The recent 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination invoked the usual reflections and differences of opinion. You’ve read examples right here. Prominent among the inevitable, spin-off speculation: What if? As in, what if it hadn’t happened?
Prominent among the “what ifs”: Vietnam–and by implication, America’s foreign policy for this last half century.
We know of Kennedy’s summer of 1963 “Peace Speech” at American University and his fall of ’63 order to begin a 1,000-man withdrawal (from 16,000) of military personnel from Vietnam by the end of the year. And we know he expected to accelerate that rate after the ’64 election, but didn’t want to risk conservative backlash that would help the Barry Goldwater candidacy.
We also know that within four days of his presidency, Lyndon B. Johnson had countermanded Kennedy’s withdrawal order. By 1968 there were more than half a million American troops in Vietnam.
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 provides intriguing, possibly prescient context for Vietnam. President Kennedy was in the (15-member-“ExComm”) minority when it came to a plan of action that didn’t involve a direct military offensive against Cuba. Fortunately, he was commander-in-chief.
Among those not favoring the “quarantine”/no-invasion promise alternative: Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. According to accounts in Robert Caro’s impressively researched “The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power,” Johnson, who rarely spoke at meetings, stepped out of character as the missile crisis grew more ominous. Then he came down on the side of the hawks–in fact, rallying them, as crunch time approached. “We’re backing down!” was a familiar Johnson alarmist refrain.
Fortunately, he wasn’t commander-in-chief any earlier.