and interestingly he noted Schumer's inadvertent admission that the intelligence agencies interfere in US politics.

Was not fond of Bay of Pigs disaster.

Eliminated right of field commanders to use nukes on their own authority.

Kennedy’s biggest worry about the military was not the personalities involved but rather the freedom of field commanders to launch nuclear weapons without explicit permission from the commander in chief. Ten days after becoming president, Kennedy learned from his national-security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, that “a subordinate commander faced with a substantial Russian military action could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative.” As Roswell L. Gilpatric, Kennedy’s deputy defense secretary, recalled, “We became increasingly horrified over how little positive control the president really had over the use of this great arsenal of nuclear weapons.” To counter the military’s willingness to use nuclear weapons against the Communists, Kennedy pushed the Pentagon to replace Eisenhower’s strategy of “massive retaliation” with what he called “flexible response”—a strategy of calibrated force that his White House military adviser, General Maxwell Taylor, had described in a 1959 book, The Uncertain Trumpet. But the brass resisted. The stalemate in the Korean War had frustrated military chiefs and left them inclined to use atomic bombs to ensure victory, as General Douglas MacArthur had proposed. They regarded Kennedy as reluctant to put the nation’s nuclear advantage to use and thus resisted ceding him exclusive control over decisions about a first strike.

The NATO commander, General Lauris Norstad, and two Air Force generals, Curtis LeMay and Thomas Power, stubbornly opposed White House directives that reduced their authority to decide when to go nuclear. The 54-year-old Norstad confirmed his reputation as fiercely independent when two high-profile Kennedy emissaries, thought to be Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, visited NATO’s strategic military command in Belgium. They asked whether Norstad’s primary obligation was to the United States or to its European allies. “My first instinct was to hit” one of the Cabinet members for “challenging my loyalty,” he recalled later. Instead, he tried to smile and said, “ ‘Gentlemen, I think that ends this meeting.’ Whereupon I walked out and slammed the door.” Norstad was so clearly reluctant to concede his commander in chief’s ultimate authority that Bundy urged Kennedy to remind the general that the president “is boss.”

Vetoed JCS plan to bomb Cuba with airstrikes over missile launchers during 1962 Missile Crisis, and feared Military style coup.

"Robert Kennedy looked exhausted. One could see from his eyes that he had not slept for days. He himself said that he had not been home for six days and nights. 'The President is in a grave situation,' Robert Kennedy said, 'and does not know how to get out of it. We are under very severe stress. In fact we are under pressure from our military to use force against Cuba. Probably at this very moment the President is sitting down to write a message to Chairman Khrushchev. We want to ask you, Mr. Dobrynin, to pass President Kennedy's message to Chairman Khrushchev through unofficial channels. President Kennedy implores Chairman Khrushchev to accept his offer and to take into consideration the peculiarities of the American system. Even though the President himself is very much against starting a war over Cuba, an irreversible chain of events could occur against his will. That is why the President is appealing directly to Chairman Khrushchev for his help in liquidating this conflict. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power. The American army could get out of control."'

[Khrushchev Remembers, intro., commentary, and notes by Edward Crankshaw, trans. and ed. by Strobe Talbott (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970; citation from paperback edition, New York: Bantam, 1971), pp. 551-52]

Dobrynin's Cable to the Soviet Foreign
Ministry, 27 October 1962:

"Because of the plane that was shot down, there is now strong pressure on the president to give an order to respond with fire if fired upon when American reconnaissance planes are flying over Cuba. The USA can't stop these flights, because this is the only way we can quickly get information about the state of construction of the missile bases in Cuba, which we believe pose a very serious threat to our national security. But if we start to fire in response—a chain reaction will quickly start that will be very hard to stop. The same thing in regard to the essence of the issue of the missile bases in Cuba. The USA government is determined to get rid of those bases—up to. in the extreme case, of bombing them, since, I repeat, they pose a great threat to the security of the USA. But in response to the bombing of these bases, in the course of which Soviet specialists might suffer, the Soviet government will undoubtedly respond with the same against us, somewhere in Europe. A real war will begin, in which millions of Americans and Russians will die. We want to avoid that any way we can, I'm sure that the government of the USSR has the same wish. However, taking time to find a way out [of the situation] is very risky (here R. Kennedy mentioned as if in passing that there are many unreasonable heads among the generals, and not only among the generals, who are itching for a fight'). The situation might get out of control, with irreversible consequences."

Questioned further involvement in Vietnam.

Kennedy’s second major 1961 decision on Vietnam policy was the rejection of proposals to send large numbers of American combat troops to help fight the Viet Cong. The president told his advisers that he did not want to create a situation in which American forces would have to fight a major land war in Asia. [...]

Also according to the Assassinations Report, CIA Director John McCone later stated that after a meeting with both the president and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, he believed that President Kennedy agreed with his recommendation to assemble all pertinent intelligence on the coup plot, despite the fact that the president had great reservations about Diem. McCone further said that during his talk with President Kennedy they did not discuss assassination specifically, only whether or not the United States should let the coup go ahead or try to stop it. McCone left the meeting believing that the president concurred with the CIA director’s hands-off recommendation.

In Saigon, [CIA chief in S. Vietnam] Conein met secretly with General Don, one of the coup plotters, telling him that the United States was opposed to any assassinations. The general responded, All right, you don’t like it, we won’t talk about it anymore.

On October 28, Don told Ambassador Lodge that he would tell him of the plans for the coup before it took place. Lodge called Washington, reporting that he could do nothing to stop the coup. Washington hurriedly replied, telling Lodge to try to talk the generals out of going ahead with the coup. By that point neither Lodge nor any other American official in Washington or Saigon could exert any more influence over the generals. The coup was on.

In the pre-dawn darkness of November 1, 1963, ARVN soldiers loyal to the generals took up positions around Saigon. They took over police headquarters and radio stations and began to move on the presidential palace. The coup leaders gave only a four-minute warning to the U.S. embassy, allowing Ambassador Lodge no time to react. When they confronted Diem, the plotters demanded that he resign and guaranteed him and the Nhus safe exit from the country. Diem called Lodge, who said that the United States could take no action.

General Minh called Diem and told him that if he did not resign immediately the presidential palace would be attacked. When Diem did not respond, the plotters launched an air attack on the presidential palace just before dark. In the early hours of November 2, Diem finally called General Don and offered to surrender if his party received safe passage out of the country. Don agreed to the terms, but Diem did not inform Don of his whereabouts.

Diem and Nhu had escaped through a secret tunnel under the presidential palace and had made their way to Cholon, the Chinese district of Saigon. In circumstances that are still unclear today, Diem and Nhu were tracked down and taken into custody by forces loyal to the plotters. A little while later Diem and Nhu were killed inside an armored personnel carrier while they were being transported to the joint general staff headquarters building.

When President Kennedy heard the news, he reacted with shock to the deaths of Diem and his brother. Their murders had not been in the script.

In 1963, there were 16,000 US troops in Vietnam. Gulf of Tonkin incident (false flag) occurred in August 1964 when US had 21,000 troops in Vietnam. In 1965, LBJ made the decision to reject a negotiated settlement and massively escalate the war effort, increasing troop levels that year to 185,000, and steadily adding more until a high of 536,000 was reached in 1968.

Not sure JFK would have seen things the same way or pursued the same path in Vietnam had he lived. It is well known that JFK was not well-liked by the upper echelons of the Armed Forces, as shown in the Atlantic article I cited. They viewed him as weak and an appeaser. JFK saw them as monsters.

During the Cold War, LeMay was prepared to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. He dismissed civilian control of his decision making, complained of an American phobia about nuclear weapons, and wondered privately, “Would things be much worse if Khrushchev were secretary of defense?” ...

The strains between the generals and their commander in chief showed up in exasperating ways. When Bundy asked the Joint Chiefs’ staff director for a copy of the blueprint for nuclear war, the general at the other end of the line said, “We never release that.” Bundy explained, “I don’t think you understand. I’m calling for the president and he wants to see [it].” The chiefs’ reluctance was understandable: their Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan foresaw the use of 170 atomic and hydrogen bombs in Moscow alone; the destruction of every major Soviet, Chinese, and Eastern European city; and hundreds of millions of deaths. Sickened by a formal briefing on the plan, Kennedy turned to a senior administration official and said, “And we call ourselves the human race.” [...]

[After Bay of Pigs], Kennedy accused himself of naïveté for trusting the military’s judgment that the Cuban operation was well thought-out and capable of success. “Those sons of bitches with all the fruit salad just sat there nodding, saying it would work,” Kennedy said of the chiefs. He repeatedly told his wife, “Oh my God, the bunch of advisers that we inherited!” [...]

... At the end of April 1961, while he was still reeling from the Bay of Pigs, the Joint Chiefs recommended that he blunt a North Vietnamese–sponsored Communist offensive in Laos by launching air strikes and moving U.S. troops into the country via its two small airports. Kennedy asked the military chiefs what they would propose if the Communists bombed the airports after the U.S. had flown in a few thousand men. “You [drop] a bomb on Hanoi,” Robert Kennedy remembered them replying, “and you start using atomic weapons!” In these and other discussions, about fighting in North Vietnam and China or intervening elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Lemnitzer promised, “If we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee victory.” [...]

The October 1962 missile crisis widened the divide between Kennedy and the military brass. The chiefs favored a full-scale, five-day air campaign against the Soviet missile sites and Castro’s air force, with an option to invade the island afterward if they thought necessary. The chiefs, responding to McNamara’s question about whether that might lead to nuclear war, doubted the likelihood of a Soviet nuclear response to any U.S. action. And conducting a surgical strike against the missile sites and nothing more, they advised, would leave Castro free to send his air force to Florida’s coastal cities—an unacceptable risk.

Kennedy rejected the chiefs’ call for a large-scale air attack, for fear it would create a “much more hazardous” crisis (as he was taped telling a group in his office) and increase the likelihood of “a much broader struggle,” with worldwide repercussions. [...]

As the session started, Maxwell Taylor—by then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—said the chiefs had agreed on a course of action: a surprise air strike followed by surveillance to detect further threats and a blockade to stop shipments of additional weapons. Kennedy replied that he saw no “satisfactory alternatives” but considered a blockade the least likely to bring a nuclear war. Curtis LeMay was forceful in opposing anything short of direct military action. The Air Force chief dismissed the president’s apprehension that the Soviets would respond to an attack on their Cuban missiles by seizing West Berlin. To the contrary, LeMay argued: bombing the missiles would deter Moscow, while leaving them intact would only encourage the Soviets to move against Berlin. “This blockade and political action … will lead right into war,” LeMay warned, and the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps chiefs agreed.

“This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich,” LeMay declared. “In other words, you’re in a pretty bad fix at the present time.”

Kennedy took offense. “What did you say?”

“You’re in a pretty bad fix,” LeMay replied, refusing to back down.

The president masked his anger with a laugh. “You’re in there with me,” he said.

After Kennedy and his advisers left the room, a tape recorder caught the military brass blasting the commander in chief. “You pulled the rug right out from under him,” Marine Commandant David Shoup crowed to LeMay. “If somebody could keep them from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal—that’s our problem. You go in there and friggin’ around with the missiles, you’re screwed … Do it right and quit friggin’ around.” [...]

Kennedy’s civilian advisers were elated when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles. But the military chiefs refused to believe that the Soviet leader would actually do what he had promised. They sent the president a memo accusing Khrushchev of delaying the missiles’ departure “while preparing the ground for diplomatic blackmail.” Absent “irrefutable evidence” of Khrushchev’s compliance, they continued to recommend a full-scale air strike and an invasion.

Kennedy ignored their advice. Hours after the crisis ended, when he met with some of the military chiefs to thank them for their help, they made no secret of their disdain. LeMay portrayed the settlement as “the greatest defeat in our history” and said the only remedy was a prompt invasion. Admiral George Anderson, the Navy chief of staff, declared, “We have been had!” Kennedy was described as “absolutely shocked” by their remarks; he was left “stuttering in reply.” Soon afterward, Benjamin Bradlee, a journalist and friend, heard him erupt in “an explosion … about his forceful, positive lack of admiration for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.”

The “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act” was placed in the 2017 NDAA, signed by President Obama.

Immediately, Germany leaped on copycat legislation, with penalties in the $500,000 range. Israel wasted no time mobilizing its forces to do the same. Both countries are of like mind in considering long prison terms, as well, for any teenagers involved.

Okay, the teenager part was Fake News.

The prison terms were not.

Meanwhile, to La Feminista: My favorite predictive technologist in US political matters assures us that this time next year we will be talking about President Pence. Donald Trump will be history. He also says, the Dems will have nothing to do with it. The Republicans will be the folks who make it happen.

What I don't understand is why Democratic Presidents have no power to make any sort of important change or even to close a depraved prison. And Republican Presidents can also do nothing — if it were not for the fact that just enough Democrats vote for their disgraceful and soul-crushing legislation Every.Single.Time.

But Donald Trump is the most power God ever elected President of the United States the United States. He has the full power to send jackboots to every single town in America and kill any Americans who do not pledge their loyalty to Hitler and Putin. He can, and will, go to every country in the world and make them all do the same thing. And make them build walls and pay for them, too.

I wonder how that works, exactly. I must have missed that civics class.

On another note: So true on the Democrats, your comments. What flabbergasts me is that they still have no idea what is going through the minds of the American people as a whole. No clue, whatsoever. They may have permanently flatlined. I've seen a lot of weird things in US politics, but if any of those imbeciles are still associated with the Democratic Party one year from now — that will be the weirdest moment in US history. For me, at least. It could even cause a singularity that will tear a hole in the fabric of the Universe.

out of the fact that Russian officials were "caught celebrating" Trump's election. Well duh... of course they'd be celebrating. Why the hell wouldn't they be? Trump wants to deal with Russia logically, and Clinton wants to attack it! Yet Russia's perfectly understandable reaction is being presented as indicative of some sort of nefarious collusion. What utter hogwash. Surely the can come up with something better than that.

That might explain things.

Thanks, Mark, for a reference to Mary Heaton Vorse. Her essay, Rebellion in The Corn Belt is currently available to read at Harpers.

I'm not much of an historian, but I am being constantly dragged back into the 1930s through the 1960s when I try to peer into what's going on in the US and mostly "why?" The themes I suppose we must live again are Labor, McCarthyism, and Dr. Strangelove — because Americans learned nothing the first time. Or they were bludgeoned too much by intense consumerism, the hammer of capitalism. As for why — well, let's face it. US Imperialism is still based solely on anti-communism. With uber-sociopathic Neoconservative doctrine unleashed upon the world.

(Have you tried kugel? Do you like it with or without raisins? I want to be careful, here. )

As for US propaganda, it seems to be driven by the need to mitigate (brainwash Americans) against environmentalism (communism), the Left (communism), social support (communism), real human rights (communism), populist-driven democracy (communism), state-sponsored infrastructure (Chinese communism), state-sponsored education (communism), and a desire for equality (communism). Americans need to get comfortable with genocide, if they are not already.

In my opinion, of course.

Meanwhile the Vorst piece is transformative. I tracked several academic papers that presented an enhanced perspective, for me. Again, thanks.

(no television here for the original)

Remember when he had to fight the Vietnamese there if we didn't want to fight them here? Well, now they're here, selling us pho and noodles.

And we're selling them their favorite condiment for them, sriracha sauce. invented in Viet Nam, but the majority of the world's supply is made by Huy Fong Foods in California.

(And tasty! I'm a user myself, and I don't know myself to bear one corpuscle of Asian blood!)

for preparing the grounds in Viet Nam for Intel's plant. So forward thinking of LBJ to do that. Who'd a thunk? Now we will definitely conquer Viet Nam by peaceful invasion of our corporations into their country, so that the workers there can see a dramatic non-rise in wages, increased chemical pollution, and richer Vietnamese politicians.