Speakeasy: The Other Eye of the One-Eyed Jack of Camelot

The Other Eye of the One-Eyed Jack of Camelot

Heard somewhere that JFK started to pull troops out. The first plane landed on the day he was shot. LBJ turned that plane around. Just what I've heard, sorry, no link. Tom {marinetbryant}

For the record, JFK never intended nor ever started to pull troops out of Vietnam. To the contrary, President Kennedy and SECDEF McNamara developed secret, stealth Vietnam war escalation plans directly after taking office in 1961.

The report that JFK started to pull troops out is just one of those false factoids that are part of the Myth of Kennedy’s Camelot. This myth is perpetrated by the folks who readily embrace and try to keep alive the misty Once Upon a Time Kennedy fairytale mystique of magnetically handsome King John and elegantly beautiful Queen Jacqueline reigning for that one brief, shining moment that was known as Camelot.

I have seen and experienced the other eye of the One-Eyed Jack of Camelot, as related to both Cuba and Vietnam.

ON JFK & CUBA: On April 17, 1961, I was 90 miles from Cuba and saw President Kennedy renege on his promise to provide close air support to the Cuban counter-revolutionaries on the Bay of Pigs [Bahia de Cochinos] Invasion. At the eleventh hour, King Jack turned his royal back and placed a blind eye on the Bay of Pigs counter-revolutionary exiles Invasion Force. Without the promised close air support, the Cuban counter-revolutionaries did not stand a chance of success.

Because of Kennedy’s inaction 45 years ago, Castro is still alive and in power in Cuba with all those surviving Cuban counter-revolutionaries and their families still living in South Florida rather than back in their ancestral homes in Cuba.

ON JFK’S VIETNAM LEGACY: The buck stopped with Truman in post-WWII 1940’s, and on into the transitional 1950’s. Truman’s 1953 Korean Police Action ruffled the U.S. citizenry so much, they decided they Liked IKE more, and elected IKE President.

In 1959, the good General Ike got us into advising and taking over from the Colonial French to assist in fighting the failed French Indo-China (Vietnam) Civil War. It was ole Likeable IKE who stuck our collective toe into that Communist Domino Swamp created by the Colonial French. Ike sent in a handful of U.S. advisors (mostly CIA) to advise and train the South Vietnamese Army. Ike had no desire to escalate U.S. involvement beyond advising, and assisting the democracy inclined South Vietnamese and French interests.

Just months after taking his oath of office in January 1961, JFK ordered Army Special Forces troops into South Vietnam. At the end of 1961 a Navy Helicopter Carrier with USMC aircrews and ground forces arrived in Saigon. In the spring of 1962, Kennedy ordered thousands more U.S. regular troops into Thailand and Laos.

In summer of 1963, the King of Camelot sent out a SECRET USCINC-To-ALL HANDS message trying to recruit me, and any of my adventurous shipmates, to fly helicopters in the Camelot Air Cavalry. He did this via the bureaucratic Inside-The-Beltway mechanism of an Inter-Service Transfer.

JFK’s stealth, in-house Inter-Service Transfer approach permitted him to fly-under-Congress’-radar during the pre-1964 Election Cycle. It kept him from having to go to Congress to request increases in military head-counts, extra funding and to get their permission to raise active duty troop strength ceilings. Jack’s stealthy in-house, Inter-Service Transfer approach meant no requests for increased recruiting and draft quotas during the 1964 Election Cycle. As a result, the Republicans did not have escalation of the war in Indo-China as an election issue.

This stealthy, in-house advanced Inter-Service Transfer recruitment effort resulted in the birth of U.S. Army 1st Cavalry Airmobile and other similar combat forces.

President Kennedy and SECDEF McNamara’s secret, stealth Vietnam War escalation plans were developed directly after Kennedy took office in 1961. These Kennedy-McNamara Vietnam War escalation plans were keyed to a phased escalation of U.S. involvement in Vietnam. The initial phase included moderate escalation of U.S. involvement in the years prior to the 1964 Presidential Election. Then, after the Kennedy-Johnson Administration won its second term in the 1964, the Post 1964 Election Follow-On Vietnam War Escalation Plan phase would be fully implemented to significantly accelerate U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

With JFK’s assassination in November 1963, LBJ inherited JFK’s Vietnam War Escalation ''Albatross'' consisting of JFK’s Defense and Cabinet Team and the Kennedy-McNamara Post-1964 Election, Follow-On Vietnam War Escalation Plans. To his later regret, President Lyndon Johnson decided to accept, embrace and directly implement these Follow-On Vietnam War Escalation Plans crafted by Kennedy-McNamara.

This follow-on implementation was done under LBJ in 1964 when, on August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving President Johnson the power to resolve the Vietnam conflict by any means necessary.

LBJ continued juggling the Kennedy Vietnam War Escalation Hot Potato he inherited, continuing on plan as he raised troop levels to the hundreds of thousands level. LBJ embracing and implementing JFK’s Vietnam War Plan is what got us so deeply immersed in the military muck and mire of the swamp of Vietnam’s civil war.

In 1968, U.S. Combat Armed Force troop strength reached ~540,000 troops in the Vietnam combat theater, with 14,000+ Americans killed in combat and 150,000 wounded during that same year.

This was not the original Likeable IKE style swamp draining military advisors solution, but rather multiple hundreds of thousands of teenager and 20-Something Camelot alligator hunters delivering multiple mega-tonnage of ordnance to the NVA-VC bullet-by-bullet, mortar-by-mortar and bomb-by-bomb. Likeable Ike’s original swamp draining advisor approach was clearly supplanted by the JFK-McNamara Get-a-Bigger-Ball-Bat, full-scale war escalation plans that LBJ followed by chapter and verse.

The failed results from the Kennedy-McNamara Vietnam War Plan Legacy, that LBJ inherited and Johnson-McNamara implemented, caused the incumbent Johnson to sit out Election 1968. Johnson’s decision not to run set up Nixon’s election win over Vice President Humphrey. Nixon was not able to beat Kennedy in 1960, but the legacy of the King of Camelot’s own Vietnam War Plans led to Johnson bowing out and Nixon winning both the 1968 and 1972 Elections.

On January 23, 1973, three days after his second inauguration, Nixon went forward initialing-signing the Paris Peace Accords ending American combat in Vietnam. The U.S. military draft ended four days later with a cease-fire going into effect the day after that, on January 28. Five months later, on July 1, 1973, Nixon signed the legislation that gave birth to the non-egalitarian U.S. All-Volunteer Military (AVM) we use to fight our wars with today.

John Kennedy and his war plan legacy escalated our involvement in Vietnam from Eisenhower’s few CIA military and political advisors in 1960, to multiple hundreds of thousands of Regular Combat Armed Forces in the field seven years later.

The 15+ year military action was finally and formally brought to a dishonorable rather than an honorable end under President Ford, twelve years after Kennedy’s death. This event occurred on April 29, 1975, at the precise moment the wheels of U.S. Ambassador Martin’s helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The very next day Saigon fell to the Communist and became Ho Chi Minh City.

While I recognize that the flesh & blood Jack Kennedy only spent 34 months as USCINC, JFK’s spectre and his Team Camelot Departments of Defense and State under McNamara and Rusk carried forth the JFK Vietnam War Plans and Legacy into and through the Johnson Administration. LBJ’s Secretaries of Defense and State, McNamara and Rusk, were Kennedy’s “Camelot” Cabinet Faithful. They continued serving their King of Camelot in those Cabinet-level roles throughout the Johnson Administration until the Kennedy-Johnson-McNamara-Rusk Administration finally ended in 1968.

The macho, war plans of the Kennedy-Johnson-McNamara-Rusk Team caused us to wade derrière deep into the black-water communist domino swamp for the seven years of 1961-1968. The Nixon-Ford-Kissinger Cut & Run, Desert & Depart Defense Policy back-pedaled us out in a bit more then seven more years.

My personal Bushido Code causes me to become sickened each time I view the History Channel or other historic news footage showing the teaming, scurrying and terror-stricken South Vietnamese and Cambodian masses of civilian families Nixon, Congress and the majority Citizen Herd left flapping in the breeze during 1973-1975.

To me there is no national or personal honor in cutting, running and abandoning defenseless civilians and comrades-in-arms to NVA-VC alligators as we did in Vietnam. JP