09-11-2013, 03:29 AM
[FONT=&] [FONT=&]This feature length documentary carefully traces the Cold War history of the Kennedy presidency from the inaugural speech to the Bay of Pigs to the Vienna Summit to the Cuban Missile Crisis to policy in Vietnam to JFK's American University Address to the assassination on November 22, 1963. Airing on Directv, this is a breath of fresh air when compared to much of the pedestrian programming at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's death.
The research for this program is exemplary for its balanced coverage, and the strength of the program lies in the commentators. The scholars appearing on camera are some of the finest writers and researchers of the history of the Cold War. Historian Michael Dobbs, who has written a superb book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, describes "a kind of universal humanism" which guided JFK through the darkest days of October, 1962. Frederick Kempe, an expert on Berlin in 1961, and not a great admirer of JFK, provides excellent insights into the pressures felt by President Kennedy due to the unique circumstances of Berlin in the first year of his presidency. Peter Kornbluh, Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive, discovered secret documents in the Kennedy Library ("Contacts with Cuban Leaders"). The declassification of this file in the late 1990s, revealed JFK's backchannel communications with Cuba with the goal of "more flexible lines" of communications with Castro. James Galbraith, the son of JFK's advisor John Kenneth Galbraith, provides expert commentary throughout this program. The producers even located and interviewed the two interpreters for JFK and Khrushchev, who were present at the Vienna summit in June, 1961.
The theme of the documentary is the behind-the-scenes war being fought between JFK and his national security network. Starting with his inaugural address, President Kennedy made it clear that he would utilize negotiation as a strategy at the height of the Cold War. The program makes it clear that this tactic placed JFK in conflict with the power elite of the American military establishment, who equated "negotiation" with appeasement going back to Neville Chamberlain's "peace for our time" débacle with Hitler. The refrain of the program is how postwar American military leaders and Cold Warrior diplomats like Dean Acheson undermined the efforts of JFK in seeking world peace. Scholar Gareth Porter discovered in Library of Congress a document indicating that Averell Harriman was actively subverting JFK's policy to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh.
In JFK's often misunderstood policy on Vietnam, the program meticulously documents JFK's opposition to military intervention in Southeast Asia, dating back to his time in Congress when he personally visited Vietnam. The program reveals that prior to the fateful trip to Dallas in November 1963, the president informed his national security staff specialist on Vietnam, Michael Forrester, that he would undertake "a thorough review of whether the United States should be there at all." President Kennedy's complementary National Security Action Memo 263 articulated his formal policy to withdraw all U.S. military personnel from Vietnam. For scholar James Galbraith, it is "no longer historically controversial" that JFK was resolute in his refusal to send American armed forces to Vietnam.
The film vividly depicts the overt hatred of JFK by the military and intelligence community that was ostensibly serving under him as commander-in-chief. Documentary footage of cigar-chomping General Curtis LeMay recalls some of the black-and-white scenes dramatized in Oliver Stone's JFK or even Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Stangelove! Candis Cousins recalls her visit to the Soviet Union with her father Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, in the year following the Cuban Missile Crisis. She vividly relates that "Kennedy said he was very scared of the power of the military in the United States. And what he was scared of was that somehow the military would position itself and undermine his executive power." Subsequently, Norman Cousins was instrumental in motivating JFK to prepare his American University commencement address, which was an eloquently articulated plan for détente that was decades ahead of its time. One of the great white papers of the twentieth century, the American University speech serves as a coda to the film.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, the film is much more than a tribute to JFK's vision of peace and his political legacy. It is also a clarion call to understand why and how he died on November 22, 1963, and why the assassination itself was a turning point in our nation's history. [/FONT]
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The research for this program is exemplary for its balanced coverage, and the strength of the program lies in the commentators. The scholars appearing on camera are some of the finest writers and researchers of the history of the Cold War. Historian Michael Dobbs, who has written a superb book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, describes "a kind of universal humanism" which guided JFK through the darkest days of October, 1962. Frederick Kempe, an expert on Berlin in 1961, and not a great admirer of JFK, provides excellent insights into the pressures felt by President Kennedy due to the unique circumstances of Berlin in the first year of his presidency. Peter Kornbluh, Senior Analyst at the National Security Archive, discovered secret documents in the Kennedy Library ("Contacts with Cuban Leaders"). The declassification of this file in the late 1990s, revealed JFK's backchannel communications with Cuba with the goal of "more flexible lines" of communications with Castro. James Galbraith, the son of JFK's advisor John Kenneth Galbraith, provides expert commentary throughout this program. The producers even located and interviewed the two interpreters for JFK and Khrushchev, who were present at the Vienna summit in June, 1961.
The theme of the documentary is the behind-the-scenes war being fought between JFK and his national security network. Starting with his inaugural address, President Kennedy made it clear that he would utilize negotiation as a strategy at the height of the Cold War. The program makes it clear that this tactic placed JFK in conflict with the power elite of the American military establishment, who equated "negotiation" with appeasement going back to Neville Chamberlain's "peace for our time" débacle with Hitler. The refrain of the program is how postwar American military leaders and Cold Warrior diplomats like Dean Acheson undermined the efforts of JFK in seeking world peace. Scholar Gareth Porter discovered in Library of Congress a document indicating that Averell Harriman was actively subverting JFK's policy to negotiate with Ho Chi Minh.
In JFK's often misunderstood policy on Vietnam, the program meticulously documents JFK's opposition to military intervention in Southeast Asia, dating back to his time in Congress when he personally visited Vietnam. The program reveals that prior to the fateful trip to Dallas in November 1963, the president informed his national security staff specialist on Vietnam, Michael Forrester, that he would undertake "a thorough review of whether the United States should be there at all." President Kennedy's complementary National Security Action Memo 263 articulated his formal policy to withdraw all U.S. military personnel from Vietnam. For scholar James Galbraith, it is "no longer historically controversial" that JFK was resolute in his refusal to send American armed forces to Vietnam.
The film vividly depicts the overt hatred of JFK by the military and intelligence community that was ostensibly serving under him as commander-in-chief. Documentary footage of cigar-chomping General Curtis LeMay recalls some of the black-and-white scenes dramatized in Oliver Stone's JFK or even Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Stangelove! Candis Cousins recalls her visit to the Soviet Union with her father Norman Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review, in the year following the Cuban Missile Crisis. She vividly relates that "Kennedy said he was very scared of the power of the military in the United States. And what he was scared of was that somehow the military would position itself and undermine his executive power." Subsequently, Norman Cousins was instrumental in motivating JFK to prepare his American University commencement address, which was an eloquently articulated plan for détente that was decades ahead of its time. One of the great white papers of the twentieth century, the American University speech serves as a coda to the film.
On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, the film is much more than a tribute to JFK's vision of peace and his political legacy. It is also a clarion call to understand why and how he died on November 22, 1963, and why the assassination itself was a turning point in our nation's history. [/FONT]
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