1961, he had asked some of the same
questions that today have been asked about reinforcement of the War
in “AfPak.” If the situation is as serious as it is said to be,
Kennedy asked, what good was a policy of training troops and national
police who would not be available for many months?

McGeorge Bundy noted in 1961 that President Kennedy asked another
question that remains pertinent concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan
today: “whether the situation was not basically one of politics and
morale.”

The conclusion of Gordon M. Goldstein’s recent book (“Lessons in
Disaster”), which makes use of McGeorge Bundy’s contemporary papers
and his drafts for the collaborative memoir he and Goldstein had
begun before Bundy’s death in 1996, is that Kennedy’s determination
at the time of his assassination was to withdraw American advisors
from Vietnam.

Bundy had favored intervention. He was one of the winners of the
argument – or so it seemed – when he was one of those most
influential in convincing the new President Lyndon Johnson to go to
war in 1964, a war that would continue for another nine years.

Among the papers from that period which Gordon Goldstein has used in
his book is a memo from Bundy to Lyndon Johnson on May 4 1967. This
said to the president, “The fact that South Vietnam has not been
lost, and is not going to be lost, is a fact of truly massive
importance in the history of Asia, the Pacific and the United States.”

Looking back at the memo, nearly 30 years after he had written it in
triumph, he noted on it, for Goldstein to read and quote, “McGB all wrong”.

What was not wrong was that the decision Bundy had urged Johnson to
take was indeed a decision of massive importance, as will be the
decision Barack Obama announces next week.

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