Burns and Novick Assassinate Kennedy

[Jim DiEugenio]

I am putting this in a new thread because:

1.) I deals with JFK directly, and

2.) It is really, really bad, even worse than Part One

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/ken-...r-part-two

Read it and weep, not one mention of NSAM 263 or the May 1963 Sec/Def Conference. If you can E Mail or Fax PBS for this horrible distortion of the record.

(My thanks to Paul Rigby for his help, he is credited in the text.)

[Jim DiEugenio]

I would hope some of us, like Nathaneil would contact PBS in some way to complain about how bad part 2 is, and ask for equal time.

Here is the contact page, you can choose how to contact them:

http://www.contactcustomerservicenow.com...r-service/

WE can either hope for an equal sided panel discussion, or ideally, they let us prepare our own video on the subject.

[Magda Hassan]

I am pleased you are taking this on JD. What a pastiche of misdirection is this little number is. I quite enjoyed his previous productions.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I am writing up my essay on the Johnson years, which is parts 3-6.

Again, very disappointing.

Hopefully the last four on Nixon will be better.

[Paul Rigby]

Washington Daily News, 23 December 1964, p.19

Our Ugly War

By Richard Starnes

The American military position in Southeast Asia has been untenable from the outset, but what is less clear is that it is morally indefensible as well.

The theory of U.S. intervention in Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia and Thailand is much like John Randolph's celebrated rotten mackerel it shines and it stinks.

American meddling ostensibly stems from the highest motives. We have told the rest of the world, and convinced only ourselves, that we are spending and bleeding and dying to bring the blessing of self-determination, pop-up toasters, fly-proof latrines and other such hyphenated benefits to the heathen masses. We are persuaded that we must preserve them from the unspeakable oppression of communism, if we have to fricassee every man jack of them in napalm to do it.

Our position sounds as wholesome as a Voice of America biography of Louisa May Alcott. The truth is a far less lovely aspect of the mackerel.

It is no longer disputed in informed circles that the Viet Cong insurgency is supported, at least passively, by a large majority of the peasants in that non-viable non-country which we call South Viet Nam. Guerilla warfare withers and dies if it is not supported by the people, as was demonstrated when the British put down a superficially similar uprising in Malaya.

The Viet Cong are, to be sure, ardently supported by the communist regimes in China and North Viet Nam. But it is cynical rubbish to assert what appears to be the developing American policy that bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail can reshape the course of the war.

First, of course, is the fact that the guerrillas who now control most of South Viet Nam can survive and continue to fight even if all material support from the North is ended.

Next, the Ho Chi Minh Trail has no real existence outside the minds of American pseudo-experts eager to perpetuate the war. It is a tangled complex of jungle paths, largely invisible from the air. Its tentacles wind thru North and South Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. Indeed, if candor is permitted to illuminate the subject, the "trail" also must include the busy routes of the sampans and motor junks that ply the Tonkin Gulf.

Finally, Korea proved that absolute air supremacy is not enough to halt the coolie-borne commerce of war in Asia. To suggest otherwise now is corrupt, cynical and brutally immoral. Yet we learn thru devious contrived leaks that interdiction of the supposed communist supply routes is to be done, altho not honestly and overtly, by American-airmen.

This policy is one with all the other bankrupt policies that have been attempted in Southeast Asia. It will prolong a war that cannot be won and it will render the ultimate solution infinitely more difficult. It will take more lives, some of them American lives which our folkways tell us are the most valuable lives in the world.

So far as is known here, no American official has ever spelled out what American interests in Viet Nam required the nation to participate in the harlot war we are now fighting there. President Kennedy once attempted to do so with respect to Laos, when he was misled by the CIA and Defense Department into believing that bluff and bluster would save the day. But on Viet Nam we are offered nothing but stirring patriotic phrases while plans are matured for an especially dishonourable extension of the conflict.

Sooner or later the round-eyed warriors have to have the courage and wit to admit that Western civilization cannot be taught with jellied gasoline bombs. The people of Southeast Asia have had no peace for a quarter century. It is unthinkable that American policy can contrive to offer them none at this sad juncture.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Harlot War?

Wow, this guy was right on the money back when it all started and no one knew what the heck was happening.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Part 3 of my critique is up at Kennedysandking.com.

I deal a lot with what LBJ did with JFK's policy so I will place it in this thread. Please imitate Nathaniel H and spread it around. This series is pretty bad.

https://kennedysandking.com/reviews/ken-...nson-years