America's Last President: What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy

By Monika Wiesak

The Presidency of John F. Kennedy was a unique and promising turning point in history. A young, compassionate, and independent thinker arrived on the scene with great intent to serve his country, his people, and the globe around him. He envisioned a world of decentralized power-from strong, diverse, and independent nations to thriving opportunit

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monika Wiesak
• Release date: Aug 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986556826

Monika Wiesak

Monika is an IT professional and concerned citizen with an interest in history and the impact it has on our current world. She has spent years studying the presidency of John F. Kennedy, from the many books written, to declassified files, press conferences, and speeches, with much thought as to what it means for our world today. Monika can be contacted by email at [e-mail].

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Monika Wiesak

America’s Last President

What the World Lost When It Lost John F. Kennedy

Copyright © 2022 by Monika Wiesak

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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To

John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy

May your spirit live on eternally

To

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

You embody the essence of your father and uncle

To

My Mother

You gave me your passion for history

To

Future Generations

May you always know your true history

Contents

Preface

1. The Emergence of Ideas

2. The CIA

3. The Congo

4. Africa

5. Latin America

6. The Domestic Economy

7. Wall Street

8. Civil Rights

9. Laos/Vietnam

10. Indonesia

11. Berlin

12. The Cuban Missile Crisis

13. Disarmament

14. Israel

15. Bobby

16. Conspiracy Theory

Conclusion

Notes

Preface

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance, without death.

– John F. Kennedy

In recent years I have become more and more aware of how concentrated power is. I began to wonder whether it had always been this way. And if not, when did it change? Was there an inflection point? Why did it seem like corporations and private interests were driving decisions impacting the entire globe? Why did it seem like we no longer lived in a democracy? Or had democracy died long ago, and it was just an illusion maintained? And most important of all, was there a better way?

Certainly, more than one historical event led us to this moment. After all, history is a summation of many acts that together create our present world. As such, history is never obsolete, and it is not random. Historical events do not sit in isolation and are not detached from today. Rather, history is linear. It takes us down a particular course that leads us to the present. Some moments in history have more impact on the direction of that course than others. And some can drastically alter it. Returning to those moments can teach us much about finding our way onto a better path. In this author’s view, one of the most important historical events that led us down this road of dying democracy and globalist imperialist control was the loss of John F. Kennedy, followed by the loss of his brother Robert F. Kennedy.

As a child, I was always perplexed about who John F. Kennedy was. Clips of him speaking evoked in me a childlike intuition that he was a good person, a great leader, but then I heard press stories about endless affairs, mob dealings, and Castro assassination attempts. I had the impression that all he did while at the White House was sleep around and plot Castro’s death. And the only reason he made it to the White House was because his father bought him the election, and the mob rigged some votes, or so the story goes. It did not occur to me that there might be a deliberate propaganda campaign to paint him in a superficial and negative light. I did not even understand what propaganda was. I did not think about it much, but any time his name came up, I wondered, who was this guy? And why did he seem so contradictory? Was he simply a complex figure like the rest of us, but on a grander scale? I wanted to understand more, so one day, as an adult, I picked up a biography on JFK. Unfortunately, that book did not help me understand him better; in fact, it portrayed the same contradictory popular culture image I had seen on TV. But with time, I began to delve deeper and eventually fell down the proverbial rabbit hole in my quest for the truth.

The more I learned about his policies, his challenges, his leadership style, and, more than anything, his courage, the more impressed I became. I realized that the public image of him as a careless, thoughtless, self-involved playboy obscured the depth of what he was trying to achieve and the intensity of opposition he faced. I felt cheated out of understanding our true history and, as an extension, out of understanding the world around me.

This book came from my desire to share what I had learned, give another perspective on the man, and explain why his presidency is so important to our world today. His untimely death has had such catastrophic long-term consequences for our society, consequences we are living with now. Our world needs so much healing and understanding the presidency and premature loss of John F. Kennedy can help give us a starting point where we can find that healing. It can provide us with a microcosm through which we can better understand the macrocosm of our world. This book delves into what started to be and what could have been, and if we so desire, what could still be. Let us resolve to be the masters, not the victims of our history, JFK once said.¹

The study of John F. Kennedy’s presidency reveals certain repeating themes: anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, self-determination, nationalism, the alleviation of poverty and suffering, opportunity for all, cooperation, understanding, peace, checks on corruption and powerful private interests, constant questioning, and more than anything, a love for humanity—all of humanity. These themes are sorely missing in today’s world of empire, greed, division, globally dictated policies, technocracy, censorship, ever-increasing wealth gaps, endless wars, and unbridled corruption.

We must recapture the spirit and reclaim the courage that this man represented. As JFK once said, A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance, without death.² In light of this truth, the merciless, endless character assassination—what some call the posthumous assassination of JFK³—makes sense. In his song Murder Most Foul—the title a reference to Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in which Hamlet’s father, the slain king, comes back to tell his son his death is not what it seems, that he was indeed murdered by the current king—Bob Dylan writes of Kennedy, They killed him once, and they killed him twice. It was not enough for John F. Kennedy to die. His ideas had to die with him.

In his novel 1984, George Orwell wrote, Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. The essence of John F. Kennedy had to be erased, for it spoke out against the growing imperial forces of our world, forces that are now suffocating us. If we want a better future for ourselves, we need to start by genuinely understanding our past and how we arrived at the present. Only then can we recapture a better path for our future, a path that John F. Kennedy gave his life trying to forge. We cannot bring him back to life, but we can bring his ideas back to life. Those ideas have been suppressed for far too long. Let us shine a light on them, learn from him and forge a better and more just path for our future.

1

The Emergence of Ideas

Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual.

– John F. Kennedy

Before we delve into John F. Kennedy’s presidency, we need to understand his frame of mind as he embarked on that historic task. Let us start by examining some of the ideals he espoused in his early years through his senatorial years. This will give us greater context behind his later actions as president.

He had a unique perspective of the world that varied greatly from the power structure of that time and even more greatly from the power structure of today. However, it aligned closely with the ideals that America purports but never lives up to. He was, in many ways, the epitome of the American ideal.

While his views and actions changed as new data and circumstances presented themselves, his ideals remained steady. He expressed those ideals from his earliest campaign as a young candidate for Congress in 1946. On July 4 of that year, while reaching for his first chance at office, Kennedy spoke of the American character, Our government was founded on the essential religious idea of integrity of the individual.⁴

This simple phrase is the key to understanding John F. Kennedy. He believed in and honored the sanctity of the individual—and not only believed in it but referred to it as a religious idea, as something core to humanity itself.

In the same speech, he went on to say:

In Revolutionary times, the cry No taxation without representation was not an economic complaint. Rather, it was directly traceable to the eminently fair and just principle that no sovereign power has the right to govern without the consent of the governed. Anything short of that was tyranny.

… The right of the individual against the State has ever been one of our most cherished political principles. … there are certain rights held by every man which no government and no majority, however powerful, can deny.

Conceived in Grecian thought, strengthened by Christian morality, and stamped indelibly into American political philosophy, the right of the individual against the State is the keystone of our Constitution. Each man is free.

He is free in thought.

He is free in expression.

He is free in worship.

He closed his speech by imploring us not to take these ideals for granted: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. It was the price yesterday. It is the price today, and it will ever be the price.

This speech is equally prescient today, if not more. JFK understood that the sovereignty of the human being is the basis for any justly organized society. This sovereignty then flows upward. Just as each human being is sovereign, so should each nation be.

John F. Kennedy, more than anything, was an anti-imperialist. We can never know the true roots of this sentiment. It likely came, to some extent, from his Irish heritage. He explained to Nehru, the prime minister of India:

I grew up in a community where the people were hardly a generation away from colonial rule. And I can claim the company of many historians in saying that the colonialism to which my immediate ancestors were subject was more sterile, oppressive, and even cruel than that of India.⁵

This anti-colonialist sentiment was likely fortified by his World War II experiences in the Solomon Islands. His PT boat was attacked and destroyed, and local indigenous islanders rescued him and his crew. His nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated, It’s one of the things that I think really gave my uncle this strong commitment that America should be on the side of colonial people around the world, that put him at odds with his own CIA and his own military.⁶ When documenting the islanders’ feelings towards the colonial British government, JFK wrote in his letters: ‘English me no like’ is their summating of the British Empire.⁷ He understood the natural resentment of colonized populations.

During World War II, JFK began to develop an anti-war sentiment. In a letter to his father, which he wrote while serving the Navy out at sea, JFK wrote:

It certainly brought home how real the war is—and when I read the papers from home and how superficial is most of the talking and thinking about it. When I read that we will fight the Japs for years if necessary and will sacrifice hundreds of thousands if we must—I always like to check from where he is talking—it’s seldom out here. People get so used to talking about billions of dollars and millions of soldiers that thousands of dead sounds like drops in the bucket. But if those thousands want to live as much as the ten I saw—they should measure their words with great, great care.⁸

His anti-war sentiments were likely also absorbed from his father, a vocal opponent of America’s involvement in World War II.

During the war, his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, had written to him:

When I hear these mental midgets talking about my desire for appeasement and being critical of it, my blood fairly boils. What is this war going to prove? And what is it going to do to civilization? The answer to the first question is nothing; and to the second I shudder even to think about it.⁹

JFK, in turn, wrote to his father, encouraging him to turn the tables, You should express your views in such a way that it will be difficult to indict you as an appeaser unless they indict themselves as war mongers.¹⁰

After Joseph Kennedy resigned as ambassador to the United Kingdom, he encouraged discussion and debate on America’s involvement in the war, arguing that without such open discussion and debate, we could be led down a path we did not anticipate:

The problems facing America today are not academic. They demand concrete answers, and rightly or wrongly they must be answered soon. The decisions to be made in the next few years will have a far-reaching effect on our lives and the lives of our children. I feel that the American people, from whom the ultimate decisions must come, should have and must have all the facts before them. All viewpoints must be considered … if the American people are to have a fair voice in determining what sort of country they are to live in.¹¹

He was not incorrect about the far-reaching implications of American involvement in World War II. Whether that involvement was right or wrong, it led to the growth of the American national security state, a sort of fourth branch of government consisting of intelligence agencies and the military, which has taken over the original three branches. It is this fourth branch of government that JFK came in constant conflict with as president.

JFK’s diary included further anti-war sentiments as the years passed by. On July 1, 1945, he wrote, Prowess in war is still deeply respected. The day of the conscientious objector is not yet at hand.¹²

Continuing with the general theme of anti-imperialism, his diary also included concerns about the dangers of rigidity and authoritarianism, even if well-intentioned, and his understanding that authoritarianism can come from the Left or the Right. Often, we are so lost in the debate between Left vs. Right that we miss the equally, if not more critical, debate between authoritarianism and more libertarian sentiments.

On July 2, 1945, Kennedy wrote in his diary:

The great danger in movements to the Left is that the protagonists of the movement are so wrapped up with the end that the means becomes secondary and things like opposition have to be dispensed with as they obstruct the common good. You wonder about the liberalism of the Left. They must be most careful. To maintain dictatorships of the Left or Right are equally abhorrent no matter what their doctrine or how great their efficiency.¹³

He elaborated on what he felt the source of some of this authoritarianism was: These Leftists are filled with bitterness, and I am not sure how deeply the tradition of tolerance … is ingrained in these bitter and discontented spirits.¹⁴

His early writing also includes keen observations about world affairs. In 1939, JFK made his first trip to Palestine, from where he wrote his father his impressions. We can see how prescient some of these observations were. He indicated that the Western media may not have been giving its listeners and readers access to the full story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: You undoubtedly … know the ‘whole’ story. It is worthwhile looking at it in its entirety.

He indicated a desire by the Israeli side (almost a decade before its establishment in 1948) to ultimately take over Jerusalem. During the Trump presidency, the United States finally recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.¹⁵ Kennedy wrote: On the Jewish side there is the desire for complete domination, with Jerusalem as the capital of their new land of milk and honey, with the right to colonize in Trans-Jordan.

He also referred to potential false flag methods that would perhaps be used to accomplish these goals: There were 13 bombs set off my last evening there, all in the Jewish quarter and all set off by Jews. The ironical part is that the Jewish terrorists bomb their own telephone lines and electric connections and the next day frantically phone the British to come and fix them up.

Last, he showed concern over what he viewed as a hesitancy to compromise: The sympathy of the people on the spot seems to be with the Arabs. … The Jews have had, at least some of their leaders, an unfortunately arrogant, uncompromising attitude.¹⁶

The important takeaway from these early letters is his keen interest in world affairs and his desire to explore different perspectives when examining various conflicts. These letters also give insight into his later actions as president.

In 1951, JFK took an extended trip across Asia and the Middle East, where he further developed his growing worldviews. In a radio address, he explained what he had seen during his trip:

It is a troubled area of the world that I saw. It is an area in which poverty and sickness and disease are rampant, in which injustice and inequality are old and ingrained, and in which the fires of nationalism so long dormant have been kindled and are now ablaze. It is an area of our world that for a hundred years and more has been the source of empire for Western Europe. Here colonialism is not a topic for tea-talk discussion; it is the daily fare of millions of men. … Basically, this is an area of human conflict between civilizations striving to be born and those struggling desperately to retain what they have held so long.¹⁷

We can see from this assessment that he frames the fundamental issues of these poor regions around the concepts of empire and exploitation.

He went on in his radio address to discuss the West’s treatment of Middle Eastern countries. He expressed the need for our policies to have the support of the people to which they are geared, and insisted that the concepts of empire can no longer apply:

For several years now the Middle East has been in revolt. That spirit of revolt is not only resistance now becoming active rebellion to the domination of Western powers, not only its hurt and vengeful reaction to the rise of Israel to nationhood, but it stems also from a deep-seated desire to lift to some degree the pall of famine and injustice that for so long has characterized this area.

… A Middle East Command operating without the cooperation and support of the Middle East Countries, including Israel, not only would intensify every anti-western force now active in that area but from a military standpoint would be doomed to failure. The very sands of the desert would rise to oppose the imposition of an outside control upon the destinies of these proud peoples.

… We have appeared too frequently to the Arab world as being too ready to buttress an inequitable status quo, whether it be the imposition of foreign controls, the safety of foreign investment not too equitably made, or a domestic regime heedless of the crying need for reforms. … Our intervention in behalf of England’s oil investments in Iran, directed more at the preservation of interests outside Iran than Iran’s own development, our avowed willingness to assume an almost imperial military responsibility for the safety of the Suez, our failure to deal effectively after these years with the terrible human tragedy of the more than 700,000 Arab [Palestinian] refugees, these are things that have failed to sit well with Arab desires and make empty the promises of the voice of America.

He then discussed the French treatment of southeast Asia, expressing his belief that our approach to the military containment of Communism was flawed:

In Indo-China we have allied ourselves to the desperate effort of a French regime to hang on to the remnants of empire. … These Indo-Chinese states are puppet states, French principalities with great resources but as typical examples of empire and of colonialism as can be found anywhere. To check the southern drive of Communism makes sense but not only through reliance on the force of arms. The task is rather to build strong native non-Communist sentiment within these areas and rely on that as the spearhead of defense rather than upon the legions of General de Lattre. And to do this apart from and in defiance of innately nationalistic aims spells foredoomed failure.

In the latter parts of his address, he expressed the importance of foreign policy to every American. While foreign policy may seem far away from our daily lives, it has a very direct impact on us, far more than most of us can imagine:

Expenditures, taxation, domestic prosperity, the extent of social services—all hinge on the basic issue of peace or war. And it is a democratic America and not a bureaucratic government that must shape America’s destiny. Just as Clemenceau once said, War is much too important to be left to the generals, I would remark that Foreign policy is too important to all of us to leave it to the experts and the diplomats.

Finally, he expressed his disappointment in how America approached foreign policy:

One finds too many of our representatives toadying to the shorter aims of other Western nations, with no eagerness to understand the real hopes and desires of the people to which they are accredited, too often aligning themselves too definitely with the haves and regarding the actions of the have-nots as not merely an effort to cure injustice but as something sinister and subversive.

We want, we may need, allies in ideas, in resources, even in arms, but if we would have allies, we must first of all gather to ourselves friends.

During this era, the 1950s, the Cold War was raging. Everything was about West vs. East, capitalism vs. Communism. To the average person, this war was about us vs. them, about the righteous Americans vs. the evil Communists. In reality, much of the conflict centered on who would control access to the world’s resources. JFK had a unique view of this Cold War struggle. He believed the way to end the Cold War was through the support of the independence of the world’s countries. Let each country become strong enough that an outside power cannot infiltrate it. With each country strong and independent, tyrannical or imperialistic forces would not be able to penetrate them, which would create a safer and more stable world for us all.

Thus, by 1954, JFK called for more transparency regarding French involvement in Vietnam and America’s support of it and urged discussion of alternative options. He urged Americans to understand the issues before becoming embroiled in endless conflicts:

But the speeches of President Eisenhower, Secretary Dulles, and others have left too much unsaid, in my opinion—and what has been left unsaid is the heart of the problem that should concern every citizen. For if the American people are … to travel the long and tortuous road of war, then I believe we have a right to inquire in detail into the nature of the struggle in which we may become engaged, and the alternative to such struggle.¹⁸

He encouraged the U.S. to refocus American aid in a way that would sway France to grant full independence to Vietnam and other countries in the region.¹⁹ He felt the U.S. could not effectively fight off the spread of Communism without supporting nationalism. The natives would have no desire to defend against a Communist threat if they were merely defending a foreign empire. Either way, they were not free and might even welcome the Communist infiltration as a road to their freedom. They would only fight Communism if they were fighting for their independence. Kennedy elaborated: I am frankly of the belief that no amount of American military assistance in Indochina can conquer an enemy which is everywhere and at the same time nowhere, ‘an enemy of the people’ which has the sympathy and covert support of the people.²⁰

He was also concerned about these types of conflicts escalating into larger wars, "for upon our decisions now may well rest the peace and security of the world and, indeed, the continued existence of