JOHN F. KENNEDY
Kyara Revels
FACTS
- Kennedy tripled the amount of American economic and military aid to the South Vietnamese and increased the number of US military in Indochina
- He refused to withdraw the troops from from the conflict in Vietnam
- He supported a military coup that overthrew and murdered South Vietnam's president Ngo Dinh Diem
- He sent 400 American Green Beret 'Special Advisors' to South Vietnam to train their soldiers to fight guerrillas
- Kennedy sent a letter to Diem and pledged that "the US is determined to help Vietnam preserve its independence..."
INVOLVEMENT IN VIETNAM WAR
Kennedy was a firm believer in containing communism. In 1961, Kennedy agreed that America should finance and increase in the South Vietnamese army. Kennedy resisted the the pressure of sending US combat troops, but he never called for a complete withdrawal. He hoped that this increase South Vietnam's fighting performance.
Kennedy followed Secretary of State Dean Rusk's advice and promoted a conspiracy to overthrow Diem in late 1963. John Galbraith said they needed to remove Rusk as Secretary of Defense and replace him with Robert McNamara. He considered him the only strong enough person to stand up to Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.
CONNECTIONS
- Robert McNamara - he became Kennedy's Secretary of Defense
- Clark Clifford - was the Chairman of Kennedy's Board of Intelligence
- Containment - Kennedy voiced support for containment of communism and the reversal of Communist progress in the Western Hemisphere
- Domino Theory - it governed most of the US foreign policy and held communist victory in one nation led to a chain reaction of communist takeovers in neighboring states