The relevance of JFK's peace speech to the JFKA and to where we are today

[Sandy Larsen]

On 6/10/2023 at 10:17 AM, Jeff Carter said:

Apparently, to this forum's moderators, the Peace Speech is a "Political Discussion" with no relevance to the assassination, even though James Douglass wrote a five-hundred page book based on exactly the relevance.

 

The very first post of that thread reads:

How JFK Would Pursue Peace in Ukraine

Kennedy’s Peace Speech, 60 years ago, highlights how Joe Biden’s approach to Russia and the Ukraine War needs a dramatic reorientation, writes Jeffrey D. Sachs.

 

It is a political thread with a contemporary agenda.

It quickly became a debate between the two sides in the Russia/Ukraine issue. It doesn't belong here and I'm surprised anybody here would think otherwise.

The thread is still there waiting for you all.

 

[Jeff Carter]

2 hours ago, W. Niederhut said:

Peaceful coexistence is an ideal, but at what price?

I doubt that Eastern Europeans subjected to the Soviet yoke after 1945, or modern day Ukrainians, share your blithe moral relativism about Soviet, and neo-Soviet, oppression.

Do you, at least, agree that Stalin was evil?

Conversely, do you believe that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are, generally, good --as opposed to murder, gulags, and social control through police state terror?

I think an honest review of postwar Europe will demonstrate that political discipline was enforced on both sides of the divide, and that, in very general terms, the public was supportive of their respective systems.

As for Stalin, he - like Cheney and Rumsfeld - proved absolutely ruthless in pursuit of what he determined was the best interest of the State. All three have, or will likely, die peacefully in their own beds. I don’ t see that as necessarily an eclipse in the arc of the moral universe, rather just a plain fact of contemporary power dynamics and edifices. I don’t see that fact reversible or transcended by engagement in some new crusade to defeat some newly identified evil-doer. A better approach, such as suggested by FDR and JFK, would be structural reforms that would make it unlikely such people rise to positions of influence in the first place. The Soviets, at least, engaged in an intensive process of self-evaluation in the wake of Stalin. (The Soviets also peacefully stood down and dissolved their hopelessly compromised project in 1990/91, whereas the current crisis-beset US Empire appears determined to go down lashing out in every direction).

Speaking philosophically, the horrors of the 20th century did inspire a lot of sociological reflection and inquiry on the nature of “evil”. Whereas you seem to regard it as an animated presence, a differing consensus, neatly summed by Arendt’s notion of banality, saw it better understood as a vacant absence.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

I think an honest review of postwar Europe will demonstrate that political discipline was enforced on both sides of the divide, and that, in very general terms, the public was supportive of their respective systems.

As for Stalin, he - like Cheney and Rumsfeld - proved absolutely ruthless in pursuit of what he determined was the best interest of the State. All three have, or will likely, die peacefully in their own beds. I don’ t see that as necessarily an eclipse in the arc of the moral universe, rather just a plain fact of contemporary power dynamics and edifices. I don’t see that fact reversible or transcended by engagement in some new crusade to defeat some newly identified evil-doer. A better approach, such as suggested by FDR and JFK, would be structural reforms that would make it unlikely such people rise to positions of influence in the first place. The Soviets, at least, engaged in an intensive process of self-evaluation in the wake of Stalin. (The Soviets also peacefully stood down and dissolved their hopelessly compromised project in 1990/91, whereas the current crisis-beset US Empire appears determined to go down lashing out in every direction).

Speaking philosophically, the horrors of the 20th century did inspire a lot of sociological reflection and inquiry on the nature of “evil”. Whereas you seem to regard it as an animated presence, a differing consensus, neatly summed by Arendt’s notion of banality, saw it better understood as a vacant absence.

What pettifoggery.  You thrive on modern Western ignorance of Russian history.

From your glib dismissal of Stalin's monstrous crimes against humanity, it is apparent that you never studied The Gulag Archipelago or other non-Soviet texts documenting the bloody history of Stalinism.  

UCLA Professor Jared Diamond, among others, has ranked Stalin's 20th century genocide in the Soviet Union as the single worst genocide in the history of our species-- estimated by Diamond at 20 million souls.

Nor have you, apparently, studied the sordid history of Putin-ism in the 21st century.

Conscientious Soviets may have engaged in an "intensive process of self-evaluation in the wake of Stalinism," but that process obviously failed to prevent Putin and his KGB associates from reconstructing a totalitarian, neo-Stalinist police state in the modern Russian Federation after 1997.

It's a pyramid with no meaningful checks-and-balances on Putin's absolute power-- not even a Politburo.

Putin turned the Russian media into an organ of state (and international) propaganda, and systematically murdered or incarcerated critics and the political opposition.

(Incidentally, you have never commented on Putin's serial murders of Russian journalists during our debates here.  You always dodge the subject.)

As for the so-called "crisis-beset U.S. Empire," when has our U.S./NATO alliance ever been stronger in recent years?  

Our most serious U.S. crisis, at present, is the right-wing, proto-fascist Trump cult, which has been actively promoted and funded by the Kremlin's asymmetrical warfare against the U.S. since 2015.

Meanwhile, Putin's fascist police state is on the brink of collapse as a result of his botched invasion of Ukraine.

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

It does belong here, but William is determined to turn this into a Robert Conquest type of, we cannot have peace with the communist USSR, even though there is no USSR and Russia is not a communist nation anymore.

Now, is it possible to say that hey, maybe America was wrong in Iraq, and Libya and Syria.  And the reason that Russia intervened in Syria was something that Kerry and Biden admitted in private--he did not want Al Qaeda close to Russia, and those were the kinds of guys we were backing.

(BTW, there is a video on You Tube in which they both admit this).

And this is the main reason we are backing Ukraine to this extent.  We thought we were going to weaken Russia.  

It has not turned out that way.  In fact, the Russian military is much improved now because of this.

The other consequences were BRICS and the R and B project.

Does anyone really think Kennedy would not have foreseen these consequences?  As anyone can see from his discussions of Cuba during the Missile Crisis and Vietnam in 1961, he was always about four questions ahead of the curve.  Trying to probe as to what the worst thing was that could happen.

The worst has already happened in Ukraine.  Kennedy would have never let it gone that far.

Edited June 11, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

Getting back to Jeff Sachs:

 

In the context of the Ukraine War, Biden has behaved almost the opposite of JFK. He has personally and repeatedly denigrated Russian President Vladimir Putin. His administration has defined the US war aim as the weakening of Russia. Biden has avoided all communications with Putin. They have apparently not spoken once since February 2022, and Biden rebuffed a bilateral meeting with Putin at last year’s G20 Summit in Bali, Indonesia.

Edited June 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[James DiEugenio]

More of Sachs on Kennedy:

Biden has refused to even acknowledge, much less to address, Russia’s deep security concerns. Putin repeatedly expressed Russia’s ardent opposition to NATO enlargement to Ukraine, a country with a 2,000-kilometer border with Russia. The US would never tolerate a Mexican-Russian or Mexican-Chinese military alliance in view of the 2000-mile Mexico-US border. It is time for Biden to negotiate with Russia on NATO enlargement, as part of broader negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

[James DiEugenio]

I repeat:  who would have ever thought that Kennedy would have used NATO to bomb Africa?

That is almost too absurd to contemplate.

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Sandy Larsen]

What you guys are discussing has nothing to do with the Kennedy assassination. I have to move this thread to a proper forum in order to be fair to others who also have had their threads moved.

Would you like  me to append it to the first, similar thread? Or move it as a separate thread? Or move it to the water cooler that doesn't get much use?

 

[Benjamin Cole]

I happen to disagree with James D in Ukraine, at least in the present day.

But I like to see other points of view, without partisan invective, and I respect JD's point of view. 

I suspect the US intel-state created a bear-trap in Ukraine for Putin, and he stepped in. Biden was either unwitting or complicit. But here we are now, with Russian troops flattening entire cities in Ukraine. I cannot sympathize with Putin, who obviously wanted to send troops all the way to Kyiv. 

JD is certainly right about how kleptocrat-capitalist Russia is still the heavy, while communist China/CCP gets a pass.

In my opinion XI makes Putin look like Peter Pan. But the multi-nationals are hip-deep into China, so communism is no longer bad.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[James DiEugenio]

Sandy,

Its that way for the reasons I stated above.  There can be no rational dialogue about Ukraine here or almost anywhere.

If you want to move it, append it to the first one.

[W. Niederhut]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

It does belong here, but William is determined to turn this into a Robert Conquest type of, we cannot have peace with the communist USSR, even though there is no USSR and Russia is not a communist nation anymore.

 

Jim,

     That is a misrepresentation of my points (above) about the post-WWII USSR and Putin's 21st century Russian Federation.

    1)  Regarding the USSR, my point is that, IMO, Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick tended to de-emphasize the significance of Stalin's genocidal history, and his post-war agenda in Eastern Europe-- largely blaming Truman, Byrnes, and the Dulles brothers for the Iron Curtain and the establishment of Stalin's Marxist-Leninist Soviet Bloc.

     Truman, Byrnes, and the Bomb certainly launched the Cold War, and undermined our war-time alliance with Stalin, but a rift with the USSR in Europe was inevitable, IMO.

     Even Tito and Milovan Djilas realized that much, if you study their historical rift with Stalin in Yugoslavia.  The U.S. had nothing to do with it.

     (See M. Djilas. Conversations With Stalin.)

    Stone & Kuznick elaborated on the thesis that Uncle Joe Stalin mainly wanted a defensive barrier against another German invasion after WWII.

     In the process, they never mentioned the August 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to partition Poland.  Nor did they discuss the dark side of post-war Soviet oppression of the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary-- including Stalin's mass incarcerations of ethnic non-Russians in his Gulag Archipelago.

     By 1950, even FDR's terrific former VP, Henry Wallace, had become disillusioned with Stalin's totalitarian police state and its oppression of Eastern Europe.

     Of course, JFK was right in pursuing detente, nuclear non-proliferation, and a de-escalation of the Cold War-- for which he was murdered.

     Without the Kennedy brothers, our U.S. Cold War hawks would have nuked the planet to defeat communism.

   2)  As for Putin, my point is that those in the West who are blaming NATO for Putin's invasion of Ukraine are not looking very carefully at the history of Putin's transformation of the Russian Federation's nascent Yeltsin-era democracy into a totalitarian police state.

        Putin has had his own geopolitical agenda for the past quarter century.   It's Aleksander Dugin's vision of Russia's geopolitical future.

        It isn't communist, but it is totalitarian.   As I began telling people 16 years ago, after the KGB (FSB) seized the ROCOR, Putin appeared to be creating a kind of fascist, ethnic Russian, totalitarian police state.  He has even had his own Russian version of the Hitler Jugend, and jackboots who beat up homosexuals, etc.  That concept was based on my own observations and conversations with people in Russia and in the Russian Orthodox community, including former KGB Lt. Col., Konstantin Preobrazhensky.

Edited June 12, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[Jeff Carter]

Kennedy's Peace Speech is absolutely relevant to the assassination and James Douglass' five-hundred page book is the proof of that.

[Ron Bulman]

As this thread is going bye bye . . .  I'm frustrated.  I should probably keep my mouth shut instead of sticking my foot in it.

The discussion of how the development of the cold war played a role in JFK's assassination is important, and informative to me at least.  The discussion of how his assassination affected the cold war in terms of LBJ, Vietnam, Nixon, neocon's, all the way to today is important and relevant.

But it seems that can't be discussed in terms of current or recent times without it becoming argumentative.  Even among those who agree LHO was not a lone nut.

Do we need a thread that stops at say idk, 1996?  The cold war was over then, right? (JK!)

Or could this be discussed without arguing over Biden, Putin, Ukraine.  J-6 and current indictments might well be discussed in a political thread as well to avoid acrimony.  Off the soap box, not kicking the can, jmo.  Ron

Edited June 12, 2023 by Ron Bulman

[James DiEugenio]

Jeff Sachs' column I think is right on.

Kennedy would have never allowed the situation to get to this point.

I mean how has this helped Ukraine?

Ron's broader point, namely how Kennedy shifted the foreign policy paradigm, is I think correct.  And I have done a lot of work on this issue.  Like for the last 9-10 years, I have been excavating Kennedy's foreign policy.  Because today I truly think that the cover up about that subject has been more assiduously concealed than have  been the circumstances about his murder.  And I am really glad Oliver got some of this into his film, especially the longer version. Because that was the first time that a mass audience got to see some of this material.  Like Sutherland said in the film: the world changed on that day.  And we are still living with the circumstances.

BTW I am looking forward to the upcoming Libby Handros film.  I think its called Four who Dared.  Its about JFK, Malcolm, King and RFK.

One should add, the fact that they got away with JFK, I think, encouraged them to commit the others.

Edited June 12, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

Jeff Morley, top JFKA researcher, evidently believes JFK Peace Speech is worth noting. 

 

The Latest From JFK Facts--Jeff Morley:

---

The Making of JFK's Visionary 'Peace Speech'

The president adopted the language of a leading antinuclear and peace activist

JEFFERSON MORLEY JUN 10

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Sixty years ago today, on June 10, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered the “Peace Speech,” his historic American University commencement address. Coming just eight months after the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy’s address is widely regarded as one of the most visionary American presidential speeches of the 20th century. 

“What kind of peace do we seek?” he asked. “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war but the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living… that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.” War, he insisted, makes no sense “in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost 10 times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War” when “All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.” 

The speech, notes Peter Kuznick, AU Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, was written by trusted Kennedy speechwriter Theodore Sorenson with input from a small group of close advisors. It included language proposed in a 16-page June 1 draft submitted by Norman Cousins, a Saturday Review editor and staunch antinuclear and peace activist.

Read Kuznick’s article here (h/t Katrina Vanden Heuvel)