[Peace-discuss] The Kennedys' fake liberalism, then and now

[C. G. Estabrook]

I'm astonished that anyone can look at the Kennedys with the advantage of distance and see them as anything other than what they were -- arriviste apparatchiks of an oppressive American empire.  They made great efforts to hide what they were of course, but they're clear in hindsight.

The vicious JFK administration "got this country  moving again" by substantially increasing the crimes of the Eisenhower admin -- which had an impressive list of its own, including Iran and Guatemala.

JFK began with a massive tax cut for the rich and then started a war -- far more murderous than Iraq -- based on fear and lies.  His admin launched subversive military operations around the world ("Green Berets"), installed death squads in Latin America, and was willing to blow up the world in order to stop the USSR from doing in Cuba, defensively, what the US was doing offensively around the world.  Luckily Khrushchev's good sense and the bravery of a Russian naval commander saved the world from Kennedy's madness.  (Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov: see <www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB75/>.) 

Those crimes are being celebrated again, and Mike Taibbi points out one contemporary parallel:

    http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/12502

<excerpt>

    There's no denying the clear difference in the
    two campaign styles. In Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton, we've
    basically got Kennedy-Nixon redux, and I mean that in the most negative
    possible sense for both of them -- a pair of superficial, posturing
    conservatives selling highly similar political packages using different
    emotional strategies. Obama is selling free trade and employer-based
    health care and an unclear Iraqi exit strategy using looks, charisma
    and optimism, while Hillary is selling much the same using hard, cold
    reality, "prose not poetry," managerial competence over "vision."

<end excerpt>

But it's much worse than that.  --CGE