Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War

[Michael Griffith]

Oliver Stone’s mostly solid documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed and its shorter version JFK Revisited claim that JFK would have withdrawn all U.S. troops from South Vietnam in 1965 even if this caused South Vietnam to fall to the communists. Stone made a similar claim in his 1991 movie JFK. This claim was one of the major errors identified in the film by numerous historians, yet Stone doubled-down on the claim in his two recent documentaries.

Another problem with the claim is that, as voiced by most conspiracy theorists, it usually includes the liberal argument that the Vietnam War was wrong and unwinnable and never should have been fought, a position that most conservatives reject as wrong and unpatriotic.

I think Dr. Marc Selverstone’s upcoming book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam, using new material and overlooked evidence, will demonstrate—and demonstrate convincingly—that the 1,000-man withdrawal was not the beginning of a complete pullout but part of a strategy to pressure Diem to make reforms in order to prosecute the war more effectively. Yes, certainly, JFK intended to eventually bring home all or nearly all U.S. troops from South Vietnam, but he had no intention of doing so until he was confident that South Vietnam was safe and secure.

Dr. Selverstone, a professor of presidential studies and chairman of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia, has been working on this book for many years. His video below on JFK’s Vietnam policy was done in 2016, and he has spent the last six years doing further research on the subject for his upcoming book.

The Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for over 20 years. I’ve read several liberal books on the Vietnam War, but I have yet to meet a liberal who has read a single scholarly book that defends the war. I’m sure there are liberals who have done so—I just haven’t met any of them.

If you want to read the other side of the story on the Vietnam War, I recommend the following books:

Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (1978), by Admiral U.S.G Sharp, who was the commander of all U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War. Among other things, Admiral Sharp documents the absolutely absurd restrictions that LBJ and McNamara imposed on the use of U.S. air power.

Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (1998), by B.G. Burkett. Not only corrects the record about the war but debunks common myths about Vietnam veterans.

A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (2007), Dr. Lewis Sorley. One of the most careful, thorough studies on the war ever published. By the way, Dr. Sorley is extremely critical of General Westmoreland.

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (2006) and Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (2022), by Dr. Mark Moyar. Dr. Moyar’s research includes new material from North Vietnamese archives that provides fascinating insights into how North Vietnam’s leaders viewed the war at important stages.

Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (2007), by Dr. Mark Moyar. This remains a much-needed correction to Doug Valentine’s severely irresponsible and misleading book The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam.

If you want to take an hour to watch a documentary that challenges the liberal view of the war, here’s a good one to watch:

Television's Vietnam: The Impact of Media (1985) - YouTube

Here’s the video that features Dr. Selverstone talking about JFK’s Vietnam policy in 2016:

JFK and the Vietnam Escalation [10/13/2016] - YouTube

 

 

 

Edited August 25, 2022 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Davidson]

You lost . Get over it .

[Pat Speer]

7 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oliver Stone’s mostly solid documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed and its shorter version JFK Revisited claim that JFK would have withdrawn all U.S. troops from South Vietnam in 1965 even if this caused South Vietnam to fall to the communists. Stone made a similar claim in his 1991 movie JFK. This claim was one of the major errors identified in the film by numerous historians, yet Stone doubled-down on the claim in his two recent documentaries.

Another problem with the claim is that, as voiced by most conspiracy theorists, it usually includes the liberal argument that the Vietnam War was wrong and unwinnable and never should have been fought, a position that most conservatives reject as wrong and unpatriotic.

I think Dr. Marc Selverstone’s upcoming book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam, using new material and overlooked evidence, will demonstrate—and demonstrate convincingly—that the 1,000-man withdrawal was not the beginning of a complete pullout but part of a strategy to pressure Diem to make reforms in order to prosecute the war more effectively. Yes, certainly, JFK intended to eventually bring home all or nearly all U.S. troops from South Vietnam, but he had no intention of doing so until he was confident that South Vietnam was safe and secure.

Dr. Selverstone, a professor of presidential studies and chairman of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia, has been working on this book for many years. His video below on JFK’s Vietnam policy was done in 2016, and he has spent the last six years doing further research on the subject for his upcoming book.

The Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for over 20 years. I’ve read several liberal books on the Vietnam War, but I have yet to meet a liberal who has read a single scholarly book that defends the war. I’m sure there are liberals who have done so—I just haven’t met any of them.

If you want to read the other side of the story on the Vietnam War, I recommend the following books:

Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (1978), by Admiral U.S.G Sharp, who was the commander of all U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War. Among other things, Admiral Sharp documents the absolutely absurd restrictions that LBJ and McNamara imposed on the use of U.S. air power.

Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (1998), by B.G. Burkett. Not only corrects the record about the war but debunks common myths about Vietnam veterans.

A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (2007), Dr. Lewis Sorley. One of the most careful, thorough studies on the war ever published. By the way, Dr. Sorley is extremely critical of General Westmoreland.

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (2006) and Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (2022), by Dr. Mark Moyar. Dr. Moyar’s research includes new material from North Vietnamese archives that provides fascinating insights into how North Vietnam’s leaders viewed the war at important stages.

Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (2007), by Dr. Mark Moyar. This remains a much-needed correction to Doug Valentine’s severely irresponsible and misleading book The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam.

If you want to take an hour to watch a documentary that challenges the liberal view of the war, here’s a good one to watch:

Television's Vietnam: The Impact of Media (1985) - YouTube

Here’s the video that features Dr. Selverstone talking about JFK’s Vietnam policy in 2016:

JFK and the Vietnam Escalation [10/13/2016] - YouTube

 

 

 

This isn't a conservative vs. liberal issue. I'd be willing to bet the farm that the vast majority of self-described conservatives today believe our involvement in the Vietnam war was a mistake. The few hold-outs, moreover, claim the war failed because the U.S. should have been more aggressive, to the point of using nukes, as Barry Goldwater famously suggested. Almost no one outside of this small minority thinks this would have been a good thing.  

I find this all a bit puzzling, moreover. The argument, in my opinion, is not whether or not those stupid lib-tards lost a winnable war, but whether the war was actually lost. I believe that in the minds of Kissinger and his ilk, the U.S. won that war. I mean, think about it. That war slowed the progression of the dominoes. It sent a message to Russia and China. It pumped billions into the pockets of the already rich, and led us back in time to Reagan. If one views it as a battle in a much larger war, it was a war the U.S. won (at least temporarily).

[Joseph McBride]

Noam Chomsky's book speciously attacking JFK and Oliver Stone

does make a sound argument that the people in the military-industrial complex who backed

the Vietnam War "won" the war by making vast amounts

of money from it. They didn't care about the human toll.

So as Chomsky notes, the conventional wisdom that

the US lost the Vietnam War depends on one's perspective.

 

When I covered a speech in 1972 at the University of

Wisconsin, Madison, by Kissinger's aide William

H. Sullivan (who later became the US ambassador to Iran

and was serving in that capacity when the hostage crisis occcurred in 1979), 

a member of the audience asked Sullivan why we were

still in Vietnam. Sullivan said the US was fighting there

because it needed to control the oil

in the South China Sea.  Chomsky mentions that

motive in his book on JFK and Stone. Few other

historians mention the oil in the South China Sea

as a motive for Nixon continuing the war.

Edited August 26, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Benjamin Cole]

Nixon and Kissinger were hardly libs, and quite willing to inflict lots of harm on anyone---but they both concluded the VW was unwinnable, soon after gaining power in 1968. Nixon extended the war so as to not lose before the 1972 elections. 

If the VW war was winnable, why did not Nixon and Kissinger win it? 

Not only that, Vietnam was not vital to US interests. After Vietnam went commie, the only wounds inflicted on the US were done from  within, as we all know.  

In recent decades, nearly every square inch of the planet has been described as "vital" to the US. 

No one I ever know had any interests in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, although almost everyone I knew needed a job, healthcare and safe streets. 

This schism is an example of multi-nationals running U.S. foreign, military and trade policies, and pretty much funding the entire foreign policy community of talking heads.  

Here is a list of the 10 most powerful US think tanks. All are globalist free-trade institutions. 

1. Brookings Institution
2. The Heritage Foundation
3. Council on Foreign Relations
4. Cato Institute
5. Center for Strategic and International Studies
6. American Enterprise Institute
7. RAND Corporation
8. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
9. Atlantic Council
10. Hoover Institution

The US cause in a place like Afghanistan, or Syria, or Vietnam may even be a "good" one from some angles. After all, life under the Taliban may be perfectly awful.

But the US getting entangled...may be a very, very long term proposition, with no assurance of victory, or final, good results. All at taxpayer expense...but to benefit whom? Not the average taxpayers. 

 

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

For those who might be interested in more information on "the other side of the story" on the Vietnam War, here is website on the subject:

https://sites.google.com/view/vietnamwartruth/home

Among other items, you'll find videos of lectures by Dr. Moyar, Dr. Sorley, and Phillip Jennings.

[Bill Fite]

55 minutes ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Nixon and Kissinger were hardly libs, and quite willing to inflict lots of harm on anyone---but they both concluded the VW was unwinnable, soon after gaining power in 1968. Nixon extended the war so as to not lose before the 1972 elections. 

If the VW war was winnable, why did not Nixon and Kissinger win it? 

One of the most interesting questions I've ever heard.  Certainly something all of those who claim the war was winnable will be unable to answer.

 

Quote

Not only that, Vietnam was not vital to US interests. After Vietnam went commie, the only wounds inflicted on the US were done from  within, as we all know.  

In recent decades, nearly every square inch of the planet has been described as "vital" to the US. 

No one I ever know had any interests in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria, although almost everyone I knew needed a job, healthcare and safe streets. 

IIRC - The late great Joseph Heller had a quote in his book, Picture This a quote about Vietnam to the effect that the US had 500 thousand troops in Vietnam to protect its vital interests.  Its only vital interest was the lives of the 500 thousand troops in Vietnam.

[Benjamin Cole]

1 hour ago, Michael Griffith said:

For those who might be interested in more information on "the other side of the story" on the Vietnam War, here is website on the subject:

https://sites.google.com/view/vietnamwartruth/home

Among other items, you'll find videos of lectures by Dr. Moyar, Dr. Sorley, and Phillip Jennings.

So why did Nixon and Kissinger conclude the VW was unwinnable? Whatever their politics, they were smart guys....

[David Lifton]

On 8/25/2022 at 3:27 PM, Michael Griffith said:

Oliver Stone’s mostly solid documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed and its shorter version JFK Revisited claim that JFK would have withdrawn all U.S. troops from South Vietnam in 1965 even if this caused South Vietnam to fall to the communists. Stone made a similar claim in his 1991 movie JFK. This claim was one of the major errors identified in the film by numerous historians, yet Stone doubled-down on the claim in his two recent documentaries.

Another problem with the claim is that, as voiced by most conspiracy theorists, it usually includes the liberal argument that the Vietnam War was wrong and unwinnable and never should have been fought, a position that most conservatives reject as wrong and unpatriotic.

I think Dr. Marc Selverstone’s upcoming book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam, using new material and overlooked evidence, will demonstrate—and demonstrate convincingly—that the 1,000-man withdrawal was not the beginning of a complete pullout but part of a strategy to pressure Diem to make reforms in order to prosecute the war more effectively. Yes, certainly, JFK intended to eventually bring home all or nearly all U.S. troops from South Vietnam, but he had no intention of doing so until he was confident that South Vietnam was safe and secure.

Dr. Selverstone, a professor of presidential studies and chairman of the Presidential Recordings Program at the University of Virginia, has been working on this book for many years. His video below on JFK’s Vietnam policy was done in 2016, and he has spent the last six years doing further research on the subject for his upcoming book.

The Vietnam War has been a research interest of mine for over 20 years. I’ve read several liberal books on the Vietnam War, but I have yet to meet a liberal who has read a single scholarly book that defends the war. I’m sure there are liberals who have done so—I just haven’t met any of them.

If you want to read the other side of the story on the Vietnam War, I recommend the following books:

Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect (1978), by Admiral U.S.G Sharp, who was the commander of all U.S. Navy forces in the Vietnam War. Among other things, Admiral Sharp documents the absolutely absurd restrictions that LBJ and McNamara imposed on the use of U.S. air power.

Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of Its Heroes and Its History (1998), by B.G. Burkett. Not only corrects the record about the war but debunks common myths about Vietnam veterans.

A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam (2007), Dr. Lewis Sorley. One of the most careful, thorough studies on the war ever published. By the way, Dr. Sorley is extremely critical of General Westmoreland.

Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 (2006) and Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968 (2022), by Dr. Mark Moyar. Dr. Moyar’s research includes new material from North Vietnamese archives that provides fascinating insights into how North Vietnam’s leaders viewed the war at important stages.

Phoenix and the Birds of Prey: Counterinsurgency and Counterterrorism in Vietnam (2007), by Dr. Mark Moyar. This remains a much-needed correction to Doug Valentine’s severely irresponsible and misleading book The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam.

If you want to take an hour to watch a documentary that challenges the liberal view of the war, here’s a good one to watch:

Television's Vietnam: The Impact of Media (1985) - YouTube

Here’s the video that features Dr. Selverstone talking about JFK’s Vietnam policy in 2016:

JFK and the Vietnam Escalation [10/13/2016] - YouTube

 

 

 

I realize that "contra-factual" history has its problems, but (on the question of JFK's intentions) it seems clear --to me, anyway --that JFK had no intention --none whatsoever -- of escalating the war in Vietnam  (which, when JFK was alive, was simply viewed as a 'counter-insurgency" operation).  The Pentagon Papers (1971)  had a section of JFK's intentions; and --for me, at least --that seemed to settle the matter. So did the book written by Prof. Larry Berman, who I came to personally know.   JFK articulated his intentions to close friend and advisor Kenneth O'Donnell (as well as Sec Def McNamara); and it was all spelled out in a 1964 cover story in LIFE (which then became part of O'Donnell's memoir.)  I don't suppose anyone will ever come up with a document that explicitly spells out a connection between Dallas and the subsequent escalation in Vietnam; but the actual "escalation chronology" spells out the reality of what was going on.   Under Secretary of State Geo. Ball spelled out the situation in his 1965 book "The Discipline of Power." Ball wrote a powerful dissenting memo to LBJ, in a last ditch effort to head off the escalation, predicting that the U.S. commitment would soon  (and inexorably) reach 500,00.  Ball was told --by LBJ -- "That's crazy" (or "You're crazy!")  but history shows he was correct.

My own experience --signing up, fall '65

I remember my own personal experience (when I registered for the draft when I turned 23 (approx). Some gung ho Army officer said, in wise-guy fashion, "Yup, sign up now and you'll soon be coming back in a body bag!"  In fact --and ironically --that was the first time I had heard the term "body bag."  At the time, I was employed at North American Aviation/Space Div. , the primary contractor for Project Apollo (JFK's moon program) and so was provided an "exception" to the draft.   

Once the war escalated, I have a vivid memory of often eating dinner -- on a Friday night, at a UCLA dorm, with Walter Cronkite (on a large  TV screen)  announcing to a roomful of anxious students the weekly casualties --approx. 200/week (if not more); along with the lottery numbers, which determined a student's level of risk at being called to serve. (DSL Note: last sentence edited, just now, 10/8/22_ 3 AM PDT) 

In retrospect, I have come to believe that LBJ was seriously self-deceived; An important negotiator (in the Senate), LBJ truly believed that he could escalate (which was akin to turning on a firehose), and then quickly negotiate a "solution" to the conflict.  But that was a delusion, and did not take into account the psychology of Ho Chi Minh, for whom a unified Vietnam was his lifelong goal.  The true symbol of all of this was the ultimate Paris agreement, negotiated under Nixon, which led to Saigon being renamed Ho Chi Minh City.  

The world of "if":

I presently believe that if President Kennedy had not been murdered in Dallas, he would have negotiated a "solution" to Vietnam --resulting in one unified country. And guess what --all those hawks with their exaggerated view of the consequences, and their domino theories about future disaster, would have been proven wrong, only years earlier, and without the 58,000 American dead that resulted from LBJ's misguided policy of escalation. (DSL, 8/26/22, 4 AM PDT)

Edited October 15, 2022 by David Lifton

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Joseph McBride said:

 

Noam Chomsky's book speciously attacking JFK and Oliver Stone

does make a sound argument that the people in the military-industrial complex who backed

the Vietnam War "won" the war by making vast amounts

of money from it. They didn't care about the human toll.

So as Chomsky notes, the conventional wisdom that

the US lost the Vietnam War depends on one's perspective

 

100% 

They weren’t trying to win it, only keep it going for as long as possible. Just fleecing the tax payer and passing their monies into the hands of private corporations. 
 

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Nixon and Kissinger were hardly libs, and quite willing to inflict lots of harm on anyone---but they both concluded the VW was unwinnable, soon after gaining power in 1968. Nixon extended the war so as to not lose before the 1972 elections. 

If the VW war was winnable, why did not Nixon and Kissinger win it? 

I think I got this one. The US needed to appear righteous and just in its neo-collonialism. It also needed its own citizenry to believe that they were more reasonable than the communist bogey men. The means to win in Vietnam would mean using tactics and weaponry that would have made the USA the villains. It was actually better that the thing looked like a hard fought draw or a loss. I read “The Phoenix” program, the US certainly was doing plenty that would have got them tried at the Hague but, if they’d done that to all of Vietman, Nixon and Kissinger would have been remembered like Hitler or Mussolini. And it would have made the propaganda that much harder to accomplish when the US engaged in future conflicts. It was better for the public to believe that it was just a tragic mistake with unfortunate consequences. We see this time and time again; the public buying info human error or colossal mistakes over Machiavellian behaviour made to look like error. 

Edited August 26, 2022 by Chris Barnard

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/10/henry-kissinger-vietnam-diaries-213236/

Evidently, Kissinger believed all along the VW was un-winnable, going back to 1965. I have read this several times in different sources. 

My guess is, after all, Nixon and K. inherited the awful war, and sought some way out other than abject defeat, especially before the 1972 elections. They perpetrated horrible war crimes in trying to avoid the inevitable. 

None of this makes the commies nice guys. 

Another oddity of the VW is that the Vietnamese had always resented Sino hegemony. These cultural and racial animosities transcend  political systems, as seen in the Sino-Nippon resentments that persist to this day. 

Only a couple decades later, the multinationals were delighted to get into bed with Beijing. They could have done that far earlier with Hanoi. 

The VW is a curiously indefensible war by nearly any standard. 

 

 

[Michael Griffith]

4 hours ago, David Lifton said:

I realize that "contra-factual" history has its problems, but (on the question of JFK's intentions) it seems clear --to me, anyway --that JFK had no intention --none whatsoever -- of escalating the war in Vietnam  (which, when JFK was alive, was simply viewed as a 'counter-insurgency" operation).  The Pentagon Papers (1971)  had a section of JFK's intentions; and --for me, at least --that seemed to settle the matter. So did the book written by Prof. Larry Berman, who I came to personally know.   JFK articulated his intentions to close friend and advisor Kenneth O'Donnell (as well as Sec Def McNamara); and it was all spelled out in a 1964 cover story in LIFE (which then became part of O'Donnell's memoir.)  I don't suppose anyone will ever come up with a document that explicitly spells out a connection between Dallas and the subsequent escalation in Vietnam; but the actual "escalation chronology" spells out the reality of what was going on.   Under Secretary of State Geo. Ball spelled out the situation in his 1965 book "The Discipline of Power." Ball wrote a powerful dissenting memo to LBJ, in a last ditch effort to head off the escalation, predicting that the U.S. commitment would soon  (and inexorably) reach 500,00.  Ball was told --by LBJ -- "That's crazy" (or "You're crazy!")  but history shows he was correct.

I remember my own personal experience (when I registered for the draft when I turned 24).  Some gung ho Army officer said, in wise-guy fashion, "Yup, sign up now and you'll soon be coming back in a body bag!"  In fact --and ironically --that was the first time I had heard the term "body bag."  At the time, I was employed at North American Aviation/Space Div. , the primary contractor for Project Apollo (JFK's moon program) and  so was provided an "exception" to the draft.   Once the war escalated, I have a vivid memory of often eating dinner -- on a Friday night, at the UCLA dorm, with Walter Cronkite (on a large  TV screen)  announcing to a roomful of anxious students the weekly casualties --approx. 200/week (if not more). 

In retrospect, I have come to believe that LBJ was seriously self-deceived; An important negotiator (in the Senate), LBJ truly believed that he could escalate (which was akin to turning on a firehose), and then quickly negotiate a "solution" to the conflict.  But that was a delusion, and did not take into account the psychology of Ho Chi Minh, for whom a unified Vietnam was his lifelong goal.  The true symbol of all of this was the ultimate Paris agreement, negotiated under Nixon, which led to Saigon being renamed Ho Chi Minh City.  

I presently believe that if President Kennedy had not been murdered in Dallas, he would have negotiated a "solution" to Vietnam --resulting in one unified country. And guess what --all those hawks with their exaggerated view of the consequences, and their domino theories about future disaster, would have been proven wrong, only years earlier, and without the 58,000 American dead that resulted from LBJ's misguided policy of escalation. (DSL, 8/26/22, 4 AM PDT)

I think it is important that we distinguish between escalation to the point of introducing ground troops and a complete, precipitous withdrawal regardless of the consequences. Those are two very different issues.

I agree that JFK was strongly against putting in ground troops, although RFK indicated in April 1964 that JFK may have opted to do this if South Vietnam were on the verge of collapse. But, yes, JFK strongly wanted to avoid sending in ground troops. I acknowledge this. However, this in no way means that JFK would have withdrawn all U.S. forces regardless of the situation on the ground and regardless of the consequences. 

I think Stone and other conspiracy theorists would be on much stronger ground if they focused on JFK's opposition to sending in ground troops and did not insist that JFK would have completely pulled out of South Vietnam even if it meant losing South Vietnam to the communists.

 

[Paul Brancato]

26 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

I think it is important that we distinguish between escalation to the point of introducing ground troops and a complete, precipitous withdrawal regardless of the consequences. Those are two very different issues.

I agree that JFK was strongly against putting in ground troops, although RFK indicated in April 1964 that JFK may have opted to do this if South Vietnam were on the verge of collapse. But, yes, JFK strongly wanted to avoid sending in ground troops. I acknowledge this. However, this in no way means that JFK would have withdrawn all U.S. forces regardless of the situation on the ground and regardless of the consequences. 

I think Stone and other conspiracy theorists would be on much stronger ground if they focused on JFK's opposition to sending in ground troops and did not insist that JFK would have completely pulled out of South Vietnam even if it meant losing South Vietnam to the communists.

 

I’m not sure why you think there is a dispute here. Do you acknowledge that JFK was interested in Peace, and was respectful of indigenous revolutions against foreign occupations, such as Algeria and Vietnam? Did Newman or Stone or DiEugenio use the words precipitous withdrawal in describing JFK foreign policy decisions? 

[Michael Griffith]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

So why did Nixon and Kissinger conclude the VW was unwinnable? Whatever their politics, they were smart guys....

I don't know about Kissinger, but Nixon never said the war was unwinnable. This was one of the many baseless claims made in Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary. Nixon repeatedly said the war was winnable.

The Vietnam War - Errors and Omissions - Episode Eight » (nixonfoundation.org)