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11/20/2013, “John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace,” Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (From Dec. 5th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone)
“On the 50th anniversary of JFK’s [1963] death, his nephew recalls the fallen president’s attempts to halt the war machine.”
“JFK’s greatest ambition as president was to break the militaristic ideology that has dominated our country since World War II….
“On October 16th, 1962, Kennedy saw aerial photographs proving that the Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba capable of reaching much of the eastern U.S. seaboard. The next 13 days were the most perilous in mankind’s history. From the outset, the Pentagon, the CIA and many of JFK’s advisers urged airstrikes and a U.S. invasion of the island [Cuba] that, as a Soviet military commander later revealed, would have triggered a nuclear war with the Soviets. JFK opted for a blockade, which Soviet ships respected. By October 26th, the standoff was de-escalating. Then, on October 27th, the crisis reignited when Soviet forces shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, killing its pilot, Maj. Rudolf Anderson. Almost immediately, the brass demanded overwhelming retaliation to destroy the Soviet missile sites.
Meanwhile, Castro pushed the Kremlin military machine toward a devastating first strike. In a secret meeting with [Soviet] Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, my father [RFK] told him, “If the situation continues much longer, the president [JFK] is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.” U.S. marshals appeared at our house to take us to government bunkers in western Virginia. My brother Joe and I were anxious to go, if only to see the setup. But my father, who’d spent the previous six nights at the White House, called to say that we needed to be “good soldiers” and show up for school in Washington. To disappear, he told us, would cause public panic….
On Monday, October 29th [1962], the world moved back from the brink. An artfully drafted letter my father [RFK] wrote with Ted Sorensen pledging that the U.S. would not invade Cuba – plus JFK’s secret agreement with Khrushchev to withdraw obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey – persuaded the Kremlin to back down.
My father was not exaggerating to Dobrynin the fragility of White House control over the military. During the 13 days, the president’s hold on power became increasingly tenuous as spooks and generals, apoplectic at JFK’s reluctance to attack Cuba, engaged in dozens of acts of insubordination designed to trigger a nuclear exchange. CIA spymaster William Harvey screamed at the president and my father during a White House meeting: “We wouldn’t be in such trouble now if you guys had some balls in the Bay of Pigs.” Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who years later leaked the Pentagon Papers, reported, “There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles.” Incensed brass were in a state of disbelief at what they considered bald treason by the president. Spoiling for a war to end all wars, Gen. Curtis LeMay, the man who pioneered the use of napalm against civilians in Tokyo during World War II, found consolation by allowing himself to believe all was not lost.
“Why don’t we go in there and make a strike on Monday anyway?” LeMay said, as he watched the crisis subside.
Khrushchev said afterward that Kennedy had won his “deep respect” during the crisis: “He didn’t let himself become frightened, nor did he become reckless….He showed real wisdom and statesmanship when he turned his back on the right-wing forces in the United States who were trying to goad him into taking military action against Cuba.”…
Today, JFK’s great concerns seem more relevant than ever: the dangers of nuclear proliferation, the notion that empire is inconsistent with a republic and that corporate domination of our democracy at home is the partner of imperial policies abroad. He understood the perils to our Constitution from a national-security state and mistrusted zealots and ideologues. He thought other nations ought to fight their own civil wars and choose their own governments and not ask the U.S. to do it for them. Yet the world he imagined and fought for has receded so far below the horizon that it’s no longer even part of the permissible narrative inside the Beltway or in the mainstream press. Critics who endeavor to debate the survival of American democracy within the national-security state risk marginalization as crackpots and kooks. His greatest, most heroic aspirations for a peaceful, demilitarized foreign policy are the forbidden debates of the modern political era.”
………………………………….. 11/20/2013, “John F. Kennedy’s Vision of Peace,” Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (From Dec. 5th, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone)
“On the 50th anniversary of JFK’s [1963] death, his nephew recalls the fallen president’s attempts to halt the war machine.”
“JFK’s greatest ambition as president was to break the militaristic ideology that has dominated our country since World War II….
“On October 16th, 1962, Kennedy saw aerial photographs proving that the Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba capable of reaching much of the eastern U.S. seaboard. The next 13 days were the most perilous in mankind’s history. From the outset, the Pentagon, the CIA and many of JFK’s advisers urged airstrikes and a U.S. invasion of the island [Cuba] that, as a Soviet military commander later revealed, would have triggered a nuclear war with the Soviets. JFK opted for a blockade, which Soviet ships respected. By October 26th, the standoff was de-escalating. Then, on October 27th, the crisis reignited when Soviet forces shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, killing its pilot, Maj. Rudolf Anderson. Almost immediately, the brass demanded overwhelming retaliation to destroy the Soviet missile sites.
Meanwhile, Castro pushed the Kremlin military machine toward a devastating first strike. In a secret meeting with [Soviet] Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, my father [RFK] told him, “If the situation continues much longer, the president [JFK] is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.” U.S. marshals appeared at our house to take us to government bunkers in western Virginia. My brother Joe and I were anxious to go, if only to see the setup. But my father, who’d spent the previous six nights at the White House, called to say that we needed to be “good soldiers” and show up for school in Washington. To disappear, he told us, would cause public panic….
On Monday, October 29th [1962], the world moved back from the brink. An artfully drafted letter my father [RFK] wrote with Ted Sorensen pledging that the U.S. would not invade Cuba – plus JFK’s secret agreement with Khrushchev to withdraw obsolete Jupiter missiles from Turkey – persuaded the Kremlin to back down.
My father was not exaggerating to Dobrynin the fragility of White House control over the military. During the 13 days, the president’s hold on power became increasingly tenuous as spooks and generals, apoplectic at JFK’s reluctance to attack Cuba, engaged in dozens of acts of insubordination designed to trigger a nuclear exchange. CIA spymaster William Harvey screamed at the president and my father during a White House meeting: “We wouldn’t be in such trouble now if you guys had some balls in the Bay of Pigs.” Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who years later leaked the Pentagon Papers, reported, “There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles.” Incensed brass were in a state of disbelief at what they considered bald treason by the president. Spoiling for a war to end all wars, Gen. Curtis LeMay, the man who pioneered the use of napalm against civilians in Tokyo during World War II, found consolation by allowing himself to believe all was not lost.
“Why don’t we go in there and make a strike on Monday anyway?” LeMay said, as he watched the crisis subside.
Khrushchev said afterward that Kennedy had won his “deep respect” during the crisis: “He didn’t let himself become frightened, nor did he become reckless….He showed real wisdom and statesmanship when he turned his back on the right-wing forces in the United States who were trying to goad him into taking military action against Cuba.”…
Today, JFK’s great concerns seem more relevant than ever: the dangers of nuclear proliferation, the notion that empire is inconsistent with a republic and that corporate domination of our democracy at home is the partner of imperial policies abroad. He understood the perils to our Constitution from a national-security state and mistrusted zealots and ideologues. He thought other nations ought to fight their own civil wars and choose their own governments and not ask the U.S. to do it for them. Yet the world he imagined and fought for has receded so far below the horizon that it’s no longer even part of the permissible narrative inside the Beltway or in the mainstream press. Critics who endeavor to debate the survival of American democracy within the national-security state risk marginalization as crackpots and kooks. His greatest, most heroic aspirations for a peaceful, demilitarized foreign policy are the forbidden debates of the modern political era.”
Added: Only 2 days after JFK’s death war profiteers were back in charge:
On 11/21/1963, JFK said: “After I come back from Texas,” we’re getting out of Vietnam. “There’s no reason for us to lose another man over there.”…
On 11/22/1963, JFK was killed….
On 11/24/1963, Two days after JFK’s death, LBJ ramped up US involvement in Vietnam.
“On November 24th, 1963, two days after JFK died, Lyndon Johnson met with South Vietnam Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, whom JFK had been on the verge of firing. LBJ told Lodge, “I am not going to lose Vietnam. I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went.” Over the next decade, nearly 3 million Americans, including many of my friends, would enter the paddies of Vietnam, and 58,000, including my cousin George Skakel, would never return. [Former CIA chief Allen] Dulles, fired by JFK after the Bay of Pigs, returned to public service when LBJ appointed him to the Warren Commission, where he systematically concealed the agency’s involvement in various assassination schemes and its ties to organized crime.”…
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11/22/1963, LBJ being sworn in as US president, a blood-spattered Jackie Kennedy beside him (Alamy photo via Daily Mail). “Swearing in: President Lyndon Baines Johnson took his oath of office on Air Force One in the Dallas airport, 11/22/1963
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Among 2019 comments to Rolling Stone article
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“3281Anonymous
Now imagine virtually the same situation – not with a strong, smart moral leader like Kennedy – but with his opposite Trump, surrounded by powerful insubordinate war hawks with itchy nuclear fingers, gaming for a coup. That’s where we are right now. That ought to keep you awake at night.”
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