Word: viet
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...nation reading it from the far side of the Viet Nam War, the most alarming passage was the one in which Kennedy promised to "pay any price ... to assure the survival ... of liberty." The revisionists have always seen that line as a precis of the mentality that brought on the war. But both Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore Sorensen reject the notion that the Inaugural speech was a prelude to cowboy interventionism. "It was," says
Kennedy's tenure was littered with messy crises-in Laos, Cuba, the Congo, Latin America, Algeria, Viet Nam and Berlin-and his record in dealing with them is decidedly uneven. Revisionists like to say that Kennedy was a cold warrior who sought confrontation, but in the early '60s, the Soviets busied themselves around the world in ways that no American President could ignore...
...Kennedy would ask for nearly 1,000 new ICBMS for the American nuclear arsenal, which eventually triggered what has become the greatest arms race in history. He acquiesced in the overthrow of the Diem government in South Viet Nam in 1963. And he ordered 16,000 American troops into that country...
Would Kennedy have become involved in Viet Nam to the extent that Johnson eventually did? The answer is unknowable. Many Kennedy loyalists think not, though their opinion is not disinterested. They point out that Kennedy was eminently a pragmatist; he would have seen the morass that lay in wait. Kennedy was a superbly self-assured man. He had already proved himself in war and had no need to do so again. With his keen sense of public relations, his loyalists believe, with his knowledge of the uses of the media, he would simply have decided that Viet...
...General Douglas MacArthur, and each time he came away hushed and thoughtful from what he considered an audience with greatness. MacArthur told Kennedy both times to stay out of a land war on mainland Asia. That is one of the reasons I believe Kennedy would have done differently in Viet Nam and that our history would have been far happier if he had lived...