Deep Cut: JFK and Vietnam
Only If Not For Dallas
Kennedy was an anti-communist, though not a particularly effective one. But no one should doubt he was sincerely opposed to the evils of communism. John Kennedy did not get to finish his only term in the White House, so whether he would have improved in the fourteen months left in his term is unknown. But we should keep in mind that a presidential term is 48 months and he had already completed 34 months, or 70% of his term. So, while his tenure was tragically cut short, contrary to popular belief, we can give a fair assessment of his presidency before his assassination.
The Vietnamese Conflict, aka the Vietnam War, was a cultural, social, and political disaster for the United States. In the aftermath, a common thought was that the whole mess could have been avoided if not for Lyndon Johnson, and he was only in the White House because JFK was murdered. The line went that JFK was on his way out of Vietnam, and some went so far as the link his murder to a deep-state conspiracy to stop the Vietnam pull that Kennedy was going to announce. On it went as Americans struggled to process the trauma of the 1960s, a decade which should have been America’s best. After the 1950s, the US was set up to win the heavens and outer space called us, and it came crashing down with the horrible year of 1968, Watergate, and the fall of Saigon in 1975, just one year before our bicentennial. If only not for Dallas 1963.
