Who is Online

We have 39 guests and no members online

Recollections

The U-2 Incident - Powers and the Vietnam War

Details
Parent Category: History
Category: Recollections
Hits: 24235

Article Index

Page 5 of 7

Powers and the Vietnam War

But for Gary Powers Kennedy would undoubtedly have lost the extremely close 1960 Presidential Election to Nixon.  Then JFK and his brother would not have been assassinated.  What about Martin Luther King Jnr?

In particular it's unlikely that the Vietnam War would have escalated.  After the Berlin Wall;  the Bay of Pigs; and the Cuban Missile Crisis; Kennedy was said to be determined to 'draw a line in the sand' - for freedom.  The Eisenhower/Nixon White House is reported to have been more interested in Laos.

After the disasters of 1961 Kennedy is reported as telling the New York Times: "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."  This choice had the added benefit helping out President Ngô Đình Diệm, the Vatican endorsed: 'Saviour of Vietnam', a fellow Roman Catholic who'd pleaded for US (and Australian) help to prevent the country falling to the Communists. 

Since the defeat of the French in Vietnam there had been US military advisers supporting the fragile government of South Vietnam that had been 'elected to power' by violently suppressing the opposition.  The governing Cần Lao Party thereafter claimed to be democratically elected but to be unable to hold further elections due to a state of martial law.  The leaders were a Roman Catholic elite in a country that was predominantly Buddhist.

Eventually even Kennedy would grow sick of the excesses of the poisonous Diệm Regime; temporally terminate diplomatic relations; and agree to a CIA supported coup in which two of the Diệm brothers were murdered.  See Vietnam on this website - scroll down and read more below the image of Notre Dame Cathedral Saigon. 

Nevertheless, by the time of Kennedy's own assassination there were over 15,000 US 'advisors' and around a hundred Australian 'advisors' and support people in Vietnam. His successor President Johnson (LBJ) would drop the pretence that these were non-combatants and  increase the number to 550,000; Australian personnel would rise to a peak of 7,672.  This commitment would only begin to decline after Nixon, eventually, won the 1968 Presidential election.

 

The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington DC
The names of 58,307 US fighting men and women who died in action and a further 1,626 missing in action
426 Australians also died in action and more later from the repercussions, including some I knew
Over two million Vietnamese: combatants (on both sides) and civilians also died
The communists won in the end but to what end?  See Vietnam on this website

 

 

 

No comments

Travel

Sri Lanka

 

 

 

In February 2023 we joined an organised tour to Sri Lanka. 

 

 

Beginning in the capital Colombo, on the west coast, our bus travelled anticlockwise, in a loop, initially along the coast; then up into the highlands; then north, as far as Sigiriya; before returning southwest to Colombo.

Read more: Sri Lanka

Fiction, Recollections & News

The First Man on the Moon

 

 

 

 

At 12.56 pm on 21 July 1969 Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST) Neil Armstrong became the first man to step down onto the Moon.  I was at work that day but it was lunchtime.  Workplaces did not generally run to television sets and I initially saw it in 'real time' in a shop window in the city.  

Later that evening I would watch a full replay at my parents' home.  They had a 'big' 26" TV - black and white of course.  I had a new job in Sydney having just abandoned Canberra to get married later that year.  My future in-laws, being of a more academic bent, did not have TV that was still regarded by many as mindless.

Given the early failures, and a few deaths, the decision to televise the event in 'real time' to the international public was taking a risk.  But the whole space program was controversial in the US and sceptics needed to be persuaded.

Read more: The First Man on the Moon

Opinions and Philosophy

Gone but not forgotten

Gone but not forgotten

 

 

Gough Whitlam has died at the age of 98.

I had an early encounter with him electioneering in western Sydney when he was newly in opposition, soon after he had usurped Cocky (Arthur) Calwell as leader of the Parliamentary Labor Party and was still hated by elements of his own party.

I liked Cocky too.  He'd addressed us at University once, revealing that he hid his considerable intellectual light under a barrel.  He was an able man but in the Labor Party of the day to seem too smart or well spoken (like that bastard Menzies) was believed to be a handicap, hence his 'rough diamond' persona.

Gough was a new breed: smooth, well presented and intellectually arrogant.  He had quite a fight on his hands to gain and retain leadership.  And he used his eventual victory over the Party's 'faceless men' to persuade the Country that he was altogether a new broom. 

It was time for a change not just for the Labor Party but for Australia.

Read more: Gone but not forgotten

Terms of Use

Terms of Use                                                                    Copyright