Skip to main content

Obama and Kennedy

Comparisons have been made between Sen. Barack Obama and President John Kennedy, and on some points the comparisons are well founded.

Both were and are young candidates running against war heroes. Both are barrier breakers, Kennedy the first Catholic president, Obama the presumptive first black president. Both wives of the candidates were and are intelligent, attractive and not camera shy. The hopes of young people appear to be vested in both. Obama and Kennedy are and were what has come to be known as “rock stars,” charismatic figures. Both were and are running on a program of change, though the "change" envisioned by Obama is somewhat different than the change envisioned by Kennedy. It seems odd to recall now that Kennedy had accused Eisenhower of being soft on Communism, part of a campaign salient in which the new and untried prospective president sought to assure a doubtful public that he was willing to "bear any burden" for the cause of liberty.

There are some important differeneces as well: Kennedy was a war hero; Obama is an anti-war hero.

But on one point a comparison is not justified: Obama has said that he would meet with the facilitator states of jihadist terrorists, Iran and Syria, “without preconditions.”

Someone went through the trouble of digging up declassified memoranda during the Kennedy administration that shows Kennedy was entertaining the possibility of “secret” negotiations with Fidel Castro, and Kennedy’s openness to the possibility of discussions is being held up as supportive of Obama’s intention to negotiate with terror facilitatators.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

First of all, the diplomatic situations in both cases are not the same. Kennedy had supported an ill conceived attack on Cuba, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, but there was at the time no "hot war" between the United States and Cuba.

Secondly, the possibility of direct talks with Cuba’s Castro was heavily preconditioned.

According to the information provided by those who wish to draw a parallel between Kennedy and Obama, the talk with Castro was conditional, not unconditional as Obama has proposed in the case of Iran.

Here is the important part of a George McBundy’s Nov 12 1965 memorandum:

“In particular, we would be interested in knowing whether there was any prospect of important modifications in those parts of Castro’s policy which are flatly unacceptable to us, namely the three points in Ambassador Stevenson’s recent speech of which the central elements are (1) submission to external Communist influence, and (2) a determined campaign of subversion directed at the rest of the Hemisphere. Reversals of these policies may or may not be sufficient to produce a change in the policy of the United States, but they are certainly necessary, and without any indication of readiness to move in these directions, it is hard for us to see what could be accomplished by a visit to Cuba.”

A reversal of these policies,” McBundy writes, “are certainly necessary, and without an indication of readiness to move in these directions, it is hard for us to see what could be accomplished by a visit to Cuba.”

The preconditions were never met. President Kennedy died at the hands of Lee Harvy Oswald, who had connections to Castro. The assassination and Castro’s obvious unwillingness “to move in these directions,” as was indicated by his move into the bosom of the Soviet Union, made any contact in the Johnson administration impossible.

Obama’s promised talks with Iran and Syria, both of which are supplying munitions and training used to kill American soldiers now fighting a hot war (not a cold war) in Iraq, is categorically different from the strategy adopted by the Kennedy administration in the case of Castro’s Cuba.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Powell, the JI, And Economic literacy

Powell, Pesci Substack The Journal Inquirer (JI), one of the last independent newspapers in Connecticut, is now a part of the Hearst Media chain. Hearst has been growing by leaps and bounds in the state during the last decade. At the same time, many newspapers in Connecticut have shrunk in size, the result, some people seem to think, of ad revenue smaller newspapers have lost to internet sites and a declining newspaper reading public. Surviving papers are now seeking to recover the lost revenue by erecting “pay walls.” Like most besieged businesses, newspapers also are attempting to recoup lost revenue through staff reductions, reductions in the size of the product – both candy bars and newspapers are much smaller than they had been in the past – and sell-offs to larger chains that operate according to the social Darwinian principles of monopolistic “red in tooth and claw” giant corporations. The first principle of the successful mega-firm is: Buy out your predator before he swallows

Down The Rabbit Hole, A Book Review

Down the Rabbit Hole How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime by Brent McCall & Michael Liebowitz Available at Amazon Price: $12.95/softcover, 337 pages   “ Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime ,” a penological eye-opener, is written by two Connecticut prisoners, Brent McCall and Michael Liebowitz. Their book is an analytical work, not merely a page-turner prison drama, and it provides serious answers to the question: Why is reoffending a more likely outcome than rehabilitation in the wake of a prison sentence? The multiple answers to this central question are not at all obvious. Before picking up the book, the reader would be well advised to shed his preconceptions and also slough off the highly misleading claims of prison officials concerning the efficacy of programs developed by dusty old experts who have never had an honest discussion with a real convict. Some of the experts are more convincing cons than the cons, p