Comment

Yes, TCinLA, JFK should have extricated the US intelligence and military forces from Vietnam. And, he should not have helped people who built their fortunes by collaborating with the brutal dictator, Batista, to oppress 90% of the Cuban population. JFK made serious mistakes in those matters. However, in the matter of Vietnam, it seems to me fairer and more accurate to put most of the blame for the American-imposed catastrophe there on Eisenhower. He should have known better. He did know better. But Eisenhower had an anticommunist fervor shut up in his bones (to apply the superbly descriptive phrase from the King James Bible that Charles Blow adopted in an entirely different political context) that prevented him from sympathizing with people who had, at great sacrifice, thrown the French colonialists out of Vietnam and removed the local collaborators and beneficiaries of French rule from Vietnamese government. Instead, Eisenhower decided to permit and encourage the evil Dulles brothers to spew their venom unopposed. Vietnam was Eisenhower’s fault. He should have known better. He did know better. He had the power to shut down all US operations in Vietnam and let those who had thrown off their European oppressors build a government according to their own lights. But he didn’t. Vietnam is on him.