Recollections

Powers and the Vietnam War

But for Gary Powers Kennedy would undoubtedly have lost the extremely close 1960 Presidential Election to Nixon.  Then JFK and his brother would not have been assassinated.  What about Martin Luther King Jnr?

In particular it's unlikely that the Vietnam War would have escalated.  After the Berlin Wall;  the Bay of Pigs; and the Cuban Missile Crisis; Kennedy was said to be determined to 'draw a line in the sand' - for freedom.  The Eisenhower/Nixon White House is reported to have been more interested in Laos.

After the disasters of 1961 Kennedy is reported as telling the New York Times: "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."  This choice had the added benefit helping out President Ngô Đình Diệm, the Vatican endorsed: 'Saviour of Vietnam', a fellow Roman Catholic who'd pleaded for US (and Australian) help to prevent the country falling to the Communists. 

Since the defeat of the French in Vietnam there had been US military advisers supporting the fragile government of South Vietnam that had been 'elected to power' by violently suppressing the opposition.  The governing Cần Lao Party thereafter claimed to be democratically elected but to be unable to hold further elections due to a state of martial law.  The leaders were a Roman Catholic elite in a country that was predominantly Buddhist.

Eventually even Kennedy would grow sick of the excesses of the poisonous Diệm Regime; temporally terminate diplomatic relations; and agree to a CIA supported coup in which two of the Diệm brothers were murdered.  See Vietnam on this website - scroll down and read more below the image of Notre Dame Cathedral Saigon. 

Nevertheless, by the time of Kennedy's own assassination there were over 15,000 US 'advisors' and around a hundred Australian 'advisors' and support people in Vietnam. His successor President Johnson (LBJ) would drop the pretence that these were non-combatants and  increase the number to 550,000; Australian personnel would rise to a peak of 7,672.  This commitment would only begin to decline after Nixon, eventually, won the 1968 Presidential election.

The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC
The names of 58,307 US fighting men and women who died in action and a further 1,626 missing in action
426 Australians also died in action and more later from the repercussions, including some I knew
Over two million Vietnamese: combatants (on both sides) and civilians also died
The communists won in the end but to what end?  See Vietnam on this website

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