Having just read James W Douglass’s exceptionally detailed book ‘JFK and the Unspeakable’ Why he died and why it matters I am drawn to ponder do we need another peace movement to sweep the world, maybe a revival of the original movement of peace and love in the 60’s and 70’s.
In this epic book Douglass came to the only conclusion possible and that is JFK was murdered in Dallas not by some hopeless singleton with a chip on his shoulder but by a conspiracy inspired by the secret government of America, the CIA, to remove from the White House a President that sought peace and not confrontation and war with the other major nuclear power at that time the Soviet Union.
JFK got offside with the CIA initially over the Bay of Pigs fiasco when CIA forces landed in Cuba and were captured with the objective of overthrowing Fidel Castro a communist who had taken power from the pro American Batista dictatorship in 1959. The CIA called on President Kennedy to send U.S. military forces to deal with the Castro forces but realising he had been set up by the CIA Kennedy refused to be dragged into a war on his borders and 1,500 Americans were taken prisoner. For that JFK was not forgiven but worse was to come when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba deterring a full American invasion of the island nation so close to the U.S. mainland.
As those of us who can remember there was a major confrontation between Kennedy and Khruschev over the missiles and the threat of nuclear war was close. Everybody in the whole world was anxious about the potential outcome, we listened to radio broadcasts for news about what was happening as war meant death to virtually all humanity on earth should a nuclear war break out, such is the toxicity of nuclear blasts and fallout. In the end Khrushchev backed down and withdrew the missiles, the crisis was resolved but nothing has changed apart from the nuclear warheads of today being hundreds of times more powerful and destructive than back then.
The difference back then was that both Kennedy and Khrushchev as leaders of diametrically opposed states resisted their individual military leaders push for nuclear war. Both men sought peace and both were afraid of the buttons they could push that both knew would lead to the end of life on planet earth so they negotiated secretly without the individual input from their own state departments, even Pope JohnXX111 becoming an intermediary for peace at one point. Both Khrushchev and Kennedy became trusting of each other, both trusting their perceived enemy more than the people who advised them, neither wanted to be the person that tipped over the edge that would destroy ‘all we have built, all we have worked for in the first 24 hours’. (Kennedy’s speech at American University June 10 1963)
However in so doing and going against those that sought war in their own countries JKF was seen by the CIA run deep state as a traitor and paid with his life just 6 months later while Khrushchev was overthrown from the Kremlin in the Soviet Union only months later by the militarist forces he too fought to control. Jackie Kennedy’s statement to Khrushchev’s personal representative to JFK’s funeral that “my husband is dead. Now peace is up to you” spoke of the closeness the two men had become as they fought to resist the forces that wanted war in their own countries.
Now 54 years later what do we behold but yet another American president this time acting like a psychopathic idiot toward another perceived foe albeit much smaller and less threatening than was the Soviet Union. Kim Jong-Un of North Korea is portrayed by that (now much more powerful) U.S. deep state as a danger that must be crushed. But Kim Jong-Un recalls the devastation of North Korea in 1953 as America effectively destroyed the whole country with napalm causing millions of North Korean deaths. He has no reason to trust anything the U.S. says yet has offered an olive branch of sorts as conciliation toward the West particularly to the South Koreans many of whom are related in some way to the North Koreans.
While it was a stupid thing to talk about having a button on his desk Kim Jong-Un knows full well that if he were to start a nuclear exchange he is on his own without Chinese backing and North Korea would disappear. But what did idiot Trump say in response. No willingness to conciliate or ease tensions, no statesman like quality to elaborate on the offering of Kim Jong-Un, it was ‘he has a bigger button on his desk and it works’.
When we have psychopaths for leaders who are controlled by forces that only want war it matters that we the people do not sit idle and allow warmongers to destroy our planet and home. The need for another peace movement has never been so large as it is now. For Khrushchev and Kennedy they stepped back from the bring of nuclear war and made the movement toward peace possible even if the cold war has brewed up into action once again. It matters that those two men showed the leadership that allowed the baby boomer generation to grow, have families and enjoy the world but this is slipping from our grasp as we fall to the propaganda and destructiveness of Western leadership that demonstrates intolerance of other peoples and seeks confrontation with anyone that dares stand in its way or be different.
The CIA document of ‘plausible deniability’ enabled the assassination of President Kennedy. That document, National Security Directive 10/2 on June 18 1948, ‘gave the highest sanction of the (U.S.) government to a broad range of covert operations-propaganda, sabotage, economic warfare, subversion of all kinds and eventually assassinations’. President Truman whose presidency sanctioned ‘plausible deniability’ came to have deep regrets disturbed because the CIA had become an operational, at time, policy making arm of government.
It remains in place as we witness confrontation the world over. It up to us survivors of the (potential) third world war to retake our planet for peace, not war. Leaving idiots running the world is a careless mistake for us all to make.
Malcolm Eves
05/01/18