Your opinions fly in the face of the actual historical record.
No, they do not. Yours do. That's why even most liberal historians don't buy the claim that JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam, even without victory, after the election. I don't think you grasp, or perhaps just don't care, that you are in a very tiny minority on this issue. Only a handful of scholars endorse the unconditional-withdrawal myth.
Again, since you ignored this fact the first time, let me repeat the fact that Dr. Marc Selverstone's 2022 book
The Kennedy Withdrawal proves, among other things, that the JFK White House tapes do not contain one syllable from JFK or RFK to the effect that JFK had any intention of pulling out of Vietnam after the election, conditionally or unconditionally. In fact, RFK specifically rejected this claim in his April 1964 oral history interview. He was asked if JFK had planned on withdrawing from Vietnam, and he immediately said no, he had not. This was RFK, who knew JFK better than anyone.
In both of the speeches that JFK wrote for delivery on 11/22/63, he spoke of the importance of the war effort in Vietnam and expressed his support for it.
Every background document for NSAM 263 makes it clear that the withdrawal plan mentioned therein was not only gradual and phased but that it entirely depended on the situation on the ground, and that the ultimate goal was still victory. Even if the progress of the war effort had allowed the withdrawal to occur according to the conditional schedule, the documents state that a reserve force would still remain and that the U.S. would continue to aid South Vietnam. This is all in black and white in the background docs for NSAM 263.
But you and a few other ultra-leftists have transformed JFK's conditional, gradual, residual-force, continued-U.S.-aid withdrawal plan into a mythical plan to unconditionally withdraw from Vietnam after the election, even if it resulted in the collapse of South Vietnam.
Withdrawal was the policy on the day JFK died.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v04/d167
You must be kidding. You're repeating claims that have been debunked every which way, even by radical leftist scholar Noam Chomsky. In fact, let's read Chomsky's demolition of James Galbraith's article "Exit Strategy," which repeats the same arguments you're making:
Having worked through the relevant documentation that James Galbraith cites, I was curious to see how he could reach his conclusions in his article “Exit Strategy” (October/November 2003), at variance with the mainstream of scholarship and other commentary, as he notes. The basic method turns out to be simple: deletion.
As for others, the centerpiece of Galbraith’s discussion of the withdrawal plans is NSAM 263, in which JFK gave qualified approval to the recommendations of Robert McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, who were greatly encouraged by the military prospects in South Vietnam and were “convinced that the Viet Cong insurgency” could be sharply reduced in a year and that the U.S.–run war effort should be “completed by the end of 1965.” They therefore advised “An increase in the military tempo” of the war throughout South Vietnam and withdrawal of some troops in 1963 and all troops in 1965—if this could be done “without impairment of the war effort” and with assurance that “the insurgency has been suppressed” or at least sufficiently weakened so that the U.S. client regime (GVN) is “capable of suppressing it” (my italics; the crucial condition throughout).
Once again they stressed that the “overriding objective” is victory, a matter “vital to United States security.” JFK approved their recommendations, while distancing himself from the withdrawal proposal and approving instructions to Ambassador Lodge in Saigon stressing “our fundamental objective of victory” and directing him to press for “GVN action to increase effectiveness of its military effort” so as to ensure the military victory on which withdrawal was explicitly conditioned. The president, Lodge was informed, affirmed “his basic statement that what furthers the war effort we support, and what interferes with the war effort we oppose,” the condition underlying NSAM 263, as consistently throughout the period and beyond.
JFK and his advisers were concerned with the “crisis of confidence among Vietnamese people which is eroding popular support for GVN that is vital for victory,” and the “crisis of confidence on the part of the American public and Government,” who also do not see how “our actions are related to our fundamental objective of victory”—JFK’s invariant condition. JFK (and his advisers) recognized that the war was unpopular at home, but regarded such lack of support—as well as GVN initiatives toward political settlement—not as an opportunity for withdrawal, but rather as a problem to be overcome, because it posed a threat to the military victory to which they were committed. The significance of these facts for the thesis under discussion is obvious.
Virtually all of this was deleted from Galbraith’s account of NSAM 263, and the tidbits that remain he clearly misinterprets. Thus he does quote the qualification that troops can be withdrawn only “when they are no longer needed,” but fails to recognize that this is simply another reiteration of the unwavering commitment to military victory.
By this method, Galbraith is able to draw the conclusions rejected by virtually everyone he cites, who use the same documentary record (in all relevant cases) but without crucial omissions and misreadings. His treatment of his own prime example is typical, as interested readers can readily discover. (https://chomsky.info/200312__/)
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