Harry
Targ
Fifty
years ago President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and
possibly a web of mysterious associates. The “Who Killed Kennedy?” debate has
continued and remains alive these many years since the tragedy in Dallas. Less
frequent but important discussion recently has arisen about the effectiveness
of the Kennedy Administration on domestic and foreign policy. I wish to address
these issues in three parts.
First,
candidate Kennedy inspired a massive sense of enthusiasm from younger
Americans, many first-time voters. His youth, his vigor, his articulateness,
and his call for public service resonated with a generation of youth who were
beginning to follow the growing struggles for racial justice in the South. In
addition young people who began to pay attention to politics in the late 1950s
were increasingly frustrated by the Cold War and the cloud of possible annihilation resulting from the spread of
nuclear weapons. In this political climate the young presidential candidate
appealed to the best instincts of many American youth. Ironically, the Kennedy
mystique inspired a generation of activists whose struggles against racism and
the Vietnam War would have appalled the President if he had lived.
Second,
as to civil rights, the Kennedy Administration, much like the Eisenhower
Administration that preceded it, was a reluctant supporter of the courageous
activism, of young people in the South. The activists, Black-led and white
supported-- primarily of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the
Congress of Racial Equality, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference--
courageously fought against racial injustice with little support from the
federal government: including Robert Kennedy’s Justice Department , and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation, led by the notorious anti-Communist zealot J. Edgar Hoover. The Kennedy Administration
would have preferred if the historically significant 1963 March on Washington
had not occurred. Key representatives of the administration sought to moderate march
organizers’ militant demands for racial equality and economic justice.
Third, as
to foreign policy, Kennedy surrounded himself with vigorous, articulate,
ideologically rigid anti-Communists. While he and the Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev deescalated tensions after the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis, it is clear that
the President was willing to go to war, destroying both countries in the
process, if he did not achieve a symbolic victory, the withdrawal of Soviet
missiles from Cuba soil (even though the Secretary of Defense and others had
advised him that the weapons on the island did not change the balance of power
between the two military giants). In the end, while the Soviet installation of
missiles in Cuba was foolish, it was Khrushchev’s decision to withdraw the
missiles that saved the world from destruction.
On
Vietnam, JFK added 16,000 military “advisers” to South Vietnam during his three
year term. He launched the “Strategic Hamlet Program,” which moved thousands of
Vietnamese villagers to South Vietnamese government “secure” areas. He launched
the program to train Special Forces or Green Berets to fight counterinsurgent
wars. He provided military advisers and resources to dictatorships elsewhere
including small countries in Latin America. The Kennedy programs were part of a
plan to “modernize” what was then called the “Third World” or the “developing
countries.” His key aides in this global effort were military advisers such as
retired General Maxwell Taylor, defense intellectuals such as Robert
McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, and William
Bundy, and academic advisors such as Walter Rostow. Kennedy’s Secretary of
State, Dean Rusk, was a long-time diplomat who vigorously opposed what he
regarded as the Communist strategy of “wars of national liberation.” For him
Vietnam was a test case of United States resolve in the war against Communism.
In
short, despite limited evidence from some of Kennedy’s closest supporters, the
President for three years promoted a global agenda to push back what he and they
regarded as International Communism, arguing that if given a choice, peasant
villagers in Vietnam would choose the South Vietnamese government over the
government of the North and former guerrilla fighters in the South who fought
French colonial rule. JFK’s global vision, like his predecessors and
successors, was to promote a global United States agenda that, contrary to
predictions, increased violent opposition in the world. There is no compelling
evidence that President Kennedy would have reversed the course of United States
foreign policy by ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam if he had lived.
Ironically,
the nearly forgotten successor to Kennedy was Vice-President Lyndon Baines
Johnson. He proceeded to mobilize a recalcitrant Congress to pass major civil
rights legislation, Medicare, and programs under the rubric of the War on
Poverty, which for a time reduced poverty in America to the lowest levels in
the twentieth century. He supported policies which established effective
pre-school programs and empowered some heretofore marginalized peoples in urban
communities to be politically engaged. Tragically, these programs lost their
popularity and funding as the Vietnam War escalated.
In sum,
candidate and President John F. Kennedy was a political inspiration for many of
the sixties generation but as president did not live up to what he promised
either in terms of civil rights or foreign policy.
