Visitors to the Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum here, on the salt water across which his ancestors came as immigrants and on which he sailed his yacht, watch Kennedy press conferences, such as that of Sept. 12, 1963, when, responding to a question about Vietnam, he said his policy was to “win the war there”: “ That is why some 25,000 Americans have traveled 10,000 miles to participate in that struggle.” He added: “But we are not there to see a war lost.” His answer was consistent with a 1956 speech calling Vietnam “ the keystone to the arch, the finger in the dike,” adding: “This is our offspring — we cannot abandon it.”
A few years later, with the war going badly, several Kennedy aides claimed that he had been planning to liquidate the intervention. But five months after the assassination, Robert Kennedy told an oral-history interviewer that his brother “ had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.”
Interviewer: “There was never any consideration given to pulling out?”
RFK: “No.”
Interviewer: “.?.?. the president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there ?.?.?.”
RFK: “Yes.”
Interviewer: “.?.?. And couldn’t lose it.”
RFK: “Yes.” |
