JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power

JFK and Vietnam: Deception, Intrigue, and the Struggle for Power John M. Newman 2016* EPUB

Reveals an intense power struggle that plagued the Kennedy Administration before the Vietnam War and contends that the President's advisors conspired to deceive Kennedy and push the United States into combat. Had he lived, would President Kennedy have committed U.S. troops to Vietnam? According to the evidence marshalled here, the answer is a resounding ‘NO’. Newman, who teaches international politics at the University of Maryland, argues that when JFK went to Dallas he already intended to withdraw U.S. advisers from Vietnam, but held off to ensure his reelection in 1964.

 The book traces the president's pullout plan back to April '62, when he stated that the U.S. should seize every opportunity to reduce its commitment to Vietnam. A month later Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara asked U.S. generals in Saigon how soon the South Vietnamese would be ready to take over the war effort. This well-documented study shows that JFK was for a time deceived by Gen. Maxwell Taylor, head of the joint chiefs, and others in a blizzard of briefings that claimed unadulterated progress and success.

Newman maintains that although the president paid public lip service to a continued commitment to appease the right, his goal was to abandon a venture that he early recognized as a lost cause. No other study has revealed so clearly how the tragedy in Dallas affected the course of the war in Vietnam, since two days after the assassination Lyndon Johnson signed a National Security Action Memo that opened the way for the fateful escalation of the war. Photos. 

Year: 2016 
Edition: 2. (Original pub, 1992)*
English 
Pages: 527 
ISBN 13: 9781530477937 
ISBN: 153047793X 
File: EPUB, 3.95 MB 
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