JFK and Vietnam, GWB and Iraq
In today's New York Times, Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger wonder what JFK would have done about Vietnam. It's all quite speculative, of course, but they knew first-hand what JFK was planning to do -- that is, withdraw from Vietnam before it turned into a quagmire, an unwinnable war.
But Sorensen and Schlesinger are also right about this, in response to Bush's speech at the U.S. Naval Academy last week:
And:
Can there be any confidence that this president knows what he's doing, that he has a plan, that there's some viable strategy for winning the war in Iraq, a war that's been grossly mismanaged and that seems increasingly unwinnable?
It's not at all clear that Bush even understands what's really going on in Iraq and what's truly gone wrong in a war of his own making.
Don't expect that to change.
GWB is no JFK.
**********
See also:
But Sorensen and Schlesinger are also right about this, in response to Bush's speech at the U.S. Naval Academy last week:
We did not hear that the war in Iraq, already one of the costliest wars in American history, is a running sore. We did not hear that it has taken more than 2,000 precious American lives and countless -- because we do not count them -- Iraqi civilian lives. We did not hear that the struggle has dragged on longer than our involvement in either World War I or the Spanish-American War, or that by next spring it will be even longer than the Korean War.
And we did not hear how or when the president plans to bring our forces back home -- no facts, no numbers on America troop withdrawals, no dates, no reference to our dwindling coalition, no reversal of his disdain for the United Nations, whose help he still expects.
And:
The responsibility for devising an exit plan rests primarily not with the war's opponents, but with the president who hastily launched a pre-emptive invasion without enough troops to secure Iraq's borders and arsenals, without enough armor to protect our forces, without enough allied support and without adequate plans for either a secure occupation or a timely exit.
Can there be any confidence that this president knows what he's doing, that he has a plan, that there's some viable strategy for winning the war in Iraq, a war that's been grossly mismanaged and that seems increasingly unwinnable?
It's not at all clear that Bush even understands what's really going on in Iraq and what's truly gone wrong in a war of his own making.
Don't expect that to change.
GWB is no JFK.
**********
See also:
posted by Michael J.W. Stickings at
8:26 PM
1 Comments:
No offense to Schlesinger and Sorensen, but they have been JFK apologists for forty years, so I'm not sure how credible their view on this is.
I am not a JFK basher--like many people my age, I grew up an admirer--and I think the bashing got out of hand. In recent years, there has been seemingly a rethinking of JFK's legacy in a more positive direction, especially with respect to foreign policy. Still, it's a bit disingenuous for S and S to talk about what JFK would have done, since that can never be known. Even if his intention would have been to get out before the war became a quagmire, who knows what might have intervened. And one can argue that it was already a quagmire when he died--there just weren't that many US troops there so one cared.
I agree with the general point about Bush not having any idea what the hell he is doing and I have some sympathy for S and S having to answer for JFK. And I would certainly prefer to have JFK in the White House than GWB or, for that matter, Ted Kennedy, who has never had an original thought in his life. Still, I always get a little queasy when I hear JFK defenders argue that he would have gotten out of Viet Nam.
By
Anonymous, at 2:06 PM
Post a Comment
<< Home