The Kennedy Half-Century (25 page)

After reminding his listeners of the futility of “total war” in the nuclear age, JFK challenged Americans to examine their own prejudices and assumptions. “First: let us examine our attitude toward peace itself,” he said. “Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable—that mankind is doomed—that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.” Kennedy captured the cynicism of the age, perhaps a lingering aftereffect of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Though relieved that disaster had been averted, many Americans also embraced Epicurean fatalism, a philosophy that we should “eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Kennedy wanted Americans to feel hopeful about the future. Further, as a World War II veteran, he knew that there was no glory in war. He had seen men die in combat and wanted to spare his children and grandchildren similar horrors. Since war was a “manmade” problem, he said, it could be eliminated by men, since “no problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” (Barack Obama chose these words to be stitched into the presidential carpet in the
Oval Office.) Although JFK acknowledged that there were enormous differences between the United States and the USSR, he believed that the two nations could work together to find common ground. “And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
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Nikita Khrushchev called it “the greatest speech by any American president since Roosevelt.” The frigid relationship between Moscow and Washington had begun to thaw. A nuclear test ban treaty, which had been discussed off and on for years, seemed possible. While Soviet and American diplomats prepared to hammer out the details of the treaty in the summer, Kennedy departed for Europe. He had originally planned to go to West Germany alone, but added Italy and England to the itinerary for political reasons and Ireland for personal ones. During what turned out to be the final months of his presidency, Kennedy became intrigued with his Celtic heritage and all things Irish. In preparation for the trip, the president “read Irish histories, traced the lineage of the Kennedys and the Fitzgeralds, studied the writings of John Boyle O’Reilly and the exploits of the Irish Brigade in the American Civil War, and arranged with the successors of that brigade, the New York Fighting 69th Irish National Guard regiment, to present one of its flags from the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg to the Republic of Ireland.” Feelings on the other side of the Atlantic were equally warm, so much so that Bono, the lead singer of the rock group U2, has said that his home country’s fascination with America “got out of hand” in the early 1960s and that the Irish “saw the Kennedys as our own royal family out on loan to America.” When O’Donnell told his boss that a trip to Ireland would be “a waste of time,” JFK responded, “Kenny, let me remind you of something—I am the president of the United States, not you. When I say I want to go to Ireland, it means that I’m going to Ireland. Make the arrangements.” Kennedy wanted an uplifting vacation and thought that a quick trip to the Emerald Isle would provide the perfect escape.
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But first, he needed to keep his promise to visit West Germany, and the trip turned truly historic. An estimated three fourths of the population of West Berlin flooded the streets of their city to see JFK. After touring the wall that had been built to keep East and West apart, Kennedy delivered a brilliant speech that most Americans and Germans alive at the time recall to this day. “Two thousand years ago,” he said, “the proudest boast was ‘Civis Romanus sum.’ Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ ” West Berliners roared their approval. He was their president as much as anyone else’s, the guarantor of their rights and freedoms. Next, JFK took
pot shots at the Communists as severe as anything ever uttered by Ronald Reagan:

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand or say they don’t, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin. There are some who say that Communism is the wave of the future. Let them come to Berlin. And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin. And there are even a few who say that it is true that Communism is an evil system, but it permits us to make economic progress.
Lass’sie nach Berlin kommen
[Let them come to Berlin].

Speaking into a bank of microphones, the wind blowing through his thick thatch of auburn hair, Kennedy closed with a proverb and a prediction: “Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe. When that day finally comes, as it will, the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines for almost two decades.” It was one of the high points of his presidency. Like his eventual successor Ronald Reagan, John Kennedy knew that Communism was a bankrupt system and that it was only a matter of time before it vanished from the earth.
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At the time, however, JFK’s advisers were worried that the speech might have torpedoed the test ban treaty. Kennedy went into damage control mode and delivered a dovish speech later that day at the Free University of Berlin. As Kenny O’Donnell later recapped it, “Fortunately, Nikita Khrushchev, who might have remembered a few ill-timed emotional outbursts of his own, decided to ignore the City Hall speech and to accept the Free University speech, and went ahead with his endorsement of the atmospheric test ban treaty.”
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It is also worth noting that the majesty of a presidential speech such as Kennedy’s in Berlin benefited from both the drama of the Cold War and the American media’s belief in that era that it was unpatriotic to point out small flaws in a president’s rhetoric. The famous phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” literally
translates as “I am a jelly doughnut.” Such a slip today would dominate the cable news networks and blogosphere for days, wiping out the emotional impact of such an address. But JFK’s German hosts, and the accommodating White House press corps, appreciated Kennedy’s effort and let the mistake slide.
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From Berlin, Kennedy flew to Ireland. He was struck by how quiet it was when he landed at Dublin Airport. “Maybe we got our schedules mixed up here,” he said jokingly. Irish leaders later claimed that people were in awe; they could scarcely believe that one of their own was the leader of the free world. From the airport, JFK rode in an “open Lincoln, a vintage model from the Eisenhower era flown in from Berlin earlier in the day, for the tenmile ride by motorcade into Dublin.” As the car wended its way along a road lined with well-wishers, Kennedy stood up so that they could get a better look at him. “The thought occurred to the Irish president [Eamon de Valera], he remembered a few years later, ‘what an easy target he would have been.’ Kennedy’s security detail was concerned about the exposure, but de Valera took comfort in the tremendous outpouring the Irish were giving Kennedy.” He did not believe that the president was in any danger.
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JFK received a hero’s welcome all across Ireland. The residents of New Ross (the point from which Kennedy’s great-grandfather, Patrick, had sailed for America 115 years earlier) hung banners reading WELCOME HOME, MR. PRESIDENT. “When my great-grandfather left here to become a cooper in East Boston,” he told the crowd, “he carried nothing with him except two things: a strong religious faith and a strong desire for liberty. I am glad to say that all of his great-grandchildren have valued that inheritance. If he hadn’t left, I would be working over at the Albatross Company [a nearby fertilizer plant], or perhaps for John V. Kelly [a local pub owner].” The crowd exploded with laughter.
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From New Ross, Kennedy drove to his family’s ancestral homeland at Dunganstown, where he was entertained by a slew of relatives. When a cousin named Jim Kennedy poured him a large Irish whiskey, the president surreptitiously handed it to an aide, who dutifully gulped it down.

The president also attended a memorial service for the executed leaders of the 1916 Easter Uprising and watched in awe as cadets from the Military College at the Curragh performed a flawless drill. It turned out to be his favorite part of the trip. He later told his sisters that he wished he “had a film of that drill so that we could do something like it at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.” Jackie made a mental note of the president’s comments.
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John Kennedy fell in love with the people of Ireland. He left with a heavy
heart and promised to return. “This is not the land of my birth,” he said, “but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection, and I certainly will come back in the springtime.” When Sean Lemass, the Irish prime minister, visited the United States in October, JFK lent him Air Force One—an honor he had never bestowed on any other world leader.
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The Irish weren’t the only ones who gave JFK a warm welcome. Italians were almost as excited about shaking hands with the Catholic president of the United States. When Kennedy’s convertible rolled through the streets of Naples, a frenzied crowd blocked its progress; thousands of people were “screaming” and “swarming all over. It was the noisiest demonstration of the entire European tour.” For Kennedy’s security detail, the trip was nerve-wracking. Two days earlier in Rome, the Italians had reneged on an agreement to allow Secret Service agents to flank Kennedy’s vehicle (they had been elbowed out by Italian motorcycle cops). Now, Jerry Blaine and Dave Grant—two of the men assigned to protect the president—found themselves seated on the trunk of an Italian car fending off overzealous Neapolitans. “There were no handrails like they had on President Kennedy’s limousine, and they found themselves throwing people off the car while trying to stay aboard the rounded trunk. People were weaving in between the motorcycles and one by one the riders became engulfed by the crowd. At one point Blaine felt his sleeve rip and his watch fall to the ground as he shoved people away. The agents felt as if they were fighting for their own lives.” Fortunately, the president made it through the ordeal without a scratch.
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As in Ireland and elsewhere, only luck prevented a tragedy. Another obvious warning about inadequate presidential security was ignored.

Kennedy also paid his respects to Pope Paul VI by making a brief stop at the Vatican. It was the last destination on what turned out to be the last of the nine international journeys during his presidency, many of them multicountry tours.
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The press speculated on whether the president would kneel and kiss the pope’s ring—a standard practice among Catholics—but JFK knew better than to provoke the wrath of Protestant voters. “Norman Vincent Peale would love that,” he quipped, “And it would get me a lot of votes in South Carolina.”
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The ring went unkissed.

The president found a crowded inbox the next day when he returned to the Oval Office. Not only had his civil rights bill stalled on Capitol Hill, but the situation in Vietnam was rapidly deteriorating. When JFK took office, eight hundred American military personnel were stationed in South Vietnam; he had increased the number to sixteen thousand in only two years. The president saw Vietnam as a test case for his “flexible response” doctrine,
which relied on a variety of methods to stop the spread of Communism. Eisenhower had been wary of American involvement in Vietnam, having watched the French get bogged down in Southeast Asia and then withdraw in humiliation in 1954. Kennedy was also cautious—he had refused a 1961 Pentagon recommendation to commit two hundred thousand U.S. troops to Vietnam—but he had talked tough as a cold warrior, and did not want to see any country fall to Communism on his watch. Still, gradually, the U.S. troop “advisers” had been drawn surreptitiously into direct fighting; the recipe for much deeper involvement was being concocted. In actions that some liberals have long forgotten, Kennedy ordered Green Berets to use counterinsurgency tactics against Communist guerrillas; he approved the use of napalm, a jellied gasoline that sticks to the skin as it burns, as well as Agent Orange, a defoliant that causes birth defects; and he provided Ngo Dinh Diem, the authoritarian ruler of South Vietnam, with guns and money.
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But by the autumn of 1963, Kennedy realized that his Vietnam strategy was not working. The previous December, Democrat Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader, returned from Indochina with a gloomy report—the United States was getting sucked into a tar pit, just as the French had a decade earlier. In addition, “Diem had resisted American combat troops. He did not want the U.S. to take over his war and his country. Moreover, he continued to defy the Kennedy administration’s insistence that he make internal reforms.” The mostly Buddhist South Vietnamese distrusted and disliked Diem, a Roman Catholic who had once lived in New Jersey. The previous May, during a ceremony celebrating the birth of the Buddha, Diem’s troops had opened fire and killed nine worshippers. Monks began setting themselves on fire in protest. Diem’s sister-in-law, a ruthless aristocrat named Madame Nhu, smiled when she heard the news. “Using the Vietnamese word for monk, she called it ‘barbecue
á bonze,’
and offered to provide gas and matches to any monks or American reporters who would do the same thing.”
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