I've been ploughing through Douglas Horne's recent series of articles over at The Future of Freedom Foundation. Horne writes quite well, although he is not a man to use 147 words where 3,179 would do!
http://fff.org/author/douglas-horne/Anyway, these articles discuss JFK's relationship with the top brass at the Pentagon during a number of potentially dangerous international incidents. For example, in Laos:
Laos was a small, landlocked country in the middle of the Southeast Asian peninsula, in between Thailand and South Vietnam. As JFK came into office, there was a Communist-led insurgency there by the Pathet Lao against the country’s king and his U.S.-trained and equipped forces. From the beginning, it had been aided by military advisors from North Vietnam and, commencing in December of 1960, by a substantial Soviet logistical airlift. Strategically, Laos was important because North Vietnam could supply its growing insurgency inside South Vietnam via a supply conduit (the Ho Chi Minh trail), if the Pathet Lao came to control significant parts of southern Laos. Furthermore, the Cold War’s “bible,” NSC 68 [approved by President Truman at the end of September 1950, which posited that the Soviet Union had in mind a goal of world domination] — combined with the prevailing “domino theory” of the time, which postulated that if one country in a region fell to Communism, then all other nearby countries might fall too, “like a row of dominos” — made the potential “loss” of Laos to the Communist side in the Cold War seem apocalyptic to most within the American national security establishment.Now, I have never really thought much about Laos but now I suppose I am going to have to. This particular article goes into some detail about how the Joint Chiefs wanted a large-scale intervention in Laos and how Kennedy resisted this. I won't expand further here as interested members can read the information for themselves. What I was interested in is that at the end of a prolonged period of internal debate and discussion, the President finally got his way and the proposed large-scale deployment in Laos never happened.
Then ...
On May 27, 1961, President Kennedy motored over from the White House, across the Potomac River to the Pentagon, and informed the Joint Chiefs of Staff personally of his dissatisfaction about their limited points of view and poorly thought-out advice given in the councils of state. They had proven to be politically tone-deaf prior to and during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and throughout the Laos deliberations as well, and had worn very large blinders that seemed to prevent them from considering the international or global strategic and military implications of the advice they had rather narrowly advocated in each of these crises.
JFK followed up this verbal chastisement with National Security Action Memo (NSAM) 55 on June 28, 1961, addressed from the President to chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Lyman Lemnitzer), in which he said, in part:
I look to the Chiefs to contribute dynamic and imaginative leadership in contributing to the success of the military and paramilitary aspects of Cold War programs ... I expect the Joint Chiefs of Staff to present the military viewpoint in governmental councils in such a way as to assure that the military factors are clearly understood before decisions are reached … while I look to the Chiefs to present the military factor without reserve or hesitation, I regard them to be more than military men and expect their help in fitting military requirements into the overall context of any situation, recognizing that the most difficult problem in government is to combine all assets in a unified, effective pattern.
To emphasize the seriousness of his message, President Kennedy signed NSAM 55 himself. Many NSAMs were signed for him by his National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy; but not this one. Any National Security Action Memorandum signed personally by a President carries special emphasis, and after President Kennedy’s uncomfortable meeting with the Chiefs on May 27, the importance of NSAM 55, issued one month later, was surely unmistakable. It was the direct result of the post mortem of the Bay of Pigs conducted for him by General Maxwell Taylor, and of JFK’s personal unhappiness over the horrendous advice he had received during the crisis over what to do about Laos.One wonders how all those old grey WWII heroes sitting over in the Pentagon took this rather public chastisement from the young President ...
Another brick in the wall?
