Why Like Ike

2,578 Views | 23 Replies | Last: 6 yr ago by BigJim49 AustinNowDallas
Aggies Revenge
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AG
Putting a plug in for my place of business.

A local cable channel has been running a series with the Eisenhower Presidential Library on Ike. It has been going for about 2 years now, I figured we have enough episodes in the can to share with everyone. Since it is a local cable channel, it is a bit amateurish in production but there are some good tidbits and artifacts that are presented in the 20 plus episodes.

huisachel
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He and Reagan and Bush l are the only sane grown men to hold the office during my memory. The rest were either nuts or kids or both
dcAg
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Eisenhower heavily influenced Kennedy to go to Vietnam.
Mort Rainey
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dcAg said:

Eisenhower heavily influenced Kennedy to go to Vietnam.
And Truman influenced Ike...

Also man up and blame Kennedy for his own mistakes. There are some serious differences between Ike's foreign policy and Kennedy's when it comes to Vietnam. One of them is a lot more responsible for the mess it became. And it isn't Ike
Aggies Revenge
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AG
dcAg said:

Eisenhower heavily influenced Kennedy to go to Vietnam.
Dig a little deeper. Ike was against full involvement in Vietnam and believed it would take more resources than used in the ETO to win any war in that nation.

aalan94
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AG
Stopped by the Eisenhower birthplace recently on a trip to Tulsa and spent some time explaining to my wife why he was so good. A good opportunity to reflect on leadership skills in general and how they are separate from technical mastery of your job. Also been reading Clausewitz and Sun Tzu on the topic a lot recently.
RGV AG
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AG
That is correct. It is very doubtful that Eisenhower gets so deep into Vietnam. He had ample opportunity to escalate US involvement much more than the little bit he did.
huisachel
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This is typical whitewashing of Kennedy's reckless foreign policy adventurism. Ike was pushed to replace the French when they got kicked out and decided it was not a place where we could fight wars successfully at an acceptable price. So he rebuffed Dulles and Cardinal Spellman, who was hip deep in the efforts to set up a safe place for the many Roman Catholics in the country. Ike said we would help them but it was their country and their war.

Kennedy wanted to look tough, as usual. Maybe he didn't get laid that day.
ja86
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Wasn't Ike being pushed to intervene to help the French at dein bein phu?
RGV AG
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AG
Don Huisache: (As you have been around a while and have lots of good info, figured we need to give you the Don title, but you can't go crazy tsip on us or you will lose it).

From the small amount of reading I have done on the Kennedy presidency, which is not much compared to the resident history scholars of the board, there are many indications that not even Kennedy was going to go big or all in on Vietnam. If I am not mistaken his secretary gave several interviews, and if she was to be believed, he was leery and already weary of the pitfalls of Vietnam.

I think the Vietnam mess, and a huge rotting of America, falls straight on to the coward lbj shoulders.

And what you state about Eisenhower is basically what I have always read and understood about his position on that deal. While cordial to De Gaulle, Eisenhower was leery of De Gaulle's aims and his mechanics. One of the few mistakes Truman made was to allow France back into the Colony business and that deal festered for years and facilitated a bunch of French dead, I think like two times the amount or so than American dead.

Just an overall misunderstood mess. I can't remember if it was Eisenhower or Truman that had recommendations from diplomats and former OSS deputies to make favor with and fund Ho Chin Min, I think it was Eisenhower. But due to the commie feeling of the time he didn't go that direction.
huisachel
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Kennedy was leery of Viet Nam? Yep, and so was LBJ when he was sending in the additional requested troops. He didn't want to lose a country to the communists and his generals were telling him he could win if they just had some more boots on the ground.

Kennedy's alleged leeriness is, in my opinion, just more whitewashing by his acolytes.

If he was so leery, why did he green light the Viet Namese military coup that overthrew Diem just a few weeks before Kennedy got shot? Diem was setting up back channel talks with the North in an attempt to get a political settlement. Why would JFK be opposed to that if he thought the war was a loser? Seems like he would find it a good way to put the whole thing off on somebody else. As it turned out, the South Viet Namese military overthrew Diem and killed him and his brother. How is that for irony?

LBJ was a disaster but blaming him for Viet Nam and letting Kennedy off the hook is errant, As he said in his inauguration speech, he was willing to pay any price and bear any burden to fight tyranny. Pizz on him and his whole damned family.
RGV AG
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AG
Quote:

LBJ was a disaster but blaming him for Viet Nam and letting Kennedy off the hook is errant, As he said in his inauguration speech, he was willing to pay any price and bear any burden to fight tyranny. Pizz on him and his whole damned family.
Your talking about lbj's family right? I agree wholeheartedly.

If Johnson was leery about Vietnam he sure got over it quick. The biggest think Johnson was leery about was public perception and staying in office. In my opinion he wanted to come across as a tough guy president and set up just what he needed with the Gulf of Tonkin deal to go all in. It was only after Johnson had gone all in on stopping the little yellow commie pissants that the military opinion truly began to have credence in the Vietnam imbroglio.

I wish I had more in depth knowledge of Kennedy's actions regarding the coup and the Diem's, what I do know is that the many sources, CIA and others, felt that there was no way to save Vietnam as long as the Diem's and their corrupt and divisive policies ruled the country. I mean give Kennedy his due, he stood by while his fellow papists got killed. It is my belief that Kennedy saw no solution or improvement in Vietnam with the Diem's at the helm. I think, and again this is my opinion based on limited knowledge, that he felt that better off to have a bloody coup with popular support in hopes of galvanizing a possible nation.

Back then US Presidents had to rely quite a bit on council and not always was this council the most accurate or best. Just look at Eisenhower being influenced, as third party, by the British via sympathetic Anglo supporters in the US Diplomatic and Intelligence services leading up to the Iranian coup. That coup can be really be said to be the cornerstone of the radical Islamic movements of today. Unintended consequences.

Based on everything that I have read and studied, admittedly limited, I do not believe JFK would have involved the US like Johnson did. Just my opinion.
huisachel
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I was referring to Kennedy's family;so far as I know, LBJ's family was ok.

LBJ got his advice from Kennedy's appointees-----Rush and McNamara were part of the brilliant brain trust the Ivy League rich kid put together.

Are we to believe that Kennedy would have ignored their advice and bugged out, losing a country to the commies with an election coming up?

The Kennedys were political opportunists at all times.
RGV AG
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AG
All we can go by is speculation and hearsay, and possibly a little of indications, and those were that Kennedy was not going to go all in on Vietnam like lbj did. I think Kennedy understood and respected war a lot more than lbj, lbj was a make believe soldier who glossed his career in WWII, at least the Kennedy boys got in harms way.

None of us can know what strings got pulled in regard to the advice that lbj was given. From what little I know and or have read I just can't see JFK getting as deep into Vietnam as he did, and maybe if he did he would have settled the matter, I think the commies at the time had more respect, or should I say trepidation, about Kennedy.
Upperdeck Critic
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Kennedy learned from his mistakes usually. He regretted Diem's assassination since there was not a credible leader to replace him. He also did not trust the Generals or CIA as LBJ did. The Cold War Republicans would not have let any Democratic president get away with losing a country to communism or capitulate to the old USSR.

Eisenhower laid the foundation for the United States policy in Indochina in a 1954 speech citing the domino theory. That speech was to shape United States policy for years to come especially on Southeast Asia.
huisachel
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Please. Kennedy didn't have time to learn from his "mistake" re Diem because he was killed himself less than three weeks later. And if he didn't trust his military, whose advice would he take? His pimp brother's?

And blaming Republicans for not wanting to lose a country to the Communists? None of us, regardless of party, did, which is why the war had such support early on. The opposition did not get cranked up until the body bags began piling up and progress hard to see.
Aggies Revenge
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AG
Kennedy could not afford to lose an inch of ground to the communist after building an entire campaign on the bomber/missile gap and how "soft" Ike had been on communism.
BrazosBendHorn
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Be sure to watch tonight's episode of The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick ...
Quote:

President Kennedy and his advisors wrestle with how deeply to get involved in South Vietnam. As the increasingly autocratic Diem regime faces a growing communist insurgency and widespread Buddhist protests, a grave political crisis unfolds.
My $0.02: JFK probably would have ended up in the same quagmire as LBJ; caught in between the fear of being tagged with "Who Lost Vietnam/SE Asia?" if N. Vietnam took over S. Vietnam, and the fear of having a major land war in Asia that would be as unpopular (or more) than the Korean War.
BrazosBendHorn
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As for the original question:

Good Ike: got us out of the Korean War
Not So Good Ike: It was a truce, not an armistice, so technically the war is still on (it's just on hold). NK has never given up on its goal of reunifying the country under a communist government. The can has been kicked down the road, and we could quite possibly be running out of road.
BrazosBendHorn
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Aggies Revenge said:

Kennedy could not afford to lose an inch of ground to the communist after building an entire campaign on the bomber/missile gap and how "soft" Ike had been on communism.
True that. (btw, might I throw in the the so-called missile gap was non-existent; poor ol' Ike couldn't respond with the truth without compromising our intelligence)

LINK
Presley OBannons Sword
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BrazosBendHorn said:

Aggies Revenge said:

Kennedy could not afford to lose an inch of ground to the communist after building an entire campaign on the bomber/missile gap and how "soft" Ike had been on communism.
True that. (btw, might I throw in the the so-called missile gap was non-existent; poor ol' Ike couldn't respond with the truth without compromising our intelligence)

LINK

It was existent, just in our favor
RGV AG
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AG
JFK met MacArthur twice, and it s well documented that MacArthur, and views on opinion of him are obviously varied, warned and advised him to not get caught up in a big fight in Laos-Vietnam, as it would be easy for the Chinese to hammer away at the US. Equally he warned of the perils of fighting a Korea style war, which the US did only much worse, in Vietnam.

I could be, and probably am, wrong but I just do not see JFK, setting all his and his family's faults aside, going down the largely ego driven trip that lbj did in terms of Vietnam. Equally I do not think that Eisenhower would have done it either. One way or another these veteran politicians tried whatever way possible to end the shooting, if they could not do it in overwhelming victorious fashion they seem to have sought the most expedient, practical, and face saving way possible to end bloodshed where the fruits of victory were largely political.

Obviously lbj was no soldier and a veteran only from the standpoint of wearing a uniform. Looking at his presidency, and career in general, the always present ego and empty toughness is apparent and those people are the most dangerous.

Ironically MacArthur's relayed principle to JFK was that a host of wrong officers had been promoted and were in high places in the pentagon and for him to be very careful.
huisachel
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...........and when Kennedy found out Diem was trying to cut a deal with the North through back channels he greenlighted the coup that resulted in Diem and his brother getting killed. Kennedy was the US president who first sent US troops there for combat and he overthrew the government we had installed when it tried to cut a deal. It does not seem to me he was bent on a negotiated settlement and he had already set the precedent of sending US combat troops. So why would he have done anything different than Johnson did when the generals said they could win if they only had this much more of this and that?

Kennedy, like Lincoln, was lucky with the timing of his death three weeks after Diem was murdered. We can all sit around misty eyed about Camelot and imagine how dashing Jack would have saved us all. Just like Lincoln would have found some way to please the south and make the freedmen happy-----though I don't think many of them were keen on going to Liberia or other garden spots Abraham had in mind for them.

LbJ made a lot of ad hoc decisions based on bad information and wishful thinking and he had doubts about all of them at the time. But sometimes decisions have to be made NOW and there are not any good options or any which guarantee success and so arrogant jerks like Kennedy and weasels like LBJ make decisions and lots of people die.

Happens all the time. My best friend and four other classmates got killed between January 1968 and June of that year. Hated Johnson for years and still spit out the window when I drive past his ranch or library. But blaming him for bad results is dishonest
BigJim49 AustinNowDallas
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AG
ja86 said:

Wasn't Ike being pushed to intervene to help the French at dein bein phu?
But didn't !
BigJim49AustinnowDallas
BigJim49 AustinNowDallas
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AG
Upperdeck Critic said:

Kennedy learned from his mistakes usually. He regretted Diem's assassination since there was not a credible leader to replace him. He also did not trust the Generals or CIA as LBJ did. The Cold War Republicans would not have let any Democratic president get away with losing a country to communism or capitulate to the old USSR.

Eisenhower laid the foundation for the United States policy in Indochina in a 1954 speech citing the domino theory. That speech was to shape United States policy for years to come especially on Southeast Asia.
Viet Nam [url=https://texags.com/forums/49][/url]indirectly saved Indochina and 100 million prople !
BigJim49AustinnowDallas
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