Re: JFK Talking to Ambassador Lodge Regarding the Anti-Ngo Coup

On Sunday, March 21, 2021 at 1:01:52 PM UTC-4, Steve M. Galbraith wrote:
> On Sunday, March 21, 2021 at 7:33:27 AM UTC-4, x wrote: 
> > I hadn't heard this conversation before. One of the 
> > things about that's "new" is, JFK apparently acknowledged 
> > in August '63 and Nhu would be killed if a coup occurred. 
> > 
> > http://fullmeasure.news/news/shows/jfk-vietnam?fbclid=IwAR0ztmFtO2u0oOZBhsHdraqJCYBSrEVCg0JiUSTGBEySOqb4CGRKD7yEQjY
> Whether he knew they would be killed or not I'm very skeptical that he was 
> shocked by it. The fact that Lodge refused to intervene - was a passive 
> spectator - indicates to me that it apparently wasn't much of a concern. 
> 
> Maxwell Taylor, the then Chairman of JCS who would later be named 
> ambassador to South Vietnam by LBJ, said this about the coup: "There was 
> the memory of Diệm to haunt those of us who were aware of the 
> circumstances of his downfall. By our complicity, we Americans were 
> responsible for the plight in which the South Vietnamese found 
> themselves". 
> 
> As Colin Powell said about Iraq, "If you break it you own it." Once JFK 
> "broke" the government our involvement deepened considerably - morally, 
> politically, militarily. This situation what LBJ inherited. He gets blamed 
> for almost all of it while JFK gets a pass. History isn't fair but neither 
> is life.

I wonder who his message about being shocked was aimed at. Maybe he was 
saying it to soothe his own conscience, trying to convince himself he 
couldn't have seen that coming.