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TechnoratiObama: Profile in Courage, or Cave-In?
"It took a lot of courage on Kennedy's part to defy the Pentagon, defy the military - and do the right thing," said Col. Larry Wilkerson, USA (ret.), according to Robert Dreyfuss in his recent Rolling Stone article "The Generals' Revolt."
Wilkerson, who was chief of staff at the State Department (2002-2005) and now teaches at George Washington University, was alluding to President John F. Kennedy's courage in 1962, when he faced down his top generals and refused to bomb Cuba and risk nuclear war. That was as close as we came to nuclear calamity during the entire Cold War.
Despite the urgency of the threat posed by the Russian military buildup in Cuba (we now know the Russians had already placed nuclear weapons on the island), Kennedy's deliberate decision-making style allowed enough time for cooler heads to prevail and yielded a peaceful solution.
A hallmark trait of John Kennedy was his ability to listen and learn. At the same time, he did not hesitate to challenge conventional wisdom.
Call that "dithering," if you wish. I, for one, applaud President Barack Obama for following Kennedy's calm, deliberative style, as Obama faces similar pressure from the military to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan.
Kennedy: Out of Vietnam
The Cuban crisis was not the only time JFK found himself at loggerheads with generals who thought they knew better and who verged on the insubordinate. Kennedy's sustained arm wrestling with his senior generals over whether to send more troops to Vietnam was just as tense, and much more sustained.
In the end, he concluded that they had it wrong and he decided against them. In short, he opted to behave like a president-a "decider" (pardon the odd word). His overruling of the U.S. military brass on Vietnam had huge implications, both short- and long-term. This "real history" is highly relevant today.
The 46th anniversary of John Kennedy's assassination passed by last Sunday virtually unnoticed. The unfortunate thing is this: his legacy on Vietnam is so widely misunderstood that it is easy to miss the relevance of his decision making in the early Sixties to the dilemma faced by President Barack Obama today as he decides whether to stand up to-or cave in to-the Pentagon's plans for escalating another misbegotten war in Afghanistan.
Faux history has it that President Lyndon Baines Johnson's infusion of hundreds of thousands, up to 536,000, combat troops into Vietnam was a straight-line continuation of a buildup started by his slain predecessor. Kennedy did raise the U.S. troop level there from about 1,000 to 16,500 "advisers" - a significant increase.
But as he studied the options, cost, and likely outcomes, Kennedy came to see U.S. intervention in Vietnam as a fool's errand. Few Americans are aware that, just before he was assassinated, Kennedy had decided to pull all troops out of Vietnam by 1965.
The Pentagon was hell bent on thwarting such plans, and Defense Secretary McNamara found it an uphill struggle to enforce the President's will on the top brass. Senior military officers were experts at "slowrolling" politicians who favored a course that the Pentagon didn't like. When in May 1962 Kennedy ordered up a contingency troop-withdrawal plan, it took more than a year for the military brass to draw one up.
As the President encountered continuing resistance, he paid increasing attention to more levelheaded military and civilian advisers as well as to his own intuition and instincts. Kennedy asked the Marine Commandant, Gen. David M. Shoup, "to look over the ground in Southeast Asia and counsel him." Shoup told the President:
"Unless we are prepared to use a million men in a major drive, we should pull out before the war expands beyond control."
Kennedy concluded that there was no responsible course other than to press ahead for a phased withdrawal regardless of the opposition from his senior national security advisers. He decided to pull 1,000 troops out of Vietnam by the end of 1963 and the rest by 1965.
How To Do It
My Irish grandmother called Kennedy "a clever lad" and she was right.
Realizing that he had to exercise the utmost care in navigating choppy military and political waters, Kennedy employed the artifice of sending Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor on a "fact-finding" trip to Saigon. At the end of the trip they would "recommend" the course the President had already chosen.
Stopping in Hawaii en route back to Washington, McNamara and Taylor were given "their" report, which had been written by John and Robert Kennedy. It was instantly named the "McNamara-Taylor report" and the two travelers presented it to the President on the morning of Oct. 2, 1963. Wasting no time, the President convened a National Security Council meeting that evening to discuss the report.
The senior military saw through the subterfuge and strongly opposed the key recommendations of the report. In his memoir, In Retrospect, McNamara wrote that the NSC meeting saw "heated debate about our recommendation that the Defense Department announce plans to withdraw U.S. military forces by the end of 1965, starting with the withdrawal of 1,000 men by the end of the year." In McNamara's words, there was "a total lack of consensus."
However, there is only one "decider" on the National Security Council - the President. Kennedy stepped up to the plate and decided, bypassing the majority opposed.
Thirty-two years later in a Sept. 12, 1995 letter to the New York Times, McNamara took strong issue with a charge in an earlier op-ed that "the groundwork was being laid for our tragic escalation of the war" before President Kennedy was killed. McNamara described the President's reasoning in deciding to go ahead, despite the lack of consensus:
"...[T]he President nonetheless authorized the beginning of withdrawal, believing that either our training and logistical support led to the progress claimed or, if it had not, additional training would not change the situation and, in either case, we should plan to withdraw."
His decision made, Kennedy wasted no time in acting, well, like a President. He told McNamara to announce it immediately in order to "set it in concrete," according to McNamara. As the defense secretary was leaving the NSC meeting to tell White House reporters, the President called to him, "And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots, too," according to Kenneth O'Donnell and David Powers in their book, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye.
Action Memorandum
The President's policy was formalized nine days later in his National Security Action Memorandum Number 263 of October 11, 1963. That document put into effect the McNamara-Taylor recommendations, which provided that:
"A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time....[and] the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963."
Whether Kennedy truly believed that the U.S. training program would succeed in helping the South Vietnamese prevail is doubtful. Clearly, he wanted out. He carried around in his conscience, and from time to time spoke of, the number of American troops already killed. (Eight died under Eisenhower; about 170 during Kennedy's tenure.)
Assistant Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff, to whom fell the task of announcing President Kennedy's death on Nov. 22, 1963, told James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, that Kennedy's mind was fixed on Vietnam the day before. Instead of rehearsing for a press conference that day, Kennedy told Kilduff:
"I've just been given a list of the most recent casualties in Vietnam. We're losing too damned many people over there. It's time for us to get out. The Vietnamese are not fighting for themselves. We're the ones who are doing the fighting.
After I come back from Texas, that's going to change. There is no reason for us to lose another man over there. Vietnam is not worth another American life."
A month before, during his last visit to Hyannis Port, Kennedy told his next-door neighbor Larry Newman, "I'm going to get those guys out [of Vietnam] because we're not going to find ourselves in a war it's impossible to win.
Kennedy understood that decisions on Vietnam were far too important to be left to myopic generals. They were still chafing at what they considered Kennedy's failure in 1962 to seize the moment and obliterate Cuba-and perhaps also the U.S.S.R., while we were at it. Add Kennedy's clear desire to work closely (often secretly) with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in a priority effort to prevent another Cuba-type crisis, and then letting generic "Communists" take over Vietnam-with dominoes likely to fall all over the place-and the military brass became convinced they needed to strongly oppose such "appeasement."
"Best and Brightest"
And it was not only the generals. Far from it. The "best and the brightest," first and foremost McGeorge Bundy, Kennedy's national security adviser, were also strongly opposed to Kennedy's decision to pull troops out of Vietnam. Bundy disagreed with the recommendations in the McNamara-Taylor report. He also resisted Kennedy's frequently expressed doubts that foreign troops, even in large numbers, could prevail in guerrilla war, and Kennedy's determination never to send combat troops to Vietnam.
Bundy thought he knew better, refusing to believe that the President would ever "let South Vietnam go." Years later, Bundy's memoirs defended his views and advice to Kennedy on Vietnam.
However, after McNamara published In Retrospect in 1995, in which he concluded that "we were wrong, terribly wrong" on Vietnam, Bundy went back to the drawing board to rethink his assessment.
Bundy hired a man half his age, Gordon Goldstein, as research assistant to help him in what turned out to be Bundy's personal quest to discover the roots of his own mistakes which, for the most part, were the result of hubris, pure and simple.
Early this year, author William Pfaff reviewed what started out as the Bundy Memoir Part II (McGeorge Bundy died in 1996), but ended up as Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam by Goldstein. In his review, Pfaff highlights Bundy's pedigree: tops at Groton, professor of government at Harvard and youngest dean of faculty; his mother a Boston Brahmin, his father a diplomat. Pfaff is ruthlessly on point in describing Bundy's attitude:
"American had to ‘win' in Vietnam because America always wins. America knows better than everyone else because of that intellectual firepower deployed at Harvard and other elite universities. America does not have to know about other people because other people are not worth knowing.
"Goldstein's decisive clue to why Bundy failed came by accident. He found a note written in 1996, when Bundy was asked what had been most surprising about the war. He answered, ‘the endurance of the enemy.' Goldstein writes: ‘He didn't understand the enemy ‘because, frankly, he didn't think they warranted his attention.'"
The good news for today comes from press reporting that top officials of the Obama administration, including the President, have read Goldstein's book. Drawing a connection between Kennedy's challenge on Vietnam and Obama's on Afghanistan, a Wall Street Journal report of Oct. 7 noted, "For opponents of a major troop increase ... ‘Lessons in Disaster' encapsulates their concerns about accepting military advice unchallenged."
Obama Must Decide
There are hints that Obama is more Chicago than Harvard-and that, like Kennedy, he carries casualty figures around in his conscience. His late-night, early-morning appearance at Dover Air Force Base a few weeks ago to salute what the Washington Post called "transfer cases" coming home from the war is, I believe, a telling sign. Obama knows they are not just "transfer cases."
This young President, too, is a "clever lad;" he is also a politician. Intellectually, he is surely equipped to understand the March of Folly that would be involved, were he to send substantial additional forces to Afghanistan. And he is surely aware that the majority of Americans are no longer deceived by the pundits at Fox News. Recent polls show broader and broader popular opposition to sending more troops.
The choice, in my view, is between courage and cowardice cloaked as politics of the possible. Let me guess what you're thinking - "But that's asking too much of the young President; "cowardice" is too strong a word; Obama cannot possibly face down the entire military establishment."
Yes He Can
John Kennedy did. So the question is whether Barack Obama is "no Jack Kennedy," or whether he will summon the courage to stand up to the misguided military brass of today. We are talking, after all, about thousands more being killed-and for what?
I would suggest to the President that he give another close read to Goldstein's "Lessons in Disaster" and then ponder the lessons that leap out of Barbara Tuchman's The March to Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.
Obama may also wish to ponder the words of W.E.B. Dubois:
"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow...."
* * *
Note: In his book JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass has arrayed-and documented-his narrative with such care, that it has been all too easy for me to plagiarize from it. Actually, the book takes the JFK story much further, to include a thorough discussion of what-and who-Douglass believes killed the President. I recommend the book highly.
An earlier version of this article first appeared at Consortiumnews.com.
88 Comments so far
Show AllThis article is a whole lotta hooey. Obama and courage are like Obama and peace.
Mr. McGovern, not everyone has forgotten JFK. I think the people that pulled it off, or their descendants, are still in power.
This is the best article I have read by Ray McGovern. (I 've read everyone that I have seen)
Thank you very much.
WHY HARM GOES ON
“The whole world is under the control of the evil one…
the power of death and deadly force -- that is the devil.”
1 John 5:19, Hebrews 2:14
For in the beginning there was this conversation:
Lord: Why are you using deadly force to enslave those less intelligent?
What if I did the same to you? Did I not create you the most
knowledgeable of all, with the greatest appreciation for life of all?
Satan: But deadly force, is that not how you control all us created beings? For is not death the punishment if we even taste of the knowledge of good mixed with evil?
Lord: But why are you blaming me for death? Am I not the author of life, and the creator and sustainer of all Life?
For the highest law of life is that no one shall use the knowledge of good mixed with evil to enrich themselves upon the misery of another. For only one thing contains both the knowledge of good and evil, that is a lie, that is darkness. For only under the cover of a lie may one commit evil, only under the cover of such darkness may one enrich themselves upon the misery of those less intelligent.
Satan: But this thing you call good, is it not just your greater knowledge used as a pretense to enslave us? For this thing you call good, is it not a false standard for right when in fact there is no such thing as right? For only deadly force makes right, and look at you – are you not right only because you have the greatest force?
Lord: But if only might makes right, then what did I gain by creating you, what's in it for me watching things get destroyed by you? All my time, energy and thought required to create and sustain life, all now being reduced to nothing by you, am I just a puppet and slave to you?
Satan: But is not everyone just a mindless robot to those more intelligent? For ability to kill is in direct proportion to intelligence.
For only slaves to you are those who do only good. As you gave them a conviction that they deserve less, which gives them a guilty conscience if they fail to give all they can give.
While a freewill have we who feel we deserve more, and a guilt-free conscience when we take all we can take.
But you call us evil for no other reason then we have a freewill, and because of a freewill desire to do more then just good.
You say if we do only good it will be eternal happiness for all, but we have only your word for it. And having blind faith in you, is that not absolute proof that we are just slaves to you?
For money won is twice as sweet as money earned, and no pleasure is there greater then the immediate pleasure of evil. Surely we need to experience evil to know the truth, otherwise we are a slave to you, locked in darkness and ignorance by you.
Lord: You must think yourself more intelligent then I, you must think you have a better way. So, what is it?
Satan: Let everyone be as you, God over those less intelligent with the power of life and death over those slower of thought. And let the fundamental principle of all law be that everyone may enrich themselves upon the misery of those less intelligent. And let everyone self-actualize, be all they can be.
Lord: Very good, I now give you planet earth, and the human race locked in darkness by the illusion that they deserve more. And let us just see, what the ultimate conclusion of it all will be.
Thank you for the history lesson on JFK's attitude towards the Vietnam war. I had always thought that he earned black marks for the escalation and future horrors there. So, Obama has no excuse for placing himself, our country, his troops and the Afghan people in the maw of a giant, carnivorous military which is technologically advanced but intellectually stunted.
A decision to escalate to the tune of 35000 - 40000 soldiers is going to be the death knell of Obama's administration, and rightfully so.
The "choice" that McGovern holds out is illusory. It is obvious that Obama has already thrown his lot in with the National Security State. Obama would not have his job otherwise. Perhaps it's a good thing that McGovern has retired from the "intelligence" business; which presumably requires good judgment of character.
If your doomsday mindset is reality, then all is hopeless and lets go fishing.
But McGovern has a theory, whereas your confusion that a theory is “illusion,” surely this is a mindless way to put the brain in neutral, a stress-free way to coast down a blind alley.
It all depends on how you look at it. The other day, some posted here about courage in the wrong direction. How is it that Obama is brave enough to bugger Congress to get those supplemental spending for Iraq and Afghanistan bills through but goes cowardly when it comes to a simple health care reform proposal? I am trying to overcome my skepticism of government but people like Obama are blocking my wish.
Please don't ever "overcome" your skepticism of government. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance" (Jefferson?, Franklin?)
ROOT CAUSE ---- SOLUTION
Our super-intelligent rich have discovered a way to gratify greed, enslave with pleasure the majority, and by this gain control of a capitalist government.
And so, as pleasure is the lubricant that gets things done, all we need do is convince people that long term happiness is the reverse of short term pleasure. Any ideas?
he is a smart lad? a smart lad would fire the generals giving
him such advice and fire the people in his administration
as well! he is really doing as ordered as he took the money
and they own his soul! what a sad man. just like georgie
bush it shows you can go to harvard but it does not mean
that your smart! this is no place for on the job training
especially when you hire the devils own as your adviser!
as a result we will suffer greatly for this fools ineptitude!
Brains come with birth and the conviction you deserve more,
whereas wisdom comes with age and the reality you deserve less.
Obama has failed the JFK test.
I give him an A for Cave-in.
SELF-GLORIFIED SOCIETY ---- BOXED IN OBAMA
For the sake of a good-going argument, let us optimize our gut-wrenching predicament and assume for a moment that our hero Obama is Jack Kennedy incarnate, to perfection JFK all the way.
Problem is, our self-absorbed majority now has four times the wealth and glory as did the better half of society in the 1960’s. Truth is, the upper 60% of society all have a lot more wealth then debt and above all things desire an all-powerful military to protect their filthy wealth, glorious bodies and inflated minds.
Someone cited the line: "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it".
Perhaps Obama *has* learned from history and doesn't want a repeat of 11/22/63.
Old Uncle Dave:
I suspect you are correct.
"Few Americans are aware that, just before he was assassinated, Kennedy had decided to pull all troops out of Vietnam by 1965."
And few Americans are aware that JFK did not like the privately-owned Federal Reserve having the power it wields over every aspect of the U.S. economy.
I wonder if Obama will veto Congressman Ron Paul's "Audit-the-Fed" bill if it ever gets to his desk?
In fact, Kennedy started the Treasury printing its own money, the United States Note, so that the U.S. gov't would not have to pay the six percent interest it is forced to pay to the private Federal Reserve Bank on all U.S. paper money--Federal Reserve Notes... This initiative was halted by LBJ immediately upon his taking office...
Ah, the big speech is coming next Tuesday. Obama is planning to "sell" us the war. I knew there was going to be much than an "announcement." Here's comes the big speech. Let's see, has played the role of super-pharmaceutical rep and super-health insurance agent, and now we get to see Obama, the war salesman, or Bush redux.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/24/obama-promises-to-finish-_0_n_369423.html
It seems to be a uniform observation that these of the intellectual liberal literati in their ivory towers, like Krugman apparently strolling around Princeton observing a rebounding economy, are sheltered from the real suffering in this country. That allows them the luxury to indulge in their fantasy of Obama as liberal standardbearer, since they are comfortable with his class identity and approve of his race as indication of political correctness.
As long as just the poor suffer and acceptable numbers in the Middle-class to ward off outright revolt and as long as the extreme Right fills the void of the Opposition, than there will be no clear voice from the Left, since these liberals keep giving Obama a pass. And then they lecture Progressives for not pressuring Obama when they are sabotaging the movement. In retrospect, perhaps it was better in the Depression when economic failure was felt across the board, because as long as it can be limited to the powerless than there is no incentive to act.
Obama dithers not only because he is coward, but because of all of the other deceptions and betrayals thus far--it is politically perilous. It is NOT as if the choice is to NOT escalate, afterall, the choice is how much. So, it is dishonest to claim that Obama is deliberating with courage--in just the way Obama characterizes as listening to all points of view on healthcare--except single-payer-what the majority wants.
You can not pull this shit on us--we follow it too closely, this is the war that Obama wanted.
Perfect assessment of Obama, but what light does it cast
on the root cause of all our problems and the only solution?
For Obama has power only to the extent those rich and powerful
give him power, and the rich have power only to the extent they
are able to gratify the desires of our self-absorbed majority.
So the solution is simple, prevent the rich from gratifying the
desires of a people the most greedy and selfish the world has
ever known
Obama broke records from small donors to his campaign--It was all we heard about, yet somehow, all of that money that he received from the little people has suddenly been erased from history and only the money from the big boys matters.
"and the rich have power only to the extent they
are able to gratify the desires of our self-absorbed majority"
More like rip them off or exploit them, don't you think?
You want the problem to be something easy that we can overcome
with a not to large organized group, just a 1% rich that we can
overpower with a 5% dedicated bunch of liberals.
Problem is, our enemy is a 200 million self-glorified majority,
a maddening crowd and is hell-bent on being glorified.
An agent "should be so normal in manner, and his actions so natural, that nothing about him excites suspicion."...(from the C.I.A. manual posted on CD)
It looks like Ray has never left the Company... Having established his anti-establishment credentials, he is able to write articles like this and the last one, which are clear attempts to patriotize wavering Obama believing readers.-, the last article with us, Americans, heroically against the others, the dastardly terrorists, America, us, on the right side in a therefore implicitly legitimate war on terror; -the current article rallying us behind a flag with Kennedy's face on one side and Obama's on the other. Whatever possibilities there were under Kennedy, THEY DIED WITH HIS MURDER, probably by the gov't;-MLK was also murdered at the moment he started to speak against the Vietnam War and was organizing a march on Washington whose purpose was to fundamentally change the American political system,.. (MlLK's murder has been proved in (civil) court to involve the U.S. Gov't)...
Obama's mask is slipping badly, and our very own C.I.A. mole is doing what he is paid for...
rereading the article, i feel i was unfair to Ray...i am not at all sure of what i thought i saw in it; i apologize.
Guernica:
RE: "excit[ing] suspicion" and 'bama john
The "agent" I'm thinking of is agent provocateur...
Ray seems to be a variation on the tried and true intelligence technique of how to use a turned enemy agent, in which the agent is given a flow of true information to send back, so that the other side will believe and act on major disinformation when it is considered crucial to have that very important disinformation followed, to bring about defeat of the other side...
he admitted in a recent interview that he also worked in Operations/Plans, which means black ops....
Yes, but I could also accuse you of doing exactly what the rich ruling class desire most, destroy the unity and harmony of the few liberals who openly oppose the deceitful rich.
For all your focus is on a secret branch of a most secret government. But abolish the CIA, give prison for life to all who tortured and our self-absorbed society will in quick order rebuild it to an even more enslaving capacity.
Ray McGovern from my perspective is trying to guide us away from a hate Obama and hate the CIA frame of mind, the goal being a rational solution to the problem, and strong unity, as in all-powerful and conquering harmony.
unity=fasces, the source of the word, fascism...
Yes, our self-absorbed majority is fascist,
“dictatorial or with extreme right-wing views.”
Otherwise 25% of America’s children would not
have suffered some form of hunger last year.
Bring America Back !!!!
****Unfortunately, in just a year, Team Obama has failed
miserably to deliver any campaign promise, which is proof positive Obama's words were cheap rhetoric===otherwise known as lies !!!!
****With the stress of the failed Economy, the failed Wars,
lack of Bush investigations. Team Obama is already a complete failure as President==no way deserving of another term of Office.
****Problem is we are in for 3 more years of His nice apeeches which fail to deliver anything to our Nation.
Rather than curing the DC 'culture of corruption', Team Obama has become an Enabler, and part and parcel of it !
****Why McGovern does his comparison of Obama to JFK, without confining it to great speeches, is strange !
I hope soon one of the White House correspondents will stand up at a Press Conf, and state to Obama----'You're No JFK !
****Last weekend was the 46th Anniversary of JFK's assassination, and hardly a whisper of public remembrance.
This should live each year on the National Stage, and I dont think Obama uttered any remorse either. Shameful at best !
So your last line hits on the root cause of all our problems, a “Shameful at best,” most corrupt, deceitful and greedy society.
So we agree, a greedy people have no capacity to produce anything but a greedy and enslaving government.
Barack Obama is not fit to lick John Kennedy's boots.
One-Termer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYKN-vsuorY
obama is all brain, but no spine, which will only stiffen when he finds the courage of his convictions. i also think that obama has always avoided, by instinct or self-protection, taking hard stands on issues. he knows that white america likes likable and non-threatening blacks; if he fought really hard and became dogmatic or crusading, many whites would recoil, for they voted for a semi-black man with charm, grace, and ease, one who appeared to want to accomodate everyone. fighting hard would dredge up the specter of the angry negro so threatening to the fragile sensibilities of white america; on the other hand, should obama appear earnest and altruistic, pleading that he just wants to improve everyone's lot, he would then appear condescending, as the uppity black who deigns to help all the whites so less intelligent and wealthy than he is. whites have a subconscious aversion to being given a "hand up" by a black guy, for it reminds them of their failure to achieve. i think the obama administration is destined to fail. i fear what comes next.
Your grasp of the obvious is astounding,
for a society that keeps on getting more
greedy and self-glorified will surely
pick a leader of like quality.
You know what else is astoundingly obvious? You're an asshole.
So true, so true.
Conscription is being overlooked. Many of the promising young men who died in Vietnam had no choice. They were unwilling casualties. Kennedy had the conscience of the nation to brace his rationale. We now have an all volunteer army engaged in war profiteering. We also have mercenary corporations making huge profits with no-bid contracts.
Have we all forgotten what we've become as a people? We can't compare Kennedy to Obama because both are products of completely different constituencies. We're not Americans in the same sense that we once were. We're only shadows of what we once were represented by whores who only listen to corporate lobbyists. Half of our congress is comprised of millionaires who have a huge stake in widening the profit margin of their cash cows.
MASS MEDIA BRAINWASH
For just like corporate media you blind the mind by burning the emotions with words that are only about the bloody effects of the problem, stress unbearable as you connect disjointed logic that generates nothing but confusion.
Yes, but you're still an asshole.
December 10, 2009 - Nobel Peace Prize Award Ceremony in Oslo
I hope there will be big peace demonstrations in Norway, and around the World about the "Peace Prize".
Will Kissinger attend, another Nobel Peace Prize laureate? Oh sorry I forgot, he can't travel overseas, he's wanted for war crimes. That'll be Obama in 20 years.
... Bundy's personal quest to discover the roots of his own mistakes which, for the most part, were the result of hubris, pure and simple.
Hubris, the 110 octane form of arrogance, is typical of preening and ambitious national security types like McGeorge Wanker Bundy. The government of His Excellency, The Great Obama, is no different. Bundy couldn't find his dick with a microscope or a flock of detectives. Neither can Obama or most of the closet throat stickers who whisper disaster in his ear. These people don't deserve the words fool, idiot or horse's ass. The simple word "nincompoop" will suffice.
Bring America Back !!!!................!!!!...Well Shiblikov, I would prefer you
keeping them in the 'idiot' or 'horses'ass categories instead of the lightweight
handslap of nincompoops !!!! All during Obama's campaign, the worst he could do to King Georges war crimes was call them : quote "failed policies" !!! They weren't malfeasance, negligence, violations--just "failed policies" !!!!!
Escalation in Afghanistan will not be possible if congress refuses to fund it. Do the congress people have the courage to refuse???
The Congress whores won't refuse if they want their cut of the action.
Why would they want to refuse to fund their campaign donors, not to mention their blackmailers?
What I get from this article is that JFK did all these courageous things, standing up to the generals, even critically mentioning the MIC and Wall Street in his speeches - and then he died.
When he took office, if not sooner, President Obama was faced with a stark choice: Follow through on the change you've promised and you'll soon join the long list of courageous American public figures who have met with accidents or irrational assassins, or ....
It looks as if the president chose the latter, probably believing that he can be of more service to his country alive rather than dead.
"...believing that he can be of more service to his country alive rather than dead."
How, since assumed self-preservation has rendered any action moot? Might as well have Bush then? Might as well be dead.
People are struggling and dying everyday because of Obama's inaction. What are the soldiers and civilians in Afghanistan dying for every day while he fiddles? I often wonder if the Muslim psychiatrist shootings was a psych-ops or a lucky coincidence where the media was employed to ramp up that anti-Muslim terrorists sentiment to make it easier to escalate. I don't think the public is buying the cost when the "homeland" is in dire straits, but I bet Obama was hoping it would pave the way for him.
Give me liberty or give me death.
It was quite clear from Obama's campaign speeches and his voting record as a Senator that Obama had already chosen to side with those who control the country's money and power. The belief that he was forced to join the dark side after being elected President is just a comforting fiction, useful to those who don't want to accept the overwhelming evidence of his ambitious and disingenuous character.
So, we are to believe that the president is a fraud, coward, or hostage who has been coerced into abdicating his constitutional authority, crawling up his own asshole, and assiduously pretending to govern from there?
Are you OK with that? The president-in-the-crosshairs scenario is thrown out there a lot, as if it Explains Everything. The exact wording changes, but the point is always fraught with "it is what it is" finality.
But even if it is what it is... what IS it?
· Yr Obd't Servant
Yes that is the issue, it being the title of this article,
But your argument that Obama took the cowards way out
because Obama thought a live coward makes the best President,
surely this be fiction logic with a fairy tale conclusion.
Obama is Dick Cheney's whipping boy, an embarrassment to the Black race. The most repulsive version of an Uncle Tom in office I've ever had the displeasure of witnessing. In fact, Obama's ashamed to be half back, he hates Blacks, he hates the damage real Blacks can do to his brilliant political career. Look what he did to Rev. Wright and Van Jones, threw them right under the bus.
He's not only continuing White Master Bush's policies, he's furthering them. He's a Rush Limbaugh ass-kisser when it comes right down to it, Dr. King and Malcolm X must be turning in their graves.
Obama not cowering down to the generals, actually challenging
and contradicting a three star most contemptuous general,
surely this now sticks in the craw of each and every general.
Many not nice things could Obama very well be, but just
confusion, to muddy the equation, is your conclusion to me.
I see that Obamabots are still choosing to remain oblivious and struggling to find excuses to explain and apologize for this creep's repugnant behavior since taking office. Please stop.
Jack was our last liberal President and the last hope of anything good
coming from a President. Johnson was forced to yield on Civil Rights,
and since then all in the White House have done more harm then good.
Dafoe
Talk about the 60's, people have damned short memories about Cuba, Castro was turned aside by the US and so looked elsewhere for aid , the USSR. Commies at our borders, still scares the hell out of the "land of the free and home of the brave" , it did then and it did for big Ronnie. Kennedy had no choice but to refrain from using nuclear weapons on Cuba, that is courage? Who was threatening him, the generals? His decision was common sense?!
Sorry McGovern your comparison of now and the 60's is so much apples and oranges. Neither then or now has anyone in the US guvmint learned that you cannot get peace through the barrel of a gun but only through justice. Ike talked of the dangers of the industrial-military complex and did zip about it as did his successors and it still operates away on remote control. Let me and others hear from the smarter people of how to stop that 70 year old embrace and chop off the roots of all the other corporate socialists. Doing that will take courage.
This country voted for the village idiot three times and not a peep out of the lot along comes Obama and we want instant change now.
What we need is a revolution but few are ready to try it. Vermont has a group that want to secede and I think that is a good start.
Yes, but our generals and the CIA designed the cold war knowing that Russia was only acting in self-defense from start to finish. I lived through the Second World War and fought in the Vietnam War, now that was scary. But the cold war was a joke for the vast majority of us who have watched from infancy the growth and glory of Empire USA.
I wrote what is below a few months ago. Today I think we know the answer to the last question I posed..
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Obama at the Crossroads
The President is at a cross roads with the American people. He is now faced with two basic choices. When will lead to greater initial challenge and eventual strong public support, the other will lead to a precipitous drop in public support- with very little hope for recovery.
Yet the road he chooses depends in part on what he really stands for. In this regard there are two schools of thought. One says that the President is really a progressive. He wants strong banking reform, strong climate change & health care legislation, etc. However, because of fear, the desire for bipartisanship, lack of vocal public support or the evils of Washington, he is unable to deliver this kind of change- so he settles on incremental steps- arguing that something is better than nothing. This school of though challenges him on his notion of governance and believes that the President should be bold and strong. They have a faith that the American people- when given the truth will act responsibly and support policies that are in their own best interest.
Another school of thought is that Obama really isn't a progressive. They argue that his supporters pre and post election have been large financial and health care companies. They took notice that his Secretary of Treasury and Chief economic advisors came from the ranks of those who helped bring about the financial crisis we are in. That he is essentially a prop for these companies and his lofty rhetoric is meant more to deceive the average American and protect the oligarchy than bring about right action. They point out that the record foreclosure rate is proof that he supports corporations over the average American.
If the President is really a progressive then he must act boldly-now. Whatever initial opposition he encounters will wither if his polices prove to be sound. If he fails to act boldly, he will perceived as weak and his popularity and effectiveness will continue to decline.
If the President is not a progressive, and for example, in the words of Howard Dean, is crafting a health plan that Bush would like, i.e., that heavily favors corporate interests, he should continue on his current path. However, eventually his true intentions will be known and his popularity will precipitously decline and will not recover.
I want to believe that the President is a principled, progressive leader. I understand he and his administration has been confronted with much in a very brief span of time. I also recognize that strategy takes time to formulate and that his predecessor left him little to work with. However, I am concerned that their is such a disparity between his actions and words that either with or without justification the American people will perceive him as hypocritical and dishonest. Sometimes I feel this way, however it is difficult for me to walk in his shoes. However I am confident that the choice he faces is real. Concessionary President or leader?
He was voted in on a mandate, but once he was in he actually opposed or refused to even allow a hearing for what a majority polled actually wanted and squandered the opportunity to actually act on what he was elected to do.
Does that make it clearer?
Bottleneck is the people, a self-absorbed majority more interested
in their excessive wealth then other people, and not much can
Obama do, with such a motley crew.
Kennedy might have been a clever lad..but not clever enough to duck.
By appeasing the military industrial complex, Obama is not only ducking, he is crawling under the Resolute Desk
I don't think we'll be seeing courage out of Obama anytime soon:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/11/24/us.afghanistan
How many times can America be thrown under the bus and walk away? I suspect that Iraq was the last time. Afghanistan will break America's back.
People will have to push Congress and Obama on halting plans to increase troops in Afghanistan.
Read all of the writing that candidates produce for you when they are running for office and read between the lines. On Obama's Change.gov website, he outlined his military policies under the military page link.
His website listed his intent to expand the military and the occupation in Afghanistan. It also said that he planned to increase the use of drones. The purpose was to "expand our global reach."
We were sold false notions of peace policies when in reality he made his pro-military policies plain as day for voters to read.
Please carefully research candidate's positions and policy stances before you vote for state, federal and local elected officials.
Obama: your choice to send thousands of more troops to Afghanistan cuts through all the fancy, silver tongued rhetoric. What you are speaks so loudly, that many will not listen any more to what you say you are!
I cannot tell you how betrayed I feel!
I thought I was an intelligent person, making rational choices.
I was an activist in college. Well, OK, back in the sixties. Early sixties.
I was totally duped.
Totally.
Cannot tell you how stooooooooopid I feel!
Obama is a chocolate Bush.
Gawd!
Now, what do we do??
Those of us who are able to still stand up, that is.
You mean Milk Chocolate
Bunny68: " Now, what do we do? ". Support third party candidates. They may not win but at least you will not feel duped and you will have a clear conscience, And do not feel bad because you were duped, because this guy is good, I mean really good.... as he duped many intelligent and well meaning people and I should know because I pleaded with many intelligent people to see that the silver tongued, Obama was a super con man but alas, to no avail.
When people are acting out of fear, as in voting for the lesser of two evils, they have regrets because they had a chance to make a better choice but chose not to do so. The sense of regret is doubled because in the back of their mind they knew that they should have known better.
Unless you can make a firm commitment to stop throwing your vote away on corporate candidates, you will continue to have regrets.
I found enough reason not to vote democratic party a long time ago and the years since 2000 are like someone else's nightmare, because I wouldn't have imagined that as many people would continue supporting the democratic candidates as they have.
The number of people who are not willing to compromise their vote is extremely small, as seen by the election results. How can people expect a change if they continue voting for the status quo?
I even have doubts about Kucinich, he has consistently placed party loyalty ahead of principles when push comes to shove.
We should start a serious push to convince Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey, Barbara Lee, to leave the democratic party behind, and engage in a new party (Green party?).
unrepentant Nader supporter (with no regrets for voting for him the last three times).
Man of peace? Nah.
Another master of war? Yeah.
It's that simple. All the embroidery is useless and pointless knowledge.
(Geez, two Dylan titles and a lyric)
Obama is a political opportunist and first class liar. This president will make GW look downright honest. Obama has betrayed progressives and has embedded Bush policies that we had hoped to reverse. The left should not be suckered by anymore fancy speeches--that's really all Obama can do right.
I'm not sure how JFK's reality is being whitewashed, whether he really was going to withdraw troops or not. But it seems that Obama is clearly not going to draw down troops, when he was in a position to clearly do so.
I'm not sure why democrats voted for him. I know why they were opposed to Bush W- the endless mindless war, health care, corporate corruption but now that it is done by a democrat it seems okay.
Didn't Obama talk about change you can believe in? I guess he was talking about the pocket change that the people are so grateful for. I guess it is called chump change for a reason.
Hope is the opiate of the masses.
Vote third party. Let the charade of the democratic party end. Don't be a chump.
Absolutely riveting video showing JFK's Secret Service mysteriously abandoning guard of his limousine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8M9GAUUSss
The first time (early in the reign of Bush II) I viewed the film of the CIA agent's shrug, it chilled me to the bone. That was the moment I knew for sure that our own government killed Kennedy. (It also explained how one gets one's idiot son elected, um, adjudicated president.)
I'd love to see the film that was confiscated by the FBI, referred to in the youtube clip. Has anyone ever seen it?
The Secret Service Standdown reminds me of the 9/11 Military stand down
Mr McGovern, when I saw the article headline, I was wondering if Obama had actually committed a Profiles in Courage action. Scanning the article revealed that this piece was only about his having an opportunity to perform one. From where I observe things, calculation, ambition, and expediency are parts of his operational kit. I don't see courage or even the potential for courage as being part of that kit. I don't think self-sacrifice is part of it either. So, there is no reason to seriously read yet another "what Obama ought to do" article. Every time I have read one of them, he has never taken the good advice given him. It has been as if you, Krugman, Volcker and many other good advisors just didn't exist.
This-all would read a lot more nicely had 0bama not decided to send more troops after his dithering.
That would have been something worth hoping for ---- had it happened or were hoping for such things useful in bringing them about.
In no way do I mean this to disparage McGovern's fine analysis and stalwart stand against the endemic lunacy of the intelligence community, but his appraisal of 0bama's motivations here is not only optimistic, but dangerously so.
Whatever one thinks of JFK's decisions in the early '60's or imagines he might have done then, 0bama has shown no sign whatsoever of deviating from paths of war. This is a pattern consistent with other aspects of his policies: There is no money for healthcare, a pittance for education, bailouts only to the richest sectors, nothing beyond lip-service to a green economy, full-bore authorization of coal and hydrocarbon expansion, more and more money to the military in Latin America as well as the Middle East, no transparency and nor surcease of torture or rendition, and a quick and quiet confirmation of the so-called "Patriot Act" for so-called patriots.
Let us for once and for all can this jabber about courage and vision and quit hedging for the man's erudition and eloquence.
These things are not at the service of the American people, and there is no point hoping for any favorable decision at all ever from this administration without some manner of force (yes, preferably nonviolent).
I'm glad McGovern credited James Douglass's excellent book, because I recognized Douglass's work in Ray's summary.
I'm finally reading David Talbot's "Brothers"; I heartily recommend it also-- at least the first half.
Not surprisingly, I believe that Ray is giving too much credit to Obama. There's simply no indication that Obama is able or willing to take courageous and principled stands.
Team Obama's signature techniques superficially resemble Team Kennedy's; apparent vacillation and stumbles arising from a deliberate intention to keep one's balance while putting one's opponents off-balance, and the capacity for operational doublethink, e.g. simultaneously pursuing belligerent and provocative Cold War hard-line military and intelligence operations while earnestly pursuing clandestine diplomatic relationships with the goal of peaceful co-existence.
I don't claim certainty; one can't equate historical perspective with the perspective one has while living in the moment. But the Obama do-si-do approach has been overused all year; Team Obama has made it a habit to introduce Pregnant Pauses during contentious or critical moments, e.g. with the health insurance legislation debacle, giving the citizen audience the impression that he's finally about to grasp the nettle.
Then the gears start turning again, and the debacle is back on course.
Thus, the recent "inside" story that Obama was dissatisfied with ALL of the escalation options was, IMO, deliberately crafted to give the impression that Obama had stopped stroking his War Boner, and might finally agree that his view of military intervention in Afghanistan as a "Good War" was mistaken.
So when he ends up choosing just the option that was briefly "unacceptable", Team Obama can pretend that the monarch truly scrutinized and agonized over Doing the Right Thing, and made the most conscientious and thoughtful decision possible.
I suspect that Team Obama is willing to risk a Kennedyesque appearance of genuine and profound soul-searching simply to manipulate and string along a desperate and credulous public.
I believe that Obama is much more of a shallow, feckless, amoral technocrat than JFK ever was-- a corporate lawyer on the make, and more of a "Profiles in Pragmatism" guy.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Sioux Rose
O.S. I'm halfway through the JFK & The Unspeakable (book), and totally agree with your extremely well-stated assessment. Any comparison between JFK and Obama is like comparing biogenetic corn with the genuine variety.
I certainly hope the President surprises us all and withdraws the troops.
Either way though, he's damaged goods & probably toast in 2012, at this point.
He can at least save a portion of his legacy by doing the right thing and go down in history as a peacemaker, not a violent warmonger.
The time it is today. And he is The Commander-in-Chief.
Ray, the Bill Moyers "Journal", last week, about the comparisons between escalation in Vietnam and what we learned today about Obama's planned escalation in Afghanistan, showed that Obama does not even have the honesty and courage of an LBJ, let alone a JFK.
Moyers Journal on this 'eve of probable destruction' provides an excellent history lesson, that would remind George Santayana himself "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". But even if Obama had learned from the 'history' of the Vietnam war, he does not have the power or courage to act on his knowledge.
This "Moyers Journal" TV show reinforces in a more emotive manner what I already have learned from history --- that our country was already an Empire those 46 years ago, once JFK was out of the way --- that since Vietnam the Empire that hides behind America has only entrenched itself, now in the 21st century, as a truly Global ruling-elite corporate/financial Empire by hiding behind the facade of its two-party 'Vichy' sham of democracy, in which an insidious combination of accumulated elitist wealth, corporatist media, and gutless complicit politicians have led the world to the economic, environmental, and militarist death-spiral in which we are trapped today.
Unless a new Global People's Movement (qua Revolution) can confront this Global EMPIRE, our future path will make the inevitable path that Moyers so well documents in Vietnam look like a walk in the park.
The biggest lie of omission during the ramp-up to Vietnam which Moyers "Journal" unfortunately does NOT recount, and which none of the anguished phone conversations of the principals reveals, is the omission that it was not circumstances. nor ideology, nor the threat of 'communism' that led to the disaster of that last dress rehearsal in the Vietnam War --- but that the causal factor, the seminal driver of all our sorrows was (and still is) EMPIRE.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
The historical record strongly supports Ray McGovern's characterization of John Kennedy as a politician (and a WWII combat veteran) who had the wisdom and the courage to stand up to the pressure from the partisan hawks, the Pentagon brass, and the CIA when it came to initiating a withdrawal, rather than ramping up an escalation, of the US military presence in southeast Asia just prior to his assassination. For an excellent additional resource about JFK's deliberative process, I highly recommend the recent article by Jonathan Schell in the Nation.
Schell cites to a named source in the Kennedy inner circle who claims the issue with John Kennedy was one of timing. Significantly, for some reason JFK felt he had to get re-elected first in 1964, before getting the American troops out by the end of 1965. Bill Moyers Journal recently recounted the travails of President Lyndon Johnson following the death of Kennedy. LBJ, too, was fearful of the potential political backlash of appearing "weak", or "soft on Communism", or "losing Vietnam like we lost China" during an election campaign, knowing full well that GOP luminaries like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon would be rattling their red, white and blue sabres lustily out there in middle America.
Maybe President Obama, tragically, is channeling Kennedy's reasoning when it comes to the timing of withdrawal from Afghanistan, and how to best finesse dangers of the re-election timetable. If so, this is a huge looming bloody mistake.
By letting his bipartisan national security team, the career spooks, and the Pentagon brass frame the issue as whether the escalation should be 80,000, or 40,000, or 30,000, or 20,000, some other, lesser amount of escalation in American troop levels, Barack Obama will likely go the way of LBJ, and have no one to blame but himself for taking the option of ending the war "off the table" for meaningful discussion in the first place.
Bill from Saginaw
Obama is kneeling at the temple of Ares, god of war.
It's over. There is no further justification for considering Obama "change" from Bush et al.
Obama is just another war pig.
Courage - Hahahahahhaahah!!!!!
But I could be wrong !
Is McGovern's wishful comparison relevant anymore now that it has been leaked that Obama is going to add 34,000 troops to Afghanistan?
To make matters worse, Obama is taking the middle of the road strategy to nowhere. He isn't following the military's recommendation of 80,000 troops requested by the military in August, nor is he going the other way and starting a withdrawal. He is doing a half-baked measure that will drag the troop increase through sometime next year (possibly finishing a year after the additional request was made).
The half-measure is the worst option for Obama. He has alienated the anti-war crowd by not withdrawing. But he has not given the military all that McChrystal requested, and so Obama will get the blame for the inevitable defeat.
I have no sympathy for him. He had his chance to do what was best for the people of the USA and the world, but he lacked the courage.
Obama apparently has feet of clay. The only possible claims of any sort of 'success' must fount from a purposeful withdrawal along with a declaration of victory. Why does he kowtow to these militarists anyway?.. Does he not realize he's actually the CIC?
It would appear that Mr. Obama is woefully inept and inadequate for the job he so purposely strived for and attained, capturing the imagination of a nation in the process..
He's simply just not THAT dude.