While the world was just beginning to heal after 6 years of war, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was embarking on a political career that would end
with assassination in 1963. After serving in the navy, Kennedy realized
his destiny lay in politics. In 1946 he was elected the House as a
representative of the 11th Massachusetts Congressional District. As a
representative, Kennedy had a mixed voting record- siding with President
Truman and the Democratic Party some of the time, and rebelling openly
at others. Though he backed most of Truman's Fair Deal policies, he
sharply criticized the president for failing to halt the spread of
communism in China. He served three terms before being elected to the U.S.
Senate in 1952. Four years later, Kennedy would barely miss becoming the
Democratic vice presidential candidate. After suffering that setback,
Kennedy licked his wounds and immediately began to campaign for the
party's 1960 presidential nomination, which he won convincingly.
As a senator, Kennedy did not amass an impressive legislative record.
However, some of the speeches he gave offer important insights to his
policy on Vietnam during his short-lived presidency. On June 30, 1953,
Kennedy spoke before the Senate on the Mutual Security Act.
Questioning the wisdom of U.S. intervention, Kennedy also said the real
battlefield lay in the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese, a sentiment he would
echo a decade later. "Yet regardless of our united effort, it is a
truism that the war can never be successful unless numbers of the people
of Viet-nam are won over, (New Generation). Nearly a year later, he would criticize the
French more harshly, accusing them of refusing to grant true
independence to the Vietnamese. He also asked Secretary Dulles to "recognize the
futility of channeling American men and machines into that hopeless
internecine struggle."ii It is important to note however that after the
Geneva Agreements in 1954, Kennedy was supportive of Eisenhower's
entrance into South Vietnam and Ngo Ninh Diem. Ever the cold warrior, his
reservations about France's involvement in Vietnam did not yet extend to
America's efforts to combat the rising tide of communism.
Despite this, given his statements regarding Vietnam in the fifties,
it is little wonder that 37 years after his presidency there remains
speculation about whether he would have allowed the conflict to escalate
if he had lived.
Photo Courtesy of New Generation
SENATOR KENNEDY'S SPEECH ON THE CONDITIONS
ON AIDING THE WAR IN INDOCHINA, JUNE 30, 1953
"THE TRUTH ABOUT INDOCHINA," APRIL 6, 1954
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