Deep Politics Forum

Adele Edisen Wrote:Greg,

Thank you for that video interview of Kennedy. Towards the end he was asked about his battle with the head of U.S. Steel Company, Roger Blough, when Blough reneged on the agreement which had been reached between the steel workers union and the various steel companies to keep the price of steel down. Blough, representing the steel companies, told President Kennedy that they would raise the price of steel anyway.

Speaking of this incident, Kennedy was quoted as saying, "My father always told me that all businessmen were sons-of-bitches, but I never believed him until now!"

At the next press conference, Kennedy did a masterful job of paraphrasing that sentence. He said:

"The statement which I have seen repeated in one daily paper is inaccurate. It quotes my father as having expressed himself strongly to me, and in this I quoted what he said, and indicated that he had not been on many other occasions wholly wrong."

Source: THE HUMOR OF JFK, compiled by Booton Herndon.

Adele

So very much to miss about this man. Those of us who were "there" saw these profound changes and saw his incredible humanity. His humor was also a delight. I cannot recall another president who could be so utterly charming with humor. The press loved him and for good reason. He made us feel safe and he made us feel good about life. I was never afraid during the Cold War. Later when I read the words of Jim Garrison and F Prouty calling this an "artificial conflict" those words really resonated with me. Only later did I realize just how dangerous those thirteen days actually were.

I believe both Jim and CD are correct here. JFK having lived the horrors of war was not the hawk he presented in the debate, but during his brief time as president he was changed and the "hope" he inspired was not the hollow mindless chatter of the current White House occupant but real.

Dawn

Jim DiEugenio Wrote:As per the Missile Crisis, that was a hare-brained miscalculation by Khrushchev.

Ironic that Khrushchev was less able to resist his Soviet warlords and probably had no choice in sending the missiles. The Soviets were following an incremental policy of slow proliferation of communism. Meanwhile JFK's advisors were pushing for pre-emptive nuclear attack. The natural course this impasse caused was the perceived need for even more CIA control of American national security interests in order to prevent another Castro. VietNam was the chosen arena for this new paradigm and Phoenix was the new rule. It's kind of ironic that the Americans lost VietNam and the communists ended-up losing Russia. The world lost JFK...

Albert Doyle Wrote:

Greg Burnham Wrote:I'd say this: JFK was the same. But, "JFK", the character was a work in progress. He was evolving in profound ways on a deep level. He was beginning to mold his public persona to fit
his actual person...and it got him killed.

Which is why I like The Unspeakable because it shows this process attracted Sponsors in the metaphysical realm of good and evil that usually mark such persons for assassination.

I disagree. ANd I thought this was a flaw in Jim's book. I noted it in just one sentence at the end because I though the rest of the book was quite good. And also,relatively speaking, his book was an oasis since there are so many bad books out there--Janney's pile of crap being an example--even in the wake of the ARRB.

Kennedy is saying in that interview, and he says it repeatedly, that he did have an established program ready to go in 1961. Significantly, note how he specifically mentions Congo, which was a special interest of his. (See the books, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, and Betting on the Africans) But he is explaining how its one thing to have a program. It is another thing to shepherd it through congress and a bureaucracy when established interests are waiting to undermine you.

In Congo, Kennedy was being opposed by Sen. Thomas Dodd, his own foreign service, and the CIA inside the government. In my opinion, the CIA assassinated Kennedy's ally on Congo, Dag Hammarkskjold (although I did not put that in my book, Lisa made a good argument for that in Probe.) He was opposed by William F. Buckley in the press who was raising nutty fears of a commie takeover. And abroad he was being opposed by the Belgians and the British who wanted to split off Katanga from Congo and plunder its riches for themselves and not the people of Congo. Kennedy, who knew the history of the Belgian colonization of the country, was opposed to that. Which is why Allen Dulles had Lumumba killed before Kennedy was inaugurated.

The other thing is this: Kennedy had a very narrow tightrope to walk. Because he also knew that if it was shown there WAS a Russian, or Chinese inspired attempt to take over the country, he would lose the little support he had. If one reads the masterful Richard Mahoney book (disgracefully neglected in the critical community, which is more interested in Janney's childhood fantasies about Mary Meyer) one understands this paradigm Kennedy was trying to fulfill.

What JFK is talking about here is on the eve of the UN military expedition to stop Katanga from splitting off. George Ball opposed military intervention. Kennedy had to talk him into supporting it, since he was one of the two point men he had working on it (the other being his Third World tutor Ed Gullion.)

My point is this: Kennedy did not start his Congo reversal of Eisenhower/Dulles in 1963. It started two weeks after he was inaugurated! But Dulles anticipated what Kennedy would do because of his Algeria speech in 1957. So he had Lumumba killed three days before his inauguration. Because he knew Kennedy would back him. And that would be the end of imperialism there, because of Lumumba's charismatic appeal and dynamic personality.

The "spiritual journey" was completed by the time he was president. No one can read the Algeria speech and not understand that. It was a matter of then obstructing him as much as possible. And when they realized he was not going to stop, it was a matter of killing him.

Let us never forget what Sukarno said about this: "Why did they kill my friend John Kennedy."

Well, I was more referring to the ethereal, ephemeral, almost supernatural, detection of Kennedy's "turning" as seen by Merton in his remote monastic tower. Sometimes when you hammer hard facts you miss the subtle angels in the mix. Maybe Merton was falling for the publicly projected persona, maybe not...

Jim DiEugenio Wrote:The "spiritual journey" was completed by the time he was president.

And herein lies your problem, Jim.

By definition, spiritual journeys have no terminus other than enlightenment.

In other words, they are all but endless.

John Kennedy died in a state of transition.

As shall we all.

Charles Drago Wrote:

Jim DiEugenio Wrote:The "spiritual journey" was completed by the time he was president.

And herein lies your problem, Jim.

By definition, spiritual journeys have no terminus other than enlightenment.

In other words, they are all but endless.

John Kennedy died in a state of transition.

As shall we all.

Bravo!!!

Dawn

Charles Drago Wrote:

Jim DiEugenio Wrote:The "spiritual journey" was completed by the time he was president.

And herein lies your problem, Jim.

By definition, spiritual journeys have no terminus other than enlightenment.

In other words, they are all but endless.

John Kennedy died in a state of transition.

As shall we all.

John Kennedy's ten year "journey" was completed in 1961.

The things that followed were tactical obstacles he had to learn to overcome while in office.

And by the way, I never call this a "spiritual journey". I only used it because of precedent.

To me its simply a self-education Kennedy made. And the reason its something unusual is that Kennedy didn't have to do it. But for some reason he did.

In my view the key to understanding why he did it is in a conversation he had with Nehru. Nehru was trying to tell him about what the British Raj had done in India. Kennedy stopped him and said words to the effect that he knew about British imperialism even longer and more sterile than the one in India. He was, of course referring to his ancestral home of Ireland. This is why I think Kennedy decided to break away from the rehearsed briefings he was going to get in Saigon in 1951. He understood the pernicious influence of imperialism from England's 800 year rule in Ireland.

Charles Drago Wrote:

Jim DiEugenio Wrote:The "spiritual journey" was completed by the time he was president.

And herein lies your problem, Jim.

By definition, spiritual journeys have no terminus other than enlightenment.

In other words, they are all but endless.

John Kennedy died in a state of transition.

As shall we all.

I agree.

I don't see a dichotomy.

Jim presents John F. Kennedy having seen what might be.

Charles presents John F. Kennedy answering the rhetorical question, why not?

I suggest, because the exploiters will kill you before your idealism bankrupts them.

JFK envisioned a post-colonial world and came to also envision a post-Cold War world.

Janney claims John Kennedy was an unreconstructed Cold Warrior who entered the incense and paisley chamber of the Magical Mary Tour and the rest of that bad movie.

The advanced human is always evolvingnot the tactical donation-driven evolution of the post-partisan controlling the Joannides file and the Afghan heroin poppies.

In my view the type of evolution John F. Kennedy presented is seen in a number of scenes depicted by Douglass:

The rage over the Bay of Pigs failure, an operation presented as a winner. This thoroughly etched his deep distrust of intelligence and military leaders.

The revulsion over LeMay's scenario of massive attack and invasion in 1962.

His deeper disgust over Lemnitzer's Northwoods proposal.

His despair over the murders of Diem and Nhu.

Idealism met realism.

Robert quoted Bernard, and Edward, both.

John saw things as they might have been and asked why not.

I submit it is because of men like Dulles doing the bidding of those who find it profitable that the status quo be maintained, or the economic battlefield be prepared for its exploitation.

Spirit must gird itself in this arena.

I submit it is because of men like Dulles doing the bidding of those who find it profitable that the status quo be maintained, or the economic battlefield be prepared for its exploitation.


That gets it Phil.

What Kennedy was learning about back there in 1951, is the post WW 2 imperial empire that the US was complicit in. And IMO, the Dulles brothers were part of it even at that early date through their law firm Sullivan and Cromwell. (But let me add: Kennedy became so clear eyed about this that he even criticized his own party as being part of it.)

And this is why his speeches were so studded with implicit references to John Foster Dulles.

Its a little known fact that Kennedy's father tried to get Allen Dulles fired when he was on the forerunner of the FIAB with Lovett and David Bruce.

Let me add another anecdote that shows how the colonial peoples understood what had happened, even though Americans did not at the time. When Mahoney's father showed the WR to Kwame Nkrumah of GHana, an ally of Lumumba who Kennedy backed, Nkrumah opened it up, looked at the page listing the commissioners, and found Allen Dulles' name. He pointed at it, and said, "Whitewash". He then gave the book back.

That is this case in a nutshell.