JFK "Peace Speech" contemporary context

[W. Niederhut]

21 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

In my opinion, the 1963 Peace Speech referred to the postwar detente envisioned by FDR although infused with an existential urgency brought on by the Cuban Missile Crisis eight months previous.

FDR’s vision was not realized due to his death, and due to machinations during the Democrats 1944 Convention when Wallace was moved aside. These events would create the space for the ascendancy of the “Dulles world view”  in the U.S. foreign policy/security architecture. It was the “Dulles world view”, realized during the Eisenhower administration, which Kennedy would come to oppose and would have supplanted if he had received a second term.

One might imagine if the Cold War had been ended in the context of a general detente, then the large military blocs (Warsaw Pact / NATO) would have also been seen to no longer have purpose, and events like NATO expansion and other eventual triggers in Ukraine would never have happened in the first place.

Jeff,

     This is the basic Cold War narrative of Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone's Untold History series, and it was the only historical narrative in the series that seemed partially erroneous, in my opinion.

     Certainly, Stone & Kuznick were correct about the machinations of American capitalists and Cold War hawks to kick Henry Wallace off of FDR's 1944 Presidential ticket, and to use Truman and the Bomb to end our WWII era alliance with Uncle Joe Stalin and the Soviets, launching the Cold War.

     But were Stone & Kuznick correct about Stalin's totalitarian police state and his post-war agenda in Europe?

     We can ask an analogous question about Oliver Stone's benign opinion of Putin's agenda in the 21st century.

     Stone has focused, primarily, on telling the Untold History of the United States-- the grim machinations of Wall Street, the CIA, and military-industrial complex.

     Conversely, he and Kuznick have not really focused on the very dark, untold history of Stalinism, the Soviet Union, and the 21st century Russian Federation.

     Using your paradigm, (above) how do you explain the 20th century Stalinist genocide against Soviet citizens, (including the Holodomor) the Gulag Archipelago, and the multi-decade oppression of Eastern Europeans by the Soviet police state?  Hungary in 1956?  Prague in 1968?  Soviet genocide in Poland?  Ukraine in 2022?

     Are those Soviet (and Russian Federation) crimes against humanity primarily the fault of U.S. (and British) Cold War hawks?

Edited June 9, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Jeff Carter]

3 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff,

     This is the basic Cold War narrative of Peter Kuznick and Oliver Stone's Untold History series, and it was the only historical narrative in the series that seemed partially erroneous, in my opinion.

     Certainly, Stone & Kuznick were correct about the machinations of American capitalists and Cold War hawks to kick Henry Wallace off of FDR's 1944 Presidential ticket, and to use Truman and the Bomb to end our WWII era alliance with Uncle Joe Stalin the Soviets, launching the Cold War.

     But were Stone & Kuznick correct about Stalin's totalitarian police state and his post-war agenda in Europe?

     We can ask an analogous question about Oliver Stone's benign opinion of Putin's agenda in the 21st century.

     Stone has focused, primarily, on telling the Untold History of the United States-- the grim machinations of Wall Street, the CIA, and military-industrial complex.

     Conversely, he and Kuznick have not really focused on the very dark, untold history of Stalinism, the Soviet Union, and the 21st century Russian Federation.

     Using your paradigm, (above) how do you explain the 20th century Stalinist genocide against Soviet citizens, (including the Holodomor) the Gulag Archipelago, and the multi-decade oppression of Eastern Europeans by the Soviet police state?  Hungary in 1956?  Prague in 1968?  Soviet genocide in Poland?  Ukraine in 2022?

     Are those Soviet (and Russian Federation) crimes against humanity primarily the fault of U.S. (and British) Cold War hawks?

You’ve directed your questions to a couple of historians rather than FDR and JFK themselves, and so avoid dealing with the root concepts of their proposals.

Was FDR entirely blind to what you term the “very dark, untold history of Stalinism”? That is, was he naive in proposing a postwar architecture modelled on peaceful coexistence with the Soviets? Was JFK foolish to propose a reset based on a similar concept?

Likewise, should JFK have pursued total war in Vietnam because the VC were irredeemably evil? Or did the Vietnam experience ultimately show that the war should never have been engaged in the first place and that manichean constructs of good and evil and twilight struggles etc were in fact the true foolishness?

In my opinion, it is useful to understand, as Kuznick/Stone do, that WW2 was a fight against fascism rather than an amorphous concept of “evil”. The Soviets were the allies in this fight. The postwar Cold Warriors were revisionists who reincorporated fascism in the “free world” and managed to turn the successful conclusion of the war into a manichean struggle against former allies. It is my understanding that FDR believed the fascists more of a threat to the American “system” than the Soviets, and his thinking was based on the interplay of systems rather than concepts of good and evil.

[Paul Brancato]

While Biden was warning the world that Putin would invade, he did nothing to stop it. The pre invasion talks were fruitless because we would not agree to Putin’s demand that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO. And there were no boots on the ground to prevent the invasion, which there could and should have been. A lot less bloody alternative. If NATO and the US were determined to take steps to include Ukraine in NATO, and Putin was amassing troops at the border, both of which were true and documented, then by leaving out the defense of Ukraine’s borders we essentially allowed the invasion to happen, and once it did all anyone could see was how evil Putin is. This was not like Czechoslovakia or Poland, which were not easily defensible prior to Hitler’s invasions, the Ukraine was defensible. We just didn’t defend them. Of course I would have preferred agreeing to Putin’s stated demand. Ukraine’s cheerleaders, including those on this board, too easily dismiss the devastation and loss of life and property in favor of the propaganda war. Is Putin Hitler? I hear it said all the time. The answer is no. Is he a despot? Yes. Is the answer to despotism war? Well, if we are willing to lose our own boys then have at it. But a proxy war to prove our point? How heartless. 

Edited June 9, 2023 by Paul Brancato

[W. Niederhut]

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

You’ve directed your questions to a couple of historians rather than FDR and JFK themselves, and so avoid dealing with the root concepts of their proposals.

Was FDR entirely blind to what you term the “very dark, untold history of Stalinism”? That is, was he naive in proposing a postwar architecture modelled on peaceful coexistence with the Soviets? Was JFK foolish to propose a reset based on a similar concept?

Likewise, should JFK have pursued total war in Vietnam because the VC were irredeemably evil? Or did the Vietnam experience ultimately show that the war should never have been engaged in the first place and that manichean constructs of good and evil and twilight struggles etc were in fact the true foolishness?

In my opinion, it is useful to understand, as Kuznick/Stone do, that WW2 was a fight against fascism rather than an amorphous concept of “evil”. The Soviets were the allies in this fight. The postwar Cold Warriors were revisionists who reincorporated fascism in the “free world” and managed to turn the successful conclusion of the war into a manichean struggle against former allies. It is my understanding that FDR believed the fascists more of a threat to the American “system” than the Soviets, and his thinking was based on the interplay of systems rather than concepts of good and evil.

Nothing new here, Jeff.

Obviously, FDR (and even Churchill) turned to Stalin as an ally-- a necessary evil, if you will-- in the critically important task of defeating the N-a-z-i Wehrmacht in Europe.

And the Red Army did the lion's share of the fighting.  80% of all Wehrmacht military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.

Churchill was very reluctant to re-commit troops to the Continent after Dunkirk, and the D-Day invasion happened almost FIVE YEARS after WWII commenced in Poland. 

It was FDR who responded most sincerely to Stalin's request for a Second Front-- in Italy (and up the Rhone Valley.)

By the time Germany surrendered, in May of 1945, the Red Army was gargantuan-- far and away the most massive military force in Europe.

And Stalin had no intention of relinquishing his occupied territories in Eastern Europe after May of 1945.

In fact, he had entered into a pact with Hitler, (Molotov-Ribbentrop) to partition (and annex) Poland in August of 1939.

Stalin was always secretive, and deceptive, about his pre-war (and post-war) Soviet genocide-- the Purges, executions, and forced labor camps of the Gulag, which also involved the mass incarceration of ethnic Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and other ethnic non-Russians after 1939.

Soviet supporters in the West were generally shocked and disillusioned when the truth about Stalinism surfaced in the publications of Solzhenitsyn after 1960.

Stalin was not an enlightened, humane autocrat.  He murdered millions of his own citizens.

So, IMO, the Stone/Kuznick narrative blaming Truman and the Cold War hawks in the West for the tragedy of Cold War history is one-sided.

The "untold" half of the story is about the Kremlin.

The same thing is true about current narratives blaming the U.S. and NATO for Putin's brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine-- and the 25 year-old Dugin/Putin agenda of annexing Ukraine.

Edited June 9, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Jeff Carter]

33 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Nothing new here, Jeff.

Obviously, FDR (and even Churchill) turned to Stalin as an ally-- a necessary evil, if you will-- in the critically important task of defeating the N-a-z-i Wehrmacht in Europe.

And the Red Army did the lion's share of the fighting.  80% of all Wehrmacht military casualties in WWII occurred in Russia.

Churchill was very reluctant to re-commit troops to the Continent after Dunkirk, and the D-Day invasion happened almost FIVE YEARS after WWII commenced in Poland. 

It was FDR who responded most sincerely to Stalin's request for a Second Front-- in Italy (and up the Rhone Valley.)

By the time Germany surrendered, in May of 1945, the Red Army was gargantuan-- far and away the most massive military force in Europe.

And Stalin had no intention of relinquishing his occupied territories in Eastern Europe after May of 1945.

In fact, he had entered into a pact with Hitler, (Molotov-Ribbentrop) to partition (and annex) Poland in August of 1939.

Stalin was always secretive, and deceptive, about his pre-war (and post-war) Soviet genocide-- the Purges, executions, and forced labor camps of the Gulag, which also involved the mass incarceration of ethnic Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, and other ethnic non-Russians after 1939.

Soviet supporters in the West were generally shocked and disillusioned when the truth about Stalinism surfaced in the publications of Solzhenitsyn after 1960.

Stalin was not an enlightened, humane autocrat.  He murdered millions of his own citizens.

So, IMO, the Stone/Kuznick narrative blaming Truman and the Cold War hawks in the West for the tragedy of Cold War history is one-sided.

The "untold" half of the story is about the Kremlin.

The same thing is true about current narratives blaming the U.S. and NATO for Putin's brutal 2022 invasion of Ukraine-- and the 25 year-old Dugin/Putin agenda of annexing Ukraine.

OK. So you are in fact saying that FDR was naive.

And, I assume, that JFK was simply foolish.

[W. Niederhut]

52 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

OK. So you are in fact saying that FDR was naive.

And, I assume, that JFK was simply foolish.

Huh?

FDR allied with the brutal mass murderer, Joseph Stalin, out of necessity.

And, at the time of his death, he was still seeking Soviet assistance in defeating Japan, right?

Is that your definition of naivete?

As for JFK, do you diehard Putin apologists really believe that JFK would have done nothing in response to Putin's invasion and annexation of Ukraine?

Study his June 1963 Berlin speech.

[John Cotter]

USA, the plutocracy that exports democracy at the point of a gun.

[Jeff Carter]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Huh?

FDR allied with the brutal mass murderer, Joseph Stalin, out of necessity.

And, at the time of his death, he was still seeking Soviet assistance in defeating Japan, right?

Is that your definition of naivete?

As for JFK, do you diehard Putin apologists really believe that JFK would have done nothing in response to Putin's invasion and annexation of Ukraine?

Study his June 1963 Berlin speech.

W. - you understand perfectly well that FDR crafted a postwar vision of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets, a fact which undermines a notion that the alliance was merely one of expediency. I also highly doubt that the political purges of the 1930s in the USSR were some kind of secret, or that FDR was naive in his dealings with Stalin.

JFK - in my opinion, trying to presume what JFK would do facing today’s situation in Ukraine is a useless and counter-productive exercise because, should his own vision of peaceful coexistence been realized then events leading to the war - including NATO expansion and neocon provocateurs - would not have occurred or even been possible.

[W. Niederhut]

52 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

W. - you understand perfectly well that FDR crafted a postwar vision of peaceful coexistence with the Soviets, a fact which undermines a notion that the alliance was merely one of expediency. I also highly doubt that the political purges of the 1930s in the USSR were some kind of secret, or that FDR was naive in his dealings with Stalin.

JFK - in my opinion, trying to presume what JFK would do facing today’s situation in Ukraine is a useless and counter-productive exercise because, should his own vision of peaceful coexistence been realized then events leading to the war - including NATO expansion and neocon provocateurs - would not have occurred or even been possible.

Jeff,

     Most people in the West were unaware of the extent of Stalin's crimes against humanity prior to the publication of Solzhenitsyn's work after 1960.

     And many of the crimes of the Soviet state against humanity have remained largely "untold" to this very day.

     They were shrouded in secrecy and Bolshevik propaganda, in a closed society-- a totalitarian police state.

     What have you read, or heard, about the Soviet concentration camps in former Orthodox monasteries like Solovki?  Nothing, I'll wager.

     What have you read about the Bolshevik demolitions of Russian Orthodox churches, or their use as Bolshevik gymnasiums and skating rinks?

     Stalin had the Spaasky Cathedral near the Kremlin demolished because he couldn't stand looking at it.

     The man was evil.

     As for JFK, I believe he would have endeavored to prevent Putin's expansionist military agenda in the former Soviet Union-- through negotiation, if possible. But I also believe he would have used military force, if necessary, to resist Putin's brutal invasion and annexation of a sovereign Ukrainian nation.

     Here is the text of JFK's June 1963 Berlin speech.

     Does he sound like a POTUS who would have done nothing while Putin invaded Ukraine, in order to establish his totalitarian police state in Kyiv?

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AT THE RUDOLPH WILDE PLATZ, BERLIN, JUNE 26, 1963

Listen to speech.    View related documents. 

President John F. Kennedy
West Berlin
June 26, 1963

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany--real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

 

Edited June 9, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Jeff Carter]

42 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Jeff,

     Most people in the West were unaware of the extent of Stalin's crimes against humanity prior to the publication of Solzhenitsyn's work after 1960.

     And many of the crimes of the Soviet state against humanity have remained largely "untold" to this very day.

     They were shrouded in secrecy and Bolshevik propaganda, in a closed society-- a totalitarian police state.

     What have you read, or heard, about the Soviet concentration camps in former Orthodox monasteries like Solovki?  Nothing, I'll wager.

     What have you read about the Bolshevik demolitions of Russian Orthodox churches, or their use as Bolshevik gymnasiums and skating rinks?

     Stalin had the Spaasky Cathedral near the Kremlin demolished because he couldn't stand looking at it.

     The man was evil.

     As for JFK, I believe he would have endeavored to prevent Putin's expansionist military agenda in the former Soviet Union-- through negotiation, if possible. But I also believe he would have used military force, if necessary, to resist Putin's brutal invasion and annexation of a sovereign Ukrainian nation.

     Here is the text of JFK's June 1963 Berlin speech.

     Does he sound like a POTUS who would have done nothing while Putin invaded Ukraine, in order to establish his totalitarian police state in Kyiv?

REMARKS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY AT THE RUDOLPH WILDE PLATZ, BERLIN, JUNE 26, 1963

Listen to speech.    View related documents. 

President John F. Kennedy
West Berlin
June 26, 1963

I am proud to come to this city as the guest of your distinguished Mayor, who has symbolized throughout the world the fighting spirit of West Berlin. And I am proud to visit the Federal Republic with your distinguished Chancellor who for so many years has committed Germany to democracy and freedom and progress, and to come here in the company of my fellow American, General Clay, who has been in this city during its great moments of crisis and will come again if ever needed.

Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was "civis Romanus sum." Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner."

I appreciate my interpreter translating my German!

There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress. Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen. Let them come to Berlin.

Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in, to prevent them from leaving us. I want to say, on behalf of my countrymen, who live many miles away on the other side of the Atlantic, who are far distant from you, that they take the greatest pride that they have been able to share with you, even from a distance, the story of the last 18 years. I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin. While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.

What is true of this city is true of Germany--real, lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice. In 18 years of peace and good faith, this generation of Germans has earned the right to be free, including the right to unite their families and their nation in lasting peace, with good will to all people. You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main. So let me ask you as I close, to lift your eyes beyond the dangers of today, to the hopes of tomorrow, beyond the freedom merely of this city of Berlin, or your country of Germany, to the advance of freedom everywhere, beyond the wall to the day of peace with justice, beyond yourselves and ourselves to all mankind.

Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner."

 

OK. So what you are saying is that FDR was naive, and JFK's Berlin speech, rather than the previous "Peace Speech", was the accurate measure of his true position as a Cold warrior.

[Benjamin Cole]

5 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

While Biden was warning the world that Putin would invade, he did nothing to stop it. The pre invasion talks were fruitless because we would not agree to Putin’s demand that Ukraine not be admitted into NATO. And there were no boots on the ground to prevent the invasion, which there could and should have been. A lot less bloody alternative. If NATO and the US were determined to take steps to include Ukraine in NATO, and Putin was amassing troops at the border, both of which were true and documented, then by leaving out the defense of Ukraine’s borders we essentially allowed the invasion to happen, and once it did all anyone could see was how evil Putin is. This was not like Czechoslovakia or Poland, which were not easily defensible prior to Hitler’s invasions, the Ukraine was defensible. We just didn’t defend them. Of course I would have preferred agreeing to Putin’s stated demand. Ukraine’s cheerleaders, including those on this board, too easily dismiss the devastation and loss of life and property in favor of the propaganda war. Is Putin Hitler? I hear it said all the time. The answer is no. Is he a despot? Yes. Is the answer to despotism war? Well, if we are willing to lose our own boys then have at it. But a proxy war to prove our point? How heartless. 

"If NATO and the US were determined to take steps to include Ukraine in NATO, and Putin was amassing troops at the border, both of which were true and documented, then by leaving out the defense of Ukraine’s borders we essentially allowed the invasion to happen, and once it did all anyone could see was how evil Putin is."---Paul B.

One can legitimately wonder if Putin put his paw into the US intel-state designed bear trap. 

As you say, Putin was baited into Ukraine, which the West left wide open for invasion. Then the neo-con-libs could wage a war, and seek regime change in Moscow. 

Whether Biden was cognizant or aware of what happened on his watch is also debatable. I think we can assume this is outside of Kamala Harris' ken. 

None of this justifies Putin's inhumane and criminal war. Putin could have simply bolstered Russian defenses, if he actually feared a military invasion. 

Thanks to Putin and US intel-state schemers, we have a human catastrophe underway in Ukraine, with no resolution in sight.

Biden does not have plan for ending the war...and glacially vacillates besides. No fighter jets for Ukraine for 18 months. But now, OK, fighter jets.

Is the Biden Administration's (or intel-state's) goal a long drawn-out war that weakens Russia? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

Two points to be made.

In reading The Declassified Eisenhower, it was not just FDR who thought America could work on a postwar structure of peace with the USSR.  General Eisenhower thought the same thing.  He and Zhukov got along famously and sent each other gifts.

What changed this, according to Ike, was Truman's dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.  He said afterwards that this was a needless mistake since he knew from intel reports that Japan was already defeated and was trying to negotiate a peace.  He said that once Truman did that horrific act, all bets were now off about any kind of peaceful co existence with Russia.  This was clinched the next year when Truman allowed Churchill to make his Iron Curtain speech in America. As Stone and Kuznick pointed out, Churchill made this speech knowing that he had agreed to allow the Russians to have control over Eastern Europe.

Secondly, Kennedy's foreign policy resembled Roosevelt's in two important respects.  One was in its anti colonialism which was clearly demonstrated in the Algeria speech in 1957 and his efforts in Congo. (I am really glad Oliver put this in JFK Revisited and especially in JFK:Destiny Betrayed). And in his belief that you could work with Cold War enemies e.g. Cuba and the USSR.  That policy was utterly destroyed by 1975.  Kennedy would have pilloried the Neocons, just like he went after Dulles and Nixon over Algeria.

Its not possible to say anything rational about Ukraine since the MSM has destroyed any kind of possibility for that.  I will just say what I said before, and its another comparison with Kennedy. This has driven together a formidable counterforce of China, India, and Russia e.g. BRICS, and the R and B Project.  And I predict those will both be successful.  Kennedy thought that Dulles and Ike were wrong to turn on Nasser when he refused to join the Baghdad Pact and they then pulled out of Aswan. This left Nasser with the only option of going to Moscow, which he did.  Kennedy thought that was just stupid diplomacy.

Last point:  was NATO ever supposed to go to the border of Russia?  It was designed to stop an invasion of West Germany through East Germany. That was negated by the unification of Germany.  is there a Warsaw Pact today?

So what did HRC do?  She used NATO to bomb Africa.

Kennedy would be rolling over in his grave.

[Benjamin Cole]

13 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

Two points to be made.

In reading The Declassified Eisenhower, it was not just FDR who thought America could work on a postwar structure of peace with the USSR.  General Eisenhower thought the same thing.  He and Zhukov got along famously and sent each other gifts.

What changed this, according to Ike, was Truman's dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan.  He said afterwards that this was a needless mistake since he knew from intel reports that Japan was already defeated and was trying to negotiate a peace.  He said that once Truman did that horrific act, all bets were now off about any kind of peaceful co existence with Russia.  This was clinched the next year when Truman allowed Churchill to make his Iron Curtain speech in America. As Stone and Kuznick pointed out, Churchill made this speech knowing that he had agreed to allow the Russians to have control over Eastern Europe.

Secondly, Kennedy's foreign policy resembled Roosevelt's in two important respects.  One was in its anti colonialism which was clearly demonstrated in the Algeria speech in 1957 and his efforts in Congo. (I am really glad Oliver put this in JFK Revisited and especially in JFK:Destiny Betrayed). And in his belief that you could work with Cold War enemies e.g. Cuba and the USSR.  That policy was utterly destroyed by 1975.  Kennedy would have pilloried the Neocons, just like he went after Dulles and Nixon over Algeria.

Its not possible to say anything rational about Ukraine since the MSM has destroyed any kind of possibility for that.  I will just say what I said before, and its another comparison with Kennedy. This has driven together a formidable counterforce of China, India, and Russia e.g. BRICS, and the R and B Project.  And I predict those will both be successful.  Kennedy thought that Dulles and Ike were wrong to turn on Nasser when he refused to join the Baghdad Pact and they then pulled out of Aswan. This left Nasser with the only option of going to Moscow, which he did.  Kennedy thought that was just stupid diplomacy.

Last point:  was NATO ever supposed to go to the border of Russia?  It was designed to stop an invasion of West Germany through East Germany. That was negated by the unification of Germany.  is there a Warsaw Pact today?

So what did HRC do?  She used NATO to bomb Africa.

Kennedy would be rolling over in his grave.

I have long wondered why the US sought "unconditional surrender" from Japan to end WWII. 

"Unconditional" is a horrible standard and possibly includes the creation of an unarmed vassal state with slave factories and brothels.  

A conditional surrender might have come much more quickly.

 

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

OK. So what you are saying is that FDR was naive, and JFK's Berlin speech, rather than the previous "Peace Speech", was the accurate measure of his true position as a Cold warrior.

Jeff,

     You are neglecting to mention an inconvenient truth that refutes your thesis.

     Even FDR's progressive former Vice President, Henry Wallace, later admitted that he had been naive about Stalin and the Soviet Union.  (He was fired as Commerce Sdcretary by Truman in 1946 for praising the USSR.)

     By 1950, Wallace said that the Soviet Union was "utterly evil."

     Perhaps you are unaware that many Western liberals also became disillusioned with the USSR after reading Solzhenitsyn.

     Have you read The Gulag Archipelago?

[James DiEugenio]

Ben, 

Did you know that even McCloy wanted the US to accept conditional terms from Japan?

As Anthony Eden said, the death of FDR was a calamity for all.

Byrnes and Churchill just steamrolled Truman. They could not have done that to Roosevelt.

I really liked the way Jim Douglass began his book about the comparison between Kennedy and Truman on atomic weapons.

BTW, I would still like to know how it is justified for NATO to bomb Africa.