A Twisted Case Against JFK
History provides perspective but can also bring distortion as a Pulitzer-Prize journalist now decides that John F. Kennedy “probably was the worst American president of the previous century.”
After studying the period, the respected Thomas E. Ricks concludes:
“In retrospect, he spent his 35 months in the White House stumbling from crisis to fiasco. He came into office and okayed the Bay of Pigs invasion. Then he went to a Vienna summit conference and got his clock cleaned by Khrushchev. That led to, among other things, the Cuban missile crisis and a whiff of nuclear apocalypse.
“Looming over it all is the American descent into Vietnam. The assassination of Vietnam’s President Diem on Kennedy’s watch may have been one of the two biggest mistakes of the war there. (The other was the decision to wage a war of attrition on the unexamined assumption that Hanoi would buckle under the pain.) I don’t buy the theory promulgated by Robert McNamara and others that Kennedy would have kept U.S. troops out.”
For a journalist who saw JFK up close, this reads more like a prosecutor’s indictment than a historical judgment, much like blaming Barack Obama for everything he inherited from George W. Bush.
Kennedy did approve with misgivings the Bay of Pigs which was imminent when he took office, refused to escalate with air cover as the military pressed him to do and, when the operation failed, nevertheless took full responsibility (“Defeat is an orphan”), learning lessons that served him well in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The “whiff of nuclear apocalypse” was dispelled by his deft handling of that confrontation and led to concluding a nuclear test-ban treaty with the Soviet Union.
In Vietnam, JFK made mistakes…
3 Responses to “A Twisted Case Against JFK”
objectively and at first glance, i’d have to say anyone that contends the American President with eponymous “straats” and “pleins” all round the Netherlands and Germany (which i’ve personally seen) and most likely many other countries… is the worst president in recent history… is missing something huge about said history.
not that i agree OR disagree with the street naming. just based on statistics alone, i have a hard time taking this notion seriously.
This guy is “respected”?
The “bay of Pigs” was an Eisenhower/republican creation that Kennedy didn’t even know about until he was sworn in. They dumped it in his lap, but John Kennedy had the courage not to escalate when this ill-conceived invasion failed. Diem was a megalomaniac whom had no respect for non Catholic Vietnamese of which the vast majority of Vietnamese was not! Diem was a hold over from French colonialism. He needed to go away. There is considerable evidence that U.S. Military escalation would never have occurred under JFK and I prefer to believe this. Yeah, this attack on probably our most beloved twentieth century president, (short or Franklin D. Roosevelt), is most probably politically motivated. Republican’s have been bad mouthing President Kennedy’s iconic legacy since they started going, “neo-con nuts”, in the 80’s. This attack is in really poor taste.
While Kennedy was a popular POTUS, he really was just mediocre or middle of the pact. I’ll take Truman over the myth of Camelot…