Re-reading JFK's 1961 inaugural address.

[baldguy]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_01/0618.JFK.j20.61.htm

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Re-reading this, it strikes me: isn’t it precisely the reason we’ve got Al-Quiada, Saddam Hussain, Slobadon Milosovic, the outrageous excesses of Nixon and Reagan, the present regime in Iran, the present American regimes’ international arrogance, and most of the other problems the United States faces internationally – is because we HAVE NOT followed this simple admonition from a true statesman?

We have crushed popular democratic uprisings, propped up failing, murderous totalitarian dictatorships and undermined and assasinated legally elected officials – all in the name of “upholding American Interests abroad”. Of course, it wasn’t really in the interests of Americans, merely in the interests of the corporations which funded domestic political campaigns of those office holders who didn’t have the cahones to actually think that non-Americans deserve the same rights which Americans claim for themselves.

Isn’t it about time that America stood up for American Ideals? The self-evident truths spelled out in the Declaration of independence are as true today as they were 228 years ago. And they are as applicable to the 18th century English colonies in North America as they are to Iraq and Afghanistan today.

Of course, the present misAdministration seems to think otherwise.

[rudeboy666]

1. JFK was an anti-communist

That is why a lot of the original neo-cons liked him.

I am not so sure that JFK would have totally oppose many of the excesses in the fight against communism.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. of course he was, but read the American University speech.

June 10, 1963. If there's a greater speech by a modern day President, I haven't heard it.

Here's a snip regarding the Soviet Union. It sound like Kennedy has something to say here to Bush:

Second: Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims -- such as the allegation that "American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of wars . . . that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union . . . the political aims of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries . . . to achieve world domination . . . by means of aggressive wars."

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth." Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements -- to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning -- a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements -- in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture and in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique, among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least twenty million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including nearly two-thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland -- a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again -- no matter how -- our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first twenty-four hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this nation's closest allies -- our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting to weapons massive sums of money that could be better devoted to combating ignorance, poverty and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.

In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours -- and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So, let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

http://www.ratical.org/co-globalize/JFK061063.html

Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.--
"I think that was the kind of speech which only the President could make. It shows the importance of having a President who will not be passive in the sense of accepting only proposals submitted to him from the machinery of government, but who will have the courage to have his own conception of what ought to be done and when it ought to be done, and to impose that conception on the government."

Jerome Wiesner--
"The speech at American University made a profound impression on the Soviet Union. Intelligence reports indicated that Chairman Khrushchev had said it was the best speech ever made by an American President. We were hopeful that this would finally mean real progress on a nuclear test ban treaty. Ever since the development of nuclear bombs, we had been attempting to bring them under control."

Dean Rusk
"It was a remarkable speech, and it had a remarkable effect on world opinion. The President wanted to indicate that we looked toward the future with hope. He wanted us to believe in the possibility of peace. "The speech was remarkable, I feel, because it had so much of President Kennedy personally in it. Because it reflected his magnanimity, his urbanity and the sense of the civilized man that marked so much of his mood and his action, and his style. And because it reflected his total commitment to peace."

[Nederland]

2. Problem is...

...the neo-cons will tell you that assuring "the survival and the success of liberty" is precisely what we are doing in Iraq.

[Feanorcurufinwe]

4. "Now the trumpet summons us again - "

" not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation' - a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.

Can we forge against these enemies a grand and global alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort? "