tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post2751871283588170373..comments2023-10-16T07:13:12.123-05:00Comments on A plain blog about politics: Egypt and ObamaJonathan Bernsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15931039630306253241noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-54544168185032049262011-02-13T23:43:05.755-06:002011-02-13T23:43:05.755-06:00Obama obviously handled a very difficult situation...Obama obviously handled a very difficult situation in Egypt about as well as possible, undercuttingg Republican presidential candidates who have charged that he botched the U.S. response to a popular revolt against a key ally.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6926413038778731189.post-46796707902055485662011-02-11T12:17:11.301-06:002011-02-11T12:17:11.301-06:00Brief remark about my very quick skim of the very ...Brief remark about my very quick skim of the very long pdf Saunders article on JFK and LBJ - VN (which I plan to read through more carefully at a later time). <br /><br />I'll stand corrected for getting anything, or everything, wrong given my hurried skim, but any recent piece on this subject which fails to account for or cite John Newman's outstanding scholarship, using then-recently released govt docs, in his 1991 book JFK and Vietnam, and which (iirc) doesn't mention James K. Galbraith's fine Boston Review article from the 1990s re JFK Withdrawing from Vietnam, nor cite and carefully evaluate JFK's NSAM 263 withdrawal plan as compared to the final draft of NSAM 273 as signed by LBJ, which subtly reversed Kennedy's withdrawal goal, such an article is less than complete to say the least. <br /><br />I also note Saunders cites people like the hawkish Leslie Gelb for an assertion about Kennedy on VN, which I would tend to take with a grain of salt, as well as McGeorge Bundy. Saunders may have written this before the recently released book by Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster, which had begun as a memoir by Bundy who, alas, didn't live to finish it. Goldstein reveals, inter alia, that a) Bundy wasn't always in the loop on VN, at least in terms of Kennedy's actual thinking and plans, presumably kept out intentionally by JFK by late '63, and b) after careful consideration, Bundy concludes to Goldstein that JFK would not have escalated the war as LBJ did and in fact appears to have sought withdrawal (pls check book for nuanced Bundy remarks for complete accuracy here; I'm only working from memory).<br /><br />James Douglass in his recent outstanding book JFK and the Unspeakable also covers this ground and Kennedy's many battles with the entrenched FP bureaucracy at Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. A very personal FP indeed, and mostly successful, often bold in the way he went against the nat'l security/MIC establishment. But with VN, he just didn't get the time to fully carry out his withdrawal plans.<br /><br />Of course LBJ's FP was personal too, often too personal in the way he considered "losing" VN to the commies as almost a threat to his manhood. Kennedy, increasingly a skeptic of Cold War platitudes, could evaluate the situation from a detached and cooly analytical perspective and always drew the line against sending in combat units; hypersensitive and unsophisticated Johnson didn't want to the "the first president to lose a war", didn't want "another Munich" and as a believer in Ike's domino theory, didn't want to have to fight the commies tomorrow in San Francisco.Brodienoreply@blogger.com